It often feels impossible for a season of football to pass without the emergence of a new scandal - whether that be a footballing matter such as the introduction and implementation of VAR or the cultural and social issues that continue to affect the game.
Everton fans at Goodison Park vs Tottenham Hotspur (Photo by Chris Brunskill/Fantasista/Getty Images)
Such is the nature of sport, these stories are generally somewhat fleeting, often replaced in the media's attention by glamorous signings and tournament upsets. These are the stories that fans love - for some, it is the very reason that they love the game.
The attracting of global megastars to their local cities, to play in front of them on a shining Saturday afternoon and provide the catalysts for so many highs and lows throughout the years - the transfer window is a fundamental part of football.
However, I would argue that it simultaneously provides a platform for one the biggest legal issues facing sport. And unlike aforementioned scandals, this is not a story that can be buried by sensational signings and FA Cup underdog tales.
It is a matter that will only be aggravated by shiny transfers and could very well - in time - see heroic underdog stories become a much-loved memory of the past. Of a time when the beautiful game was just that.
A game where anyone could win and anyone could lose. A game that was played on the
football pitch and not in the court rooms. Financial Fair Play regulations have dominated headlines in recent years. In the last few weeks, Everton have been deducted ten points form their Premier League total and are now subject to further investigation and potential deductions alongside Nottingham Forest.
It is inevitable that the fans of these clubs will feel such sanctions are incredibly harsh. They could face a significantly enhanced prospect of seeing their enormous clubs suffer relegation to the Championship come May.
As fans of Leeds United will know all too well, the history and prestige of a club far from guarantees their immediate return to the top-flight. However, immediate reaction of fans aside, it can largely be agreed to be fair that if you - as an owner of a football club - blatantly breach the rules that you and your club have signed up to, you can and should expect to be punished.
Such a punishment is required in order to maintain the very notion of integrity within the sport. If there were no consequences for breaking the financial rules, what would prevent football from turning into a game played on calculators and accounting sheets rather than in the packed-out stadiums to the cheers of thousands.
Whilst, in isolation, this principle may be relatively uncontroversial, an overwhelming issue
becomes quite apparent when considering the other significant FFP case in English football
right now.
The sky-blue elephant in the room. Manchester City have been charged with 115 alleged breaches of Financial Fair Play, virtually trivialising the singular breaches of Everton and Nottingham Forest.
The frequent alleged disregard and abuse of the rules of the game preceded a period of total domestic dominance for the blues - culminating in a famous treble last season - and as such the integrity of their recent accolades has been put up for debate by many.
With Everton having been docked ten points for one breach, one can only attempt to imagine the scale of the punishment that City will soon be facing - if they are to be found guilty of each charge. That last disclaimer may seem an obvious or unnecessary point, but it is absolutely fundamental to the message of this article, and very possibly the integrity of modern football as a whole.
City have already escaped a 30 million Euros fine and a two-year suspension from European competition by UEFA for similar breaches. Under UEFA statute, alleged breaches that took place more than five years prior to charges being brought are unable to be scrutinised.
This greatly limited the power of UEFA to bring City to supposed justice. Whilst such rules will not limit their liability this time around, it is not beyond the realm of belief that City's legal team can once again find a loophole to extinguish their liability for at least some of the 115 charges facing the club.
This time, City have been charged with failing to give a "true and fair view of the club's financial position". By comparison, there has never been a suggestion that Everton were intentionally dishonest in their breaches. This puts the two cases into an entirely different stratosphere.
Whereas it has at least been suggested that City were somewhat deceitful - whether this turns out to be true or not - Everton were docked points for what can thus be classified as an accidental breach. I would therefore argue that the punishment that Pep Guardiola's team should face should not be linear to the ten points taken from Everton's total.
Using the precedent set by the case against Everton, if Manchester City were (hypothetically) found to be liable for 115 breaches of the same non-deceitful variety, it would follow that they could be punished with a mammoth deduction of 1150 points.
When you add in the element of a potential finding of dishonesty and failure to cooperate with investigators, this deduction should only be increasing – again, only in theory. Clearly, a deduction of over 1000 points will not be administered to City. An immediate relegation may be. Perhaps more likely of a punishment would be a strict points deduction which leaves the club battling relegation and most likely succumbing to it by the end of the season. But this is all speculation.
No honest person, be that an expert or fan, can give a genuinely accurate prediction of what will happen at the conclusion of this investigation. The final verdict - and indeed punishment - will likely be negotiated and altered many times before it is administered.
In truth, the true details of the punishment are immaterial to the overall lesson that these proceedings have demonstrated to us as football fans. The current rules are not sufficient - a
significant proportion of Premier League teams are currently either under some form of
investigation for breaking financial regulations or desperately trying to offload players in
order to prevent future breaches and sanctions.
It is likely that this number will only increase in the near future. As the aforementioned examples demonstrate, harsher punishments are required as a deterrent to prevent owners and teams from regularly breaching rules quite literally operating in order to maintain 'Fair Play'.
However, it can be argued that their most function is not as a deterrent but in the pursuit of restorative justice. If Manchester City are found to have breached financial fair play regulations in the build up to Pep Guardiola’s arrival at the club, titles won under Guardiola will not immediately be subjected to scrutiny.
However, the butterfly effect suggests that maybe they ought to be. At the start of the 2015/16
season, Manchester City spent close to 140 million euros on the duo of Kevin De Bruyne and
Raheem Sterling.
Both players contributed significantly to the enormous success of the team in the years following their transfers. I am not suggesting that these signings themselves broke – or contributed to the breaking of – financial fair play rules.
However, I am raising the question of whether had City not won the league in two of the four seasons immediately preceding their joining of the club (two seasons for which the club is under investigation), the club would have been able to attract two such highly promising young players. Let’s say, for instance, that City’s title from the 2013/14 season was rescinded and Liverpool were victorious instead.
Would the club have been able to keep hold of Raheem Sterling (or at least lose him to a different team) or afford and attract the young Kevin De Bruyne who has admitted to being a Liverpool fan in his youth.
Whilst these are of course entirely hypothetical situations, it is perhaps worth considering the possibility that the Premier League would look very different if City had not won the two league titles that they did during this period.
For example, without such trophies, would they have been able to attract Pep Guardiola to the club? Without Pep, would Jurgen Klopp’s Liverpool have won far more than the sole Premier League trophy that they did manage? Would Mikel Arteta have clinched Arsenal’s first Premier League title in decades last season? This thought experiment will only ever be a frustrating exercise for fans of rival teams, but this can have a tangible impact on a huge number of other sides as well.
Let’s say, for example, that City would be stripped of their two titles if indeed they were found to have breached the rules during this period. Where would they then sit in the league table for that season? If they were immediately sent to the foot of the table, then does that mean that the team in 18th should have survived?
Bolton Wanderers were relegated in 2011/12 as City topped the league. Having lasted thirteen
seasons in the top-flight prior to their relegation, Bolton have not returned since. Having been
plagued by their own financial issues in the years since then, the recent allegations surrounding Manchester City must leave a bitter taste in the mouth of Bolton supporters.
If City cheated their way to the title, then should their points total for that season being null and
void? If so, they would have finished 20th and Bolton would have survived. This is just one example. For many thousands of fans, the past decade could have been so different.
Whilst these hypothetical questions will never be answered – and perhaps in the view of
some, do not need to be answered - it does demonstrate the heart of the issue which I am
trying to convey. If teams are regularly cheating the system, and it takes many years for them
to be investigated and punished, then who can genuinely claim that the football events that
occur in between are just and fair.
It is all too likely that major footballing nights this season - whether that be title charges, cup runs, huge nights on the European stage, or indeed bitter relegations – will look so different in five years when another team is found to have broken FFP rules in a period that includes this season.
For billionaire owners, that might seem like a risk worth taking, but think of the working man and woman who just want to enjoy watching their team play on a Saturday afternoon. Is the sport really doing everything it can to protect them? Can a supporter genuinely enjoy their team’s success with the knowledge that a court ruling could wipe it out? Is it fair that a team can be relegated and suffer huge financial repercussions only for a court to find, five years down the line, that the team that pipped them to safety by a single point did so in the midst of a financial scandal themselves?
Due to the current structure, and the delays in decision-making, this does not seem to be an issue that is likely to disappear any time soon. I would like to end by bringing you back to an image I raised at the start of this article.
Football is a precious game that provides so much unity in times of political, economic, and
social upheaval. The sport unites so many fans of varying ethnic, geographic and socio-
economic backgrounds – all willing the ball into the back of the net.
For ninety minutes every issue, every crisis, every societal attempt to divide us fades into total irrelevancy. There is a reason it is called the beautiful game. Football is a game that – in theory – can be won by either side. But the question I raise is – when both success and defeat can so easily and so frequently be annulled by the bang of a judge’s gavel – is anyone truly winning?
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