What's going on?" sang 4 non Blondes in their hit song What's Up. It's got to the point where a lot of football fans are asking "what's going on?", if not WTF?
VAR was oversold as an answer to inconsistency in refereeing, But week after week we see examples of rulings which are controversial because - guess what? - they are a matter of judgement. The last seconds goal for Wolves disallowed for offside led to the Wolves manager saying no-one who knew anything about football would disallow it. Lineker and his two cohorts on MoTD agreed. I'd have disallowed it every day of the week when I was reffing boys' football and I listened with interest as two pundits on Radio 5Live said the same. That's the thing with judgement calls - they're judgement calls.
We're promised that semi-automatic VAR offside rulings, as they do in Europe, will improve things. Not looking at this example:
Ha - offside? When I was trained as a referee (and all the time I played) that's a classic example of "level". The law still says that a player is not offside if "level with the second last opponent". But it also now says the player is offside if "any part of of head, body or feet" is nearer to the opponent's goal line than both the ball and the second last opponent". But the chap's foot above is very difficult to see in real time when standing on the line on a windy park pitch with a flag in your hand (a task I always thought much harder than actually refereeing). But you can see, even in the blur of action, that he's level.
VAR has in effect changed the law without it being changed. It was always a tenet of football that the laws could be applied at every level of the game - even where they can't afford goal nets, which are still optional (though not in the Premier League). But not when it comes to video technology. You'd be onside in most leagues in the world but not the elite game.
Meanwhile, the Premier League deducted a further two points off Everton this week, which was in line my expectation (I predicted three or maybe two - see Justice, Natural Justice and Double Jeopardy 20 March 2024). Much of the media discussion since then has revealed an almost universal puzzlement on the part of football fans - not just Evertonians - about what the league is trying to achieve with its Profit and Sustainability Rules (PSR). Nobody thinks Everton, Forest or Leicester are unsustainable - though they could be tilted into it by the punishments they are receiving. I listened to pundits chatting on TalkSport the day the sanction was announced. They were totally bemused that Everton may face a third charge associated with interest on loans which the club says is for the new stadium and so outside the PSR regime. One pundit said it made no sense and it was time for an amnesty.
I doubt fans of most Premier League clubs other than Manchester City and perhaps Chelsea would agree with an amnesty, especially if it let City off scot free. But what is clear is that the rules will almost certainly change fairly soon to a totally different basis.
Pul McInnes put it well when he said in the Guardian that the Premier League has created the impression of a rigged game. That, Paul, is because it's not an impression, it's a fact.
The new rules will probably be based on the top teams being capped to spending a multiple of the lowest ranked team's broadcast revenue. This feels like progress - there is some limit to what any club can spend. But when you remember that the whole PSR/UEFA financial fair play (FFP) regime was brought in to ensure Bayern, Real Madrid, Barca, Man United, Liverpool and Juve stayed at the top for ever (and, more to the point, Roman Abramovich's Chelsea was excluded - oops, too late, but maybe Manchester City can be kept out of the party...) then you twig that it's to spike Newcastle's financial firepower.
But more than that it's to ensure that big clubs are profitable all the time. Now football clubs have never been profitable, bar the odd, exceptional season. But the American venture capital owners of Man U and Liverpool don't want profits someday, when they sell. They want dividends paid every year. The new financial rules being discussed by the Premier League will ensure that. But what will the fans think?
As Martin Samuel said in the Times
...profit is a dream in the boardroom, not on the terraces. Whoever huddled over a cup of half-time Bovril longing for the chairman to be paid a lovely dividend? Well before the advent of the Premier League, in a leafy corner of east London, a director of West Ham United used to hold court at the bar overlooking the putting green, having played his 18 holes. “Such a well-run club, West Ham,” he would tell his audience. “In 20 years I’ve never had to put my hand in my pocket.”
In his other columns railing against PSR and FFP Samuel has said:
The Premier League isn't worried about competition. It doesn't care about promoted clubs taking on the best, challenging the established order, not just at the top but even in the middle and lower middle. It wants Crystal Palace heads just above water, or even Sheffield United, rock bottom but compliant*.
Had Forest sold Brennan Johnson for £17.5 million less earlier in the season and not bought players they could well be where Sheffield United are now. And that would be fine. Masters (Richard Masters, the Premier League CEO) has no problem with Sheffield United 0 Newcastle United 8. There are no rules outlawing circumstances that lead a club to concede 26 goals in six homes games, as Sheffield United did between December 26 and March 4. That's all lovely. That all adds up. It's trying to avoid this that is the crime. Playing catch-up. Refusing to accept a dismal fate."
Oh but won't it all be wonderful when there's a government backed regulator? Er, no, why would it be? We have the world's most succesful domestic football product. The man (or woman) appointed by Whitehall can only cock it up.
Here are some straws in the wind. Take the owner's test. The government was always in favour of the Saudi take over of Newcastle. It was the Premier League that had a problem becauise of pirate broadcasts in the middle east. The West Bromwich Albion owner was sound for a while but took money out when his other businesses got into difficulty and did a flit. The Chinese owner of Reading failed the Premier League owner's test but passed the EFL's at a time the UK government was cosying up to China. Reading is now sinking in unpaid bills.
Oh, you can doubt the ability of the Premier League and EFL to assess these things - who wouldn't? Maybe we should trust the big audit companies like Deloittes. So what about Dozy Mmobuosi? He's a Nigerian tycoon who didn't pass the Premier League and EFL tests when he tried to buy Sheffield United. But Deloitte and the US Nasdaq exchange thought he was sound. His Tingo Mobile (I'm not making this up) was supposedly worth $1bn but it eventually turned out that it actually had no meaningful customers or operations and had about $15 in it's bank account. These things aren't as easy as they seem.
So I had hoped that the government would go cool on implementing a compulsory government backed football regulator. After all, why would they want the controversy of docking clubs points, or declining prospective owners with money to spend? Maybe they think that, like the water industry, the preposterously named Ofwat (er, we want it on, not off, bozos) deflects the blame when the sewage is flowing in the rivers. Have they really not noticed that it doesn't?
Anyway our moribund government, incapable of implementing anything much that actually matters, has announced recently that it intends to press on with the football regulator, supported on the sidelines by Labour, who normally won't commit to any policy. It was summed up for me when Lucy Frazer, the Culture Secretary (culture - has she been to Goodison?) announced that "football has been at the heart of our nation for 200 years". D'oh, the first football club in the world (Sheffield FC since you ask) was formed in 1855. That's er....169 years ago Tracy. Not good at maths or sport, eh?
This all gives me further ammunition that politicians don't usually know what they are talking about, but especially when it comes to football. I seriously doubt that I can vote for a party that introduces or supports the ridiculous idea of a football regulator. Which could be awkward as that rules out Tories and Labour. I'm not sure about the LibDems (who is?) but some of their peers have been pressing for the return of free to air broadcasts for a selection of Premier League matches. This won't be particularly compatible with current broadcasting contracts but, more importantly, it would wouldn't be compatible with the Premier League retaining its international standing as the best domestic league in the world. Fans will just love it when we return to our leading clubs selling their best players to Italy, Spain and Germany as happened with Keegan, Rush, McManaman and Beckham. Or more likely, to Saudi Arabia.
Who'd vote for that? Which may leave me few options to vote for. I wonder what Plaid Cymru's policy is on a football regulator? And would it even apply to Wales?
The world's not gone crazy. It's post crazy.
* Sheffield United's compliance as far as the Premier League is concerned won't stop them being docked points if and when the go back to the EFL for breaching that league's rules.
The 4 Non Blondes song is just a 1990s pop song but I love it, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NXnxTNIWkc
Martin Samuel. Every owner gets to be the Glazers once anchoring takes hold. Times 19 March 2024
If you don't believe me that goal nets are optional in the laws of the game check https://downloads.theifab.com/downloads/laws-of-the-game-2023-24?l=en. I found such snippets useful when playing and refereeing, being well aware that goal nets were optional but corner flags weren't.
And for level is onside see: https://www.theifab.com/laws/latest/offside/#offside-position
No comments:
Post a Comment