Arsenal News » The CORRUPTION FILES: 1 – The League

The organisation running the top league in English football has a long history of corruption – dating back at least to 1919 when Manchester United and Liverpool, who had been found guilty of match fixing in the final pre-war season were allowed to go unpunished and continue unhindered.

Arsenal benefitted from the final outcome of that particular scandal, by being given a place in the new expanded First Division in the re-organised league, but that was due to what was effectively a vote of thanks from other clubs who were so pleased to find a team that would stand up to the corruption of the north west teams.

That protest against the corruption in football was led by Henry Norris, the Arsenal chairman and owner, who brought Arsenal to Highbury, and who brought in Chapman as manager.

But the authorities never forgave his campaign, and they eventually got their own back when he was banned from football for life for… having the club pay for his chauffeur for the drive to an away match.  Clearly a balanced response.

On May 6, 1991, Arsenal won the League, but not before the League itself had docked Arsenal two points for the behaviour of its players on the pitch in the game earlier in the season at Old Trafford.   There’s no denying that something like 18 of the 22 players on the pitch squared up to each or protested to the ref – but players squaring up to each other was nothing new and had never been punished before.  No punches were thrown, no one was pushed to the ground.

No club has before or since been deducted two points for general player demenour – these days there is a set of rules about paying a fine if several players get booked – but then there was no rule.  The League made it up for the occasion.  Manchester United were docked one point but that was irrelevant because they were never challenging for the title.  Arsenal were.

This season, the League obviously were not the prime motivators in getting Eduardo banned for two games in the Champs Knockabout – that all happened because of the Scottish FA, who hold a dominant position in UEFA (especially in the case of Gordon Smith who was prominent in this case).   But the League, who could see the injustice of the situation, kept very quiet.

Now the application of the post-match charge of Article 10 (1c) of the disciplinary regulations (saying that a player can be suspended “for acting with the obvious intent to cause any match official to make an incorrect decision or supporting his error of judgment”) the world has changed.

Eduardo, it is said, did this by diving with intent (remembering that under the new rule the officials decide what is in the player’s mind).  Adebayor therefore did the same by intending to rake his studs all over Van Persie’s face and then claiming it was an accident.  (No one can know what is in the mind of Adebayor – any more than Eduardo, but since the Eduardo case that is not the question – it is assumed you can know).

Van Persie is in no doubt.  He says, on the Arsenal site…

“I am sad and disappointed by my former team-mate Emmanuel Adebayor’s mindless and malicious stamp on me during today’s match…. He set out to hurt me today.

“I knew he was aiming for a collision because he changed the angle of his body to allow contact to be made.  He moved backwards when his natural momentum would have taken him forward…

“I do feel lucky that I have not suffered a greater injury. The contact was only centimetres from my eye. I have not received an apology from him, there were no words exchanged afterwards…”

Now we know that Eduardo got a two game ban for diving.  That did not affect the outcome of the game, and did not hurt anyone.  So a deliberate attempt to disfigure a player for life presumably is a little more than a two game ban.

In November 2007 a rugby player Rhys Garfield from near Bridgend was jailed for 15 months for stamping on the head of an opponent during a match.  Garfield cause greater injury than Adebayor, but it shows that such issues can be taken seriously.

So here we have the two ends of the spectrum.  Two match ban for falling over, or 15 months in prison for stamping on a player’s head.

Given that the injury Van Persie suffered was not substantial it doesn’t seem relevant to talk of prison, but certainly a long ban from football would seem in order.  Anything less than half a season’s ban for deliberate contact between boot and head would seem ludicrous given the precedent set by two games for falling over.

Anything less than half that (ie ten game ban) would (again given the context of Eduardo’s two game ban) seem like corruption once again.

We wait and see, but if you do accept that the League is a corrupt body in the way it hands out uneven punishment then the question is why?  Why should club a) get away with it and club z) not?   The answer undoubtedly come down to money and who pays whom, how and when.  Just the same as in the match fixing days before the First World War.

At least Arsenal are at last standing up to bent authorities, and I really do welcome this.  The strong statement made on the web site in the Eduardo case was welcome, and the way the club has handled its comments about Adebayor is also welcome.  Long may that continue – we’ve been pushed around by the nutters who run football for nearly 100 years, and it is time this stopped.

PS – the link in the banner at the top is not working as I write this (monday AM) but will be soon — it leads to www.woolwicharsenal.co.uk

Coming next in the Corruption Files: Fabio Capello

(c) Tony Attwood 2009