Kevin McCabe, chairman of Sheffield United, thinks I have a claret-and-blue-tinted vendetta against his club. Not true. I do think football is hiding, though. Hiding behind the notion that, if the Carlos Tevez affair is pursued to the utmost degree, all those other sneaky little third-party carve-ups that take place every season can be neatly brushed under the carpet. And, yes, some of them do involve Sheffield United.
Double standard: McCabe
This is significant as it shows a double standard at work. On one side a campaign for fairness, on the other a desire to continue operating with the nod-and-a-wink, you- scratch-my-back, practices that have been part of football for too long. Post-Tevez, the Football League have not even bothered to rewrite their rules to include sanctions
for third-party ownership or influence. Those at the Football Association are, at best, vague and the Premier League could do with tightening a few loopholes, too. The only explanation for this is that clubs wish to have it both ways, a handshake on the sly when it suits them, crying foul when it does not.
McCabe also says I have an allegiance to West Ham United, but it has never coloured my professional judgement. West Ham were wrong over Tevez. I have stated this many times. The week after the Premier League hearing, I wrote that had the club been summarily relegated for lying over the transfer there could have been no complaint. I stand by that. What changed, however, as I began looking at the way
the loan system was being abused with gentlemen’s agreements and deals not in writing (there is no mention of Sheffield United’s side arrangement with Charlton Athletic over Matthew Spring in the papers lodged at the Football League, which seems strange if it was all above board), was the belief that only one club were playing fast and loose with the third-party rules.
The Spring story, like the investigations into the transfers of Tim Howard and Steve Kabba, were about the loan system and the way it is corrupted by poor administration, allowing clubs to operate in a way that is unhealthy for the competition. What happened over Spring, who scored for his new club against Crystal Palace last night, was not meaningless or victimless for it allowed Sheffield United to face a weakened Charlton team in the FA Cup, and then ensure a stronger one in the Championship for the rest of the season when Charlton will face all but Sheffield United and Queens
Park Rangers from the top nine. It is not the crime of the century but it is hardly irrelevant, either.
Anyone who cares about fairness should care about the loan and third-party issues. The Football League said on Monday that they would now be looking to change their rules and the Football Association were still agonising over the legality of the Spring deal more than four days after it had been brought to their attention. How can this be?
How, after all that has gone on, can we still be operating with transfer legislation that is not unequivocally black and white? Nobody expects harsh sanctions over this, just clearer rules. And if we now succeed in getting them, I don’t call that a vendetta, Kevin: I call that a victory. And if you are as concerned with fairness as you claim, so should you.
