Wednesday, July 04, 2007

 

Staying Up

Not there was ever any doubt :)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/football/eng_prem/6252310.stm

Full decision here.

Summary here.

The full decision is definitely worth a read..it outlines the full background and sequence of events.

Key point for me is that WHU (under new ownership) disclosed the breaches voluntarily in *January* and yet a decsion was not made until the end of *April*. During that time Tevez played a lot more than he did prior to January. WHU could have rectified the 3rd party contract in January (similar to the way Liverpool legally negotiated Mascherano's contract) if we had not had to wait for the tribunal's decision. The new owners clearly had the desire to obey the rules evidenced by their voluntary disclosure of the breaches.

Tevez should have and would have been playing legally for us from Jan onwards (the majority of his actual playing time for us) had the PL & the tribunal not taken over 3 months to rule.

There was a scary bit in there...the new tribunal made the comment that they would likely have deducted points from us if they had been the original tribunal since they would have placed more weight on the club's deliberate deceit. Jebus.

With the cloud lifted hopefully it will help attract quality players...



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