The cost of being honest

[OldNick]

I look at west Ham and see them in the higher reaches of the PL and only being so due to fielding a player who should not have played. Perhaps RL should have signed Tevez and paid a paltry fine at the profit of still being in that league.

It is said crime pays and whilst WHU have not been involved in crime it does seem that way to me.

Even now if we could play someone legal or not and that kept us up it would be worth it.

Of course had it been us we would be expelled , docked points and fined the national debt. WH with Brooking and half the media their supporters it doesnt happen to them.

[SaintRobbie]

Not really - WH I think are paying £30m to Sheffield Utd are they not? I am not so sure that they have got away scot-free.

 

Honesty and integrity are very important - particularly at Chairmanship level (as we know Lowe's integrity has been in doubt for several years - MC recently exposed him as a liar over the NP farce and what exactly does Kim van de man do again?). Without integrity at the top the club loses potential investment, support and credibility. I think ours has been undermined a lot in recent years.

 

What we do need is a manager who understands the league and the people in it. If that means we attract finer players by bending the rules through such a manager then so be it - and I think most British Football managers give you that, shall we say, 'flexibility'. But, it is up to the manager and not the chairman - as it is at the highest level where integrity is preserved. That is why none of us trust Lowe. We simply dont. He stays quiet knowing whatever he says will be ripped apart, analysed and studied ... the reason we do it? Lack of trust in the Chairman.

[70's Mike]

sums up life in general

[Deano6]

The Lounge is thaddaway ------------------------------>

[Window Cleaner]

Not really - WH I think are paying £30m to Sheffield Utd are they not? I am not so sure that they have got away scot-free.

 

.

 

 

15 million I think, but they're selling Tevez to Utd for 32 million so that's a big + in the profit column. PLus continued Premiership football for what? at least another 3 years.

[tombletomble]

15 million I think, but they're selling Tevez to Utd for 32 million so that's a big + in the profit column. PLus continued Premiership football for what? at least another 3 years.

 

 

West Ham never owned Tevez so they wont get a penny of the £32m

[eelpie]

Not really - WH I think are paying £30m to Sheffield Utd are they not? I am not so sure that they have got away scot-free.

 

Honesty and integrity are very important - particularly at Chairmanship level (as we know Lowe's integrity has been in doubt for several years - MC recently exposed him as a liar over the NP farce and what exactly does Kim van de man do again?). Without integrity at the top the club loses potential investment, support and credibility. I think ours has been undermined a lot in recent years.

 

What we do need is a manager who understands the league and the people in it. If that means we attract finer players by bending the rules through such a manager then so be it - and I think most British Football managers give you that, shall we say, 'flexibility'. But, it is up to the manager and not the chairman - as it is at the highest level where integrity is preserved. That is why none of us trust Lowe. We simply dont. He stays quiet knowing whatever he says will be ripped apart, analysed and studied ... the reason we do it? Lack of trust in the Chairman.

 

...and a manager to be in control, rather than a coach who plays the team that the MD selects.

[alpine_saint]

I look at west Ham and see them in the higher reaches of the PL and only being so due to fielding a player who should not have played. Perhaps RL should have signed Tevez and paid a paltry fine at the profit of still being in that league.

It is said crime pays and whilst WHU have not been involved in crime it does seem that way to me.

Even now if we could play someone legal or not and that kept us up it would be worth it.

Of course had it been us we would be expelled , docked points and fined the national debt. WH with Brooking and half the media their supporters it doesnt happen to them.

 

Its cost West Ham £25m to Sheff Utd and a £5m fine to the PL. And there is still the private action of Warnock and the Sheff Utd players to come.

 

Personally, much as the cheating sticks in my craw, its sufficient punishment. A whopping financial penalty, amplified in these times of financial crisis, which means you can be sure West Ham dont think they have got away with murder.

 

Personally, I hope the biggest aftermath of this odious event is yet to come. I am hoping that that slimy bastard Scudamore, who basically decided that West Ham's face fitted in the Premiership better than Sheff Utd's, has made plenty of enemies in the game (along with his 39th game abroad idea), and will eventually lose his job.

 

That bloke has done as much to wreck the game below PL level as the likes of Roman Abramovich.

[OldNick]

to be still in the PL is worht so much and as a fan it would be tempting to have closed a blind eye and done the same. WHU would be in administration now had they been relegated IMO. They could well be in our position.

I think RL is correct (or any other CEO) in not doing it, but WHU by breaking the rules are in the promised land and we are heading for land of the lepers.No justice is there

[OldNick]

Its cost West Ham £25m to Sheff Utd and a £5m fine to the PL. And there is still the private action of Warnock and the Sheff Utd players to come.

 

Personally, much as the cheating sticks in my craw, its sufficient punishment. A whopping financial penalty, amplified in these times of financial crisis, which means you can be sure West Ham dont think they have got away with murder.

 

Personally, I hope the biggest aftermath of this odious event is yet to come. I am hoping that that slimy bastard Scudamore, who basically decided that West Ham's face fitted in the Premiership better than Sheff Utd's, has made plenty of enemies in the game (along with his 39th game abroad idea), and will eventually lose his job.

 

That bloke has done as much to wreck the game below PL level as the likes of Roman Abramovich.

30m is nothing though is it Alps if you consider just in the 2 seasons they have stayed up they would have banked over 50m and plenty more to follow.Add their high league position and they will get more.

[alpine_saint]

30m is nothing though is it Alps if you consider just in the 2 seasons they have stayed up they would have banked over 50m and plenty more to follow.Add their high league position and they will get more.

 

I understand what you mean, but £30m + is still a helluva fine.

 

They could have gone down since by other means, remember. Last year they earned their place in the PL again.

[OldNick]

I understand what you mean, but £30m + is still a helluva fine.

 

They could have gone down since by other means, remember. Last year they earned their place in the PL again.

thats fair, but they were able to strengthen by staying up.

[OldNick]

Can we make claims for the points we've lost against sheff utd by claiming we might well have fared better against west ham?

Lol

[Saint_clark]

Can we make claims for the points we've lost against sheff utd by claiming we might well have fared better against west ham?

 

But last season we beat them both times. This season doesn't count as it's too long after they were relegated.

[Pancake]

is anyone else still ****ed off about brum fielding pandiani to score against us when that was blatantly a dodgy transfer?

 

Yes, I had a ****ty cold that evening(?) and listened to the match on the laptop in my Saints fleece with a box of tissues and a large mug of tea. each time Im ill now I remember that bloody game and it ****es my right off.

[Window Cleaner]

it all counts. we'd have beaten west ham 4 times. probably.

 

is anyone else still ****ed off about brum fielding pandiani to score against us when that was blatantly a dodgy transfer?

 

Well the FA said their fax ran out of paper or something similar. Bet if it had been us signing a player after the deadline it wouldn't have washed.

[alpine_saint]

is anyone else still ****ed off about brum fielding pandiani to score against us when that was blatantly a dodgy transfer?

 

YES.

 

Can you see them having been so lenient with us ? My arse.

 

It was Brums fault for leaving it to the last minute to sign him.

[Legod Third Coming]

What the Tevez affair really proves is that high quality footballers commanding high salaries are the difference between success and failure.

 

Can you please take this message and ram it down the throat of Rupert Lowe, whose policy of relying on quantity rather than quality cost us our Premiership status and could quite easily now relegate us to League One.

 

The man simply refuses to accept every football truism known to every football fan worldwide - the better the players, the more successful the club, the more it costs to pay and retain them...

[Graffito]

West Ham should have been deducted points and relegated, that's what has happened to smaller clubs that have cheated, like Luton. It would also have been a more definite punishment and more likely have brought an end to the affair. West Ham have been heavily fined, yes, but the ruling has opened up a can of worms with these further claims and the whole situation is untenable and could rumble on indefinitely.

 

I went to West Ham v West Brom on Monday night. If they play like that next season and with their poor financial situation they are going down anyway.

[Saint Fan CaM]

What the Tevez affair really proves is that high quality footballers commanding high salaries are the difference between success and failure.

 

Can you please take this message and ram it down the throat of Rupert Lowe, whose policy of relying on quantity rather than quality cost us our Premiership status and could quite easily now relegate us to League One.

 

The man simply refuses to accept every football truism known to every football fan worldwide - the better the players, the more successful the club, the more it costs to pay and retain them...

 

 

The trouble is he probably knows all this, but in reality does not care. Financial expediency is the name of the game. However, Rupert is such a rubbish businessman and the PLC is such a straight-jacket when it comes to invetment, there has never been the chance of raising expectations and ambition to achieve anything more than poor mediocrity. :mad:

Edited 20 March, 2009 by Saint Fan CaM
formatting

[Wes Tender]

I wonder whether you missed the irony, Nick, in posting a thread about dishonest dealings by West Ham and praising our board for not indulging in such shenanigans.

 

Either you had forgotten the dodgey dealings covered in the programme "The Share Game" and the immorality of the reverse takeover, or else you think that the way that the board behaved in that little episode was satisfactory. I reckon that Askham, Lowe and the other charlatans on our board at that time could give lessons on how to go as far as you could along the edge of legality, but crossing over the line of what one might call moral or decent behaviour.

[OldNick]

I wonder whether you missed the irony, Nick, in posting a thread about dishonest dealings by West Ham and praising our board for not indulging in such shenanigans.

 

Either you had forgotten the dodgey dealings covered in the programme "The Share Game" and the immorality of the reverse takeover, or else you think that the way that the board behaved in that little episode was satisfactory. I reckon that Askham, Lowe and the other charlatans on our board at that time could give lessons on how to go as far as you could along the edge of legality, but crossing over the line of what one might call moral or decent behaviour.

I dont know the legalities of the takeover. I usggest that they were legally correct morally wrong. At the same time i do also think that the way the ownership for decades before being a closed shop and the shares only able to be sold to a select few was wrong as well.

[Wes Tender]

I dont know the legalities of the takeover. I usggest that they were legally correct morally wrong. At the same time i do also think that the way the ownership for decades before being a closed shop and the shares only able to be sold to a select few was wrong as well.

 

Regarding the legalities of the reverse takeover, I had read something recently implying that there had been an element of insider trading involved and that this was additional to another incident that I had heard about previously. However, nothing apparently has been substantiated about this. As you say, the actual reverse takeover was immoral in the opinion of both of us due to the stuff that came out in the Share Game documentary about the George Bowyer shares and offers to give only the nominal £1 value for purchase of shares from either widows or those in bankruptcy when those shares were resold at a massive profit. They were then resold to Askham's toadies at £1 each, only to acquire their massive increase in value with the reverse takeover shortly after, which is reprehensible.

 

The situation whereby the shareholdings were valued at a nominal £1 was fine when the board comprised gentlemen from the professions who sat on the board for little or no remumeration, mostly because they were not only fans of the Saints, but also felt it an honour and almost a civic duty to help their local club. In more modern times, such altruism has become an anachronism and has been replaced by a greedy self-interest and unfortunately we were burdened with people on our board not of the old school, but those more interested in swelling their own bank accounts.

 

The road to our current predicament began at that time.

[OldNick]

Regarding the legalities of the reverse takeover, I had read something recently implying that there had been an element of insider trading involved and that this was additional to another incident that I had heard about previously. However, nothing apparently has been substantiated about this. As you say, the actual reverse takeover was immoral in the opinion of both of us due to the stuff that came out in the Share Game documentary about the George Bowyer shares and offers to give only the nominal £1 value for purchase of shares from either widows or those in bankruptcy when those shares were resold at a massive profit. They were then resold to Askham's toadies at £1 each, only to acquire their massive increase in value with the reverse takeover shortly after, which is reprehensible.

 

The situation whereby the shareholdings were valued at a nominal £1 was fine when the board comprised gentlemen from the professions who sat on the board for little or no remumeration, mostly because they were not only fans of the Saints, but also felt it an honour and almost a civic duty to help their local club. In more modern times, such altruism has become an anachronism and has been replaced by a greedy self-interest and unfortunately we were burdened with people on our board not of the old school, but those more interested in swelling their own bank accounts.

 

The road to our current predicament began at that time.

Come on Wes however you dress it up a closed shop is a closed shop that ultimately cost us as a fanbase. We also dont know what investor may have wished to buy us years ago.Many a wealthy man has been made from our city and some may well have wished to invest.

The cosiness may have stopped us being going bankrupt of course but to me it was just a gentlemans club and that is perhaps why we never pushed on properly during the LM era

[Wes Tender]

Come on Wes however you dress it up a closed shop is a closed shop that ultimately cost us as a fanbase. We also dont know what investor may have wished to buy us years ago.Many a wealthy man has been made from our city and some may well have wished to invest.

The cosiness may have stopped us being going bankrupt of course but to me it was just a gentlemans club and that is perhaps why we never pushed on properly during the LM era

 

As I said, in its day, with altruistic board members, it was OK. It was only when there was undue haste in my opinion to get into bed with Lowe's small retirement home business, when it seems that there were other consortia wishing to make bids to take over the club that the problems began. It has never been justified to my satisfaction why the other bids were ruled out of time in this undue haste to sign up to the reverse takeover. We had better not hold the opinion though that the reverse takeover was incentivised, as that was obviously not the case.

[SaintRobbie]

...and a manager to be in control, rather than a coach who plays the team that the MD selects.

 

Absolutely.

[SaintRobbie]

 

Can you please take this message and ram it down the throat of Rupert Lowe, whose policy of relying on quantity rather than quality cost us our Premiership status and could quite easily now relegate us to League One.

 

 

Good point.

[SaintRobbie]

 

Message for Rupes?

[Doctoroncall]

West Ham should have been deducted points and relegated, that's what has happened to smaller clubs that have cheated, like Luton. It would also have been a more definite punishment and more likely have brought an end to the affair. West Ham have been heavily fined, yes, but the ruling has opened up a can of worms with these further claims and the whole situation is untenable and could rumble on indefinitely.

 

I went to West Ham v West Brom on Monday night. If they play like that next season and with their poor financial situation they are going down anyway.

 

NO, it hasn't happened at smaller clubs.

 

There was a clause in the agreement that Tevez could be sold without WHU say so. THIS was the issue - third part involvement.

[SW5 SAINT]

Its cost West Ham £25m to Sheff Utd and a £5m fine to the PL. And there is still the private action of Warnock and the Sheff Utd players to come.

 

Personally, much as the cheating sticks in my craw, its sufficient punishment. A whopping financial penalty, amplified in these times of financial crisis, which means you can be sure West Ham dont think they have got away with murder.

 

Personally, I hope the biggest aftermath of this odious event is yet to come. I am hoping that that slimy bastard Scudamore, who basically decided that West Ham's face fitted in the Premiership better than Sheff Utd's, has made plenty of enemies in the game (along with his 39th game abroad idea), and will eventually lose his job.

 

That bloke has done as much to wreck the game below PL level as the likes of Roman Abramovich.

 

Absolutely spot on, if ever there was a case of crime pays this is it. Wham are still in the prem picking up 60mil plus each season.The whole scenario would not have happened if the PL(scudamore)had policed the league and punished blatant cheating with straight relegation. Wham gambled on lying about Tevez's status and have picked 60 mil each season since fraudulently!!

[The9]

You only have to look at some of the dodgy backgrounds of former and current Prem owners like Shinawatra and Gaydamak to see that the game is morally bankrupt - the "right and proper" owner test the FA have is a complete joke for a start.

 

Beyond that you have the sudden switch of the FA from a relatively independent football governing body to the powerbrokers of a multi-billion pound Premier League with global brands existing where football clubs used to exist, and businessmen ruling where anachronistic blazered administrators may have been incompetent but at least therre was no question of their attempts at fairness, and football was run for the benefit of all, rather than the few.

 

Anyway, now I've dragged myself back out of the 1970s, I still find myself disagreeing with everyone who claims that generally small clubs are dealt with differently - the Luton example was the Football League (not the FA or Premier League) strictly following their rules, and Bournemouth, Luton and Leeds have all received similar penalties for similar administration offences. That's consistent - but it's also not the FA.

 

As for Pandiani, they ruled what they ruled, but to suggest Birmingham are somehow regarded as tangibly a bigger club or more of an asset to the Premier League than Saints to the extend that the transfer procedure was deliberately waived to benefit Birmingham and hamper Saints is frankly paranoid nonsense, as are most of the "we're being hard done by" bleats.

 

Getting back to West Ham, Whilst £30m is a big fine, it's only half of the money West Ham made from still being in the Prem the following season, and that was before the massive overseas TV deal kicked in.

 

West Ham breaking the ownership rules was never in question, the issue was the FA sticking their heads in the sand and choosing not to address the issue until after the season had finished, so they left themselves with no way of punishing West Ham that wouldn't have led to a retrospective post-season relegation, which no matter what the morality of the situation would have been unfair as well.

 

Don't forget that Middlesbrough were relegated due to a points deduction they got for cancelling a fixture back in the 90s - if the FA had left that decision until June when Boro had already stayed up, would they have thought a points deduction was still appropriate then, relegating them with no on-field opportunity to recover ?

 

I'm surprised no-one seems to have mentioned the Leeds legal action for transfer incentive payments they missed out on for Sheff U player Prem appearances, or Fulham's claim for additional prize money either, it's still going to rumble on and on - but you can guarantee that Ye Olde Bert Millichip-style FA wouldn't have walked into a legal minefield like this... or maybe they just had the benefit of existing in a less litigious time, and with far less money at stake.

 

Long and short of it, it's all bad for sport, never mind Premier League football. But when the rulers of a football competition can't be relied upon to rule fairly there are other arbitrators who will, which is what the courts are there for. The FA only have themselves to blame for their failure to deal with it effectively at the time and in the following months.

 

Ahhh, I've missed being able to post more than 3 times a day... :smt049

[Doctoroncall]

West Ham breaking the ownership rules was never in question, the issue was the FA sticking their heads in the sand and choosing not to address the issue until after the season had finished, so they left themselves with no way of punishing West Ham that wouldn't have led to a retrospective post-season relegation, which no matter what the morality of the situation would have been unfair as well.

 

Don't forget that Middlesbrough were relegated due to a points deduction they got for cancelling a fixture back in the 90s - if the FA had left that decision until June when Boro had already stayed up, would they have thought a points deduction was still appropriate then, relegating them with no on-field opportunity to recover ?

 

I'm surprised no-one seems to have mentioned the Leeds legal action for transfer incentive payments they missed out on for Sheff U player Prem appearances, or Fulham's claim for additional prize money either, it's still going to rumble on and on - but you can guarantee that Ye Olde Bert Millichip-style FA wouldn't have walked into a legal minefield like this... or maybe they just had the benefit of existing in a less litigious time, and with far less money at stake.

 

Long and short of it, it's all bad for sport, never mind Premier League football.

 

Just to add there are two issues in this affair - the third party influence which I thought was decided on before the end of the season and the apparent tearing up of the contract which allowed Tevez to continue playing.

 

It's the second which Sheff Utd went to (civil) court on regarding loss of earnings which only needed the judge to decide on whether Tevez's involvement in all probability helped WHU's cause to stay up.

 

As such I don't think Warnock and the players have much of a case to get any money out of WHU... if only they beat Wigan at home!

 

 

Middlesbrough case is total different so you cannot compare these two cases. But as you say it's bad for sport and will only get worse with more money at stake.