Furious clubs may sue if West Ham stay in Premiership

The independent commission which fined West Ham United a record £5.5m over the signings of Carlos Tevez and Javier Mascherano, but decided not to deduct points from the club, has managed the rare feat of Agatha Ruiz Dela Prada Official Website uniting football. Nobody seems to like it.

West Ham achieved their aim of avoiding a points deduction after belatedly pleading guilty to the Premier League’s two charges but the chairman, Eggert Magnusson, is said to be shocked at the record fine and considering a legal challenge. The Premier League declared last Friday that, “We fully respect the decision”, but other Premiership Black Prada Eyeglass Case clubs threatened with relegation are incensed that West Ham were not docked points despite admitting “extremely serious breaches” of the rules including lying to the league. An insider at one club said yesterday the judgment is “extremely likely to be challenged legally”.

The Premier League’s chief executive, Richard Scudamore, was at Wigan Athletic yesterday, attempting to explain the decision and justify the process with the manager, Paul Jewell, and owner, Dave Whelan. They accused the league of “bottling it” and argued West Ham should have been docked points.

Paul Aldridge, West Ham’s former chief executive, who was found by the commission to have “told Mr Scudamore a direct lie” when he said West Ham had supplied the Premier League with “all documentation in respect of these players”, announced yesterday that he had instructed libel lawyers to contest that finding. The commission itself accepted that Aldridge had not been called as a witness, nor made a statement and “has thus not been here to answer for himself”. Aldridge reacted to that by arguing in a statement that “This is hardly natural justice.”

He complained that he had written a “detailed letter” to the commission, but they did not respond to it or refer to it in the judgment. “My own personal and professional reputations have been besmirched,” Aldridge added, saying he had been given no opportunity to respond to the “serious allegations”.

The Premier League had accused Black Prada Bag Mission Impossible West Ham of breaching rule U18, which prohibits a club from allowing outside parties “materially to influence its policies or the performance of its team”, when they signed Tevez and Mascherano from the offshore companies which “owned” the players. The club was also charged Ap Lei Chau Prada Factory Outlet with the arguably more serious offence of failing to act in good faith when Aldridge and the Authentic Prada Shoes For Sale club’s legal director, Scott Duxbury, a solicitor, did not show Scudamore the club’s agreements with those companies. The Premier League maintains it followed its procedures flawlessly, bringing the charges, which are both unprecedented in the league’s history, then passing the hearing of them to an independent commission chaired by a barrister, Simon Bourne-Arton QC.

West Ham had promised throughout to “defend the charges vigorously” but late last week they changed their plea to guilty. Instead, they concentrated on arguing there were circumstances which should mitigate against a points deduction. The £5.5m fine might look huge, but given the Premier League’s £2.7bn TV deal starting next season, relegation would cost at least £30m from TV alone.

On West Ham’s conduct, the commission’s judgment thumped crushingly hard. It found that two offshore companies, whose investors were not named, owned “exclusively and absolutely” the “economic rights” of the players. Tevez’s destiny was controlled by MSI and Just Sports Inc, Mascherano’s by Global Soccer Agencies and Mystere Services. West Ham signed the Argentinians from these companies for no transfer fee, paying just “a considerable sum” to an agent. Sources close to the deal told me West Ham had an option to buy both players from the companies outright at any time, for a pre-agreed fee, but the commission did not mention this. It said instead that the companies had “the sole, exclusive and unilateral right” to move the players in any transfer window, and pay West Ham £2m for Tevez and only £150,000 for Mascherano.

The commission Agatha Ruiz Dela Prada E Shop ruled that these contracts gave the companies the right to materially influence the club’s policies or team performance – even though they never did wield that influence – and so rule U18 was breached.

The commission was scathing about Duxbury and Aldridge’s decision not to show Scudamore the contracts. It ruled that “Mr Duxbury misled Jane Purdon” [the Premier League’s company secretary] Authentic Prada Bags For Sale Philippines when he told her that he had provided her with all the documents required to register the players.

Duxbury had come to that view because he believed the contracts with the offshore companies were not needed to register the players, and so when Aldridge met Scudamore on September 8 last year, he said, according to Scudamore, that there was “no documentation of any sort in respect of these players which the Premier League had not seen”. That, the commission decided, was “a direct lie”.

Yet having been so damning in their judgment of the player ownership arrangements and Duxbury and Aldridge’s conduct, the commission seems to have come over all woolly when deciding that deducting points would not be a “proportionate” penalty.

It acknowledged that other clubs believed points should be docked, but took into account seven factors to reach that fateful decision. The first, that West Ham pleaded guilty, looks reasonable enough, but this was not a criminal court and in football it seems a little tricky to argue there should be a lighter sentence simply for changing a plea at the 11th hour. The commission also showed sympathy because the club is under new ownership following Magnusson and Bjorgolfur Gudmundsson’s £85m takeover last December. Perhaps most oddly, the commission argued that the “fans and players have been fighting relegation” and are “in no way to blame for this situation”. “Those efforts and that loyalty,” it continued, “would be to no avail were we to now deduct points.”

That reasoning, that football penalties unfairly hit players and fans, is never applied to commute 10-point penalties when troubled clubs go into administration. The FA and leagues customarily deduct points, without mercy, when clubs fail to complete the required paperwork to register players. Bury were thrown out of the FA Cup earlier this season for cocking up the administrative procedure when playing Stephen Turnbull – on loan from Hartlepool, who were happy for him to play.

The problem here, partially acknowledged by the Premier League, is that its independent commissions are not ruling on the basis of established law or precedent. However eminent the QC in the chair, the panel is essentially coming to its own opinion. In this judgment, they said more than Authentic Prada Purses Sale once that West Ham’s breaches of the rules were “extremely serious”. That makes it difficult to see why West Ham’s belated admission of guilt prada bags uk, the fact they were taken over by new investors and the players’ efforts should commute the sentence to cash, not relegation. If Tevez continues to rampage the Hammers to safety, it Baby Prada Shoes Uk is difficult to imagine that the clubs relegated instead will accept their fate quietly.

Why the commission did not deduct points

Seven mitigating factors were taken into Alex Pradas Quiles account – other clubs may challenge their validity:

The plea

West Ham United changed their plea to guilty at the 11th hour

The owners

West Ham have new owners, the Icelandic investors who took over the club for £85m last December, four months after Carlos Tevez and Javier Mascherano were signed

The contracts

Had West Ham disclosed the Argentinian players’ contracts when they signed, the club could have amended the arrangements in ways which would have been acceptable to the Premier League. Liverpool did so when they signed Mascherano in January

The timing

Because the hearing took place this late in the season the commission decided that a points deduction “would have consigned the club to certain relegation”

The player

Tevez featured in further West Ham games after the charges were brought on January 24. The Premier League had the power to stop him playing but did not

The fans

West Ham’s players and fans “are in no way to blame for this situation”

The admission

After the change of ownership the club itself brought the breaches of the rules to the attention of the Premier League