Subject: Sheff Utd West Ham compensation

West Ham got a 20 million pound player for nothing who was illegally registered.This player then scored the goals to keep West Ham up.Sheff Utd were consequently relegated on goal difference people may say Sheff Utd were rubbish and deserved to be relegated but we didn\\\\\\\'t have the luxury of a 20 mill illegal player which is totally against the league rules.In my opinion West Ham should have been relegated but i am biased of course what do you think guys.

not the most timely of posts is it? get over it.

:)
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Ok well I could rant over this for weeks.

1) West Ham were fined a record £5.5m when they were looking doomed, at this stage we were 10 points behind Sheff Utd.

2) Sheff Utd then beat us after this 3-0.

3) Up until this time we had scored 4 points with Tevez in the team, which was 28 games I believe.

4) We were then cleared to play him for the rest of the season by the PREMIER LEAGUE.

5) We won 7 out of our last 9 games.

6) You lost your last match when your destiny was in your own hands.

7) 3rd party ownership was the problem, you SOLD Steve Kabba to Watford and then ENSURED he could NOT PLAY AGAINST you 3 weeks later.....a clear case of 3rd party meddling which your hypocritical club keeps sweeping under the rug.

8) HAD you stayed up this would not be an issue for your team.

9) Oh and why we are there you should probably sue Liverpool who fielded a WHOLE RESERVE TEAM against Fulham to lose at home, had they not would have won probably and Fulham would have been relegated.

This whole thing opens up football to the courts and many clubs could sue for all sorts of things.

10) Oh and what about Watford, those poor people lost 2 points on sat...what if that costs them promotion....should they sue the linesman and ref?


Your club are making a joke of themselves - and the poll proves it so far......the WORST CASE OF SOUR GRAPES IN HISTORY!
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Aren't you out of the cup now? Gutted! :-) the whole tevez affair was a bit of a shambles, i agree with your sour grapes comment

We are out of the cup now courtesy of a nice own goal. ;)

Yet again though our focus is being taken off pitch by this bunch of grapes that are very sour.

The season is 38 games, yes he played well in the last part of the season, but then again Robert Green was outstanding, Mark Noble was outstanding and various others were brilliant too. The way they go on its as if we only had 1 player on the pitch, and who is to say the player who could have played in his place would not have scored instead.

I mean come on ....he had scored just 1 goal in 19 matches before he was found out to be owned by MSI.

and if teves had scored an own goal and cost westham their prem spot, would sheffield have demanded westham be allowed to stay up, as the own goal would have been scored by the illegal player?

so, you'll be happy to agree to disagree then ? :)

@ Dylanos....exactly my point, you don't hear Watford and Charlton harping on about this, and they were relegated too. There were hundreds of things throughout a whole season that got Sheff Utd relegated, plus as I say tevez was rubbish right up until the end of the season.

@ NCN...too right I will disagree, they are hypocrites they had a 3rd party influence over the Kabba transfer to Watford. This would just make every club start suing eachother. Had they concentrated their efforts on staying up rather than belly aching then this wouldn't even be an issue.

To be fair a majority of Sheff Utd fans including Sean Bean blamed Warnock for their relegation on the last day....but now, well its always easier to blame somebody else than look into the mirror. If West Ham are guilty then the premier League and FA are just as guilty for saying he was eligible to play the remainder of the season.

The previous record fine was £100,000 for Chelsea's tapping up of Ashley Cole...we got a £5.5m record fine, lets get some perspective here. At the time we were too far away to catch anybody, were playing rubbish and to be fair risked losing not only the Prem money but also £5.5m which would have crippled us.

If Sheff Utd put their effort onto the field then the Arsenal U12's wouldn't have smashed their first team 6-0.

Its a distasteful shambles, and lacks class on so many different levels.

Oh and I am certain the amount of £30m is also a joke and far from any sort of money that we will end up paying. Tevez is a good player, but does not make a team - he certainly didn't for the most part of the season when we were adrift at the bottom. It would be interesting to see what had happened had this been man Utd or Liverpool who had done this, because at the time £5.5m was we all felt a ridiculous amount to pay.

I am sure herries feels strongly about this too, and would love his perspective on things. However hearing on Talksport and other stations the views of fans not connected it is clear that everybody sees this as Sour Grapes apart from the Blades.


Oh and Dapoole says he scored the goals to keep us up...well at Man Utd we needed a draw only. Bobby Zamora scored crucial winners vs Arsenal away and everton at home in 1-0 wins. We did the double over both Arsenal and Man Utd that season.....the only team to do so.....again 1 player did not do that. in fact you could argue that Robert Green was the most influential player as he kept out various penalties and made some magical saves to ensure clean sheets.
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west ham broke a law that untill that point was not very well known about and not very clear.

the original fine went solely to the premier league (i believe) The Blunts are showing a distinct lack of class about this because their destiny was always in their hands. if the complaint by them held true then other teams would of seeked legal action, they did not.

West Ham either cheated or were conned into the whole Tevez thing and it's really not to me to speculate on how they behaved and how much knowledge they had of it. but they were subsequently fined for their part in it, heavily to.

as for the sport arbitration panel they rarely act in the fair manner, and seldom ever act on the evidence presented.

The article below is from Martin Samuel in todays Times....its a long read but very good all the same, if you have the patience. ;)

Martin Samuel, Chief Football Correspondent

The Right Honorable The Lord Griffiths, a man who collects lucrative legal commissions as enthusiastically as he does definite articles, is available as a mediator and arbitrator in the specialist areas of international and domestic commercial disputes, according to his CV. Pools forecasts are not mentioned, but even so, he could be worth a ring.

Griffiths can predict football matches, you see - right down to knowing how many points a team will get through a season, or in a sequence of matches. And using these special powers, he can factor in results from around England to give a precise monetary value on the worth of those wins. Griffiths is very talented. I bet he nails those ten home-wins coupons every week.

Yesterday, a tribunal led by Griffiths found that one player - Carlos Tévez - had decided the Premier League relegation issue in 2006-07, as fact. Not as opinion. Not with any vague doubt that the hundreds of other footballers, managers and coaches who were involved might have had some impact, too. Not with any pretence to evaluate their presence.

Griffiths said that Sheffield United went down because of Tévez. He, and two friends, then replayed the season in their mighty minds and, despite all of this action taking place in a hypothetical dimension, prepared to hand down a finite punishment, payable in hard cash. Be warned, this is what happens when you invite lawyers to the party.

It does not matter whether one has any sympathy for West Ham United. Senior club officials, including Scott Duxbury, who was inexplicably retained and promoted to chief executive, misled the Premier League over the signings of Tévez and Javier Mascherano, a scandal that could have resulted in the club being relegated. West Ham were fortunate that the league table was taken into account by the original independent commission, sitting on behalf of the Premier League, which decided to impose a financial penalty rather than a points deduction, for fear of deciding the relegation issue in a legal chamber, rather than on a football pitch.

Yet this ruling is as bad, if not worse, because it takes relegation issues away from the football pitch and back to the legal chamber. It sets a precedent that any relegated team with a grievance that can be put down cunningly to one incident, or one player, have a claim. The same applies to a team denied a prize, or perhaps a Champions League place. It moves English football nearer to the game in Italy or Brazil, where important issues are often not resolved until late in the close season and fixture lists are printed pending courtroom appeal.

Think of what happened between Watford and Reading on Saturday: the goal that never was. The Football League has announced that the match will not be replayed, despite a noble offer from Steve Coppell, the Reading manager. Yet what if Watford are two points short of promotion come the end of the season? What if Reading keep another team out of the Premier League by one point? Considering the Griffiths ruling, these clubs have a case against the Football League, or perhaps against Stuart Attwell, the referee.

It may not end there. Hull City looked to have started the season very well, then Danny Guthrie, of Newcastle United, broke Craig Fagan's right leg with a foul tackle. If the fortunes of the club take a downturn with the loss of an important player, to what extent is Guthrie, or his club, responsible? And what might that be worth? Now that Griffiths has determined that a season can be played out accurately in a man's head, where does this end?

Perhaps the one saving grace of the ruling in favour of Sheffield United is that the claim was for compensation, not reinstatement, although Kevin McCabe, the club's plc chairman, may feel empowered to push for the big one now. Welcome to a world of 21-team leagues, of relegationlawyers4U.com. Welcome to a world in which the most important player at your club is no longer the striker, but the QC engaged by the owner.

Can one man keep a team up or relegate another? We all say these things, but they are unproven opinions, not hard facts. I think that Tévez may have been the difference for West Ham that season, just as Chris Waddle was for T*ttenham Hotspur one year and Matthew Le Tissier was for just about his entire career at Southampton. But do I know this? No. A million intangible factors contribute to events in each season and every one is unquantifiable in finite terms. Yet the FA's independent tribunal took into account as one of Sheffield United's witnesses the testimony of the chief football writer of The Daily Telegraph, who said that Tévez kept West Ham up.

Now, I have a great deal of time for the chief football writer of The Daily Telegraph. He is a friend and a professional whom I respect enormously. Yet he is no more an expert in this matter than any devotee of football. Neither am I. If writers could predict the outcome of matches so precisely that we could say for certain, not just as an opinion, what specific factors have won and lost games, or how a match would have panned out had a single participant been removed, we would not need to work. No journalist would present his views as anything more than informed estimation. It is a punt, really. All of it. A good one, we hope, and we like to think entertaining, but a punt nonetheless.

So why was the man from the Telegraph even called? Why does an independent tribunal with the power to pass a ruling that will change football in England irrevocably rely in part on speculation and guesswork? It beggars belief. From this day, every football administrator in every league in the land will open his postbag in the month after the season has ended wincing, for ever in fear of the writ that will take him to court on nothing more than prophecy.

Sheffield United have been hawking this case from commission to courtroom to tribunal until they have found men misguided enough to believe that they can imagine the league programme and legislate on these visions. So what, exactly, are supporters buying tickets for now, if what they see may be rendered meaningless by the interpretation of a committee at a later date? Had West Ham been deducted three points at the time of the first commission for lying to the Premier League, few would have complained. Once the decision to fine was made, however, any further punishment would have to be issued retrospectively, with the season over.

Sheffield United know precisely what adjustment needs to be made to achieve the desired outcome, which is why Tévez's worth to West Ham is always calculated at three points. It is the number required to keep Sheffield United up on goal difference, astutely overriding their failings, as if these, too, could be put down to a player in a different match, representing a different team.

Sheffield United lost more away matches than any other club that season and scored fewer goals away from home. That is not the work of Tévez. Neil Warnock, the manager at the time, fielded a weakened side against Manchester United and lost and his team won only a single match in the last five, against Watford, when Steve Kabba, a former player, mysteriously did not play for their opponents. That was not down to Tévez, either.

Kabba is the sort of figure who could become hugely significant now that matches can be played in the minds of lawyers. He is on loan to Blackpool, was formerly a Sheffield United forward who had been loaned to Watford, with the deal then made permanent. Before Sheffield United and Watford met on April 28, 2007, Warnock, and match preview articles published on both official club websites, stated that Kabba could not feature because of an agreement as part of his transfer.

Kabba had played in 14 of the previous 15 matches for Watford and all of the previous eight. Any arrangement regarding his deselection would be illegal and a case of third-party interference. When the statements about Kabba were brought to the attention of the Premier League, it launched an investigation and Watford provided contract details showing that no pact had been put in writing. “There may be gentlemen's agreements between managers that, in fairness, clubs know nothing about,” McCabe said.

Yet Warnock was quoted in a local newspaper confirming that he had checked the issue and had been told that Kabba could not play, so it was not the manager's work. The most plausible explanation, therefore, is that a private deal was struck between clubs. To believe otherwise is to accept that an official information outlet of Sheffield United would carry false information uncorrected for several months, coincidentally replicated at Watford. Kabba-less, Watford lost 1-0.

And here is the rub. Who is to say that those three points for Sheffield United were any more, or less, significant than any match won by West Ham, with or without Tévez? And if West Ham could countersue, hire private investigators and subpoena everyone involved in the Kabba transfer to get to the bottom of it, would football have to peer deep into the brilliant mind of Griffiths and friends so that they could replay that match, too?

We all think that Tévez was a huge player for West Ham that season, but we cannot know for sure. We cannot faithfully evaluate his goals against the saves of Robert Green or the performances of Matthew Upson in central defence. Certainly, he cannot be held responsible for Sheffield United losing at home to Wigan Athletic on the final day of the season or Warnock's understrength team against Manchester United.

Yet we can begin to estimate the cost to football of Griffiths's foolish precedent. Right now, this is a row about money between two groups of very rich men, vainly dressed up as a fight between right and wrong. But where it goes from here cuts to the heart of Saturday afternoons, a time of the week that will increasingly cease to be of significance to football supporters - for, as we know, lawyers do not work on Saturday
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We are appealing to the Court of Arbitration to Sport in Lausanne, Switzerland. At last!!!!!!

" We are appealing to the Court of Arbitration to Sport in Lausanne, Switzerland. At last!!!!!! "

going straight to sepp blatters door then.

Ah, Sepp Blatter. If anyone can be relied upon to act rationally and with great decorum and common sense then surely... It isn't him.

My vote is sour grapes. This saga has already dragged on for ages, and it's going to continue all season and beyond now, I'll warrant.

relegate them both again until they shut up!

It isn't us though, Sheff Utd have been dragging us through both the media mire and courts/hearings since. Its Kevin McCabe who won't shut up.

Oh and also I voted for Sour Grapes....imo we were punished very severely already, but we were punished and so that should be the end of it. I agree we should have been punished, and a fine of £5.5m compared to the previous record fine of £100k seems severe enough to me.