West Ham Fined

gracehopper

5.5m but no points reduction

Necronomicon

Snap! Just beat me

mike65

Hard to know what to make of these punishments, clearly the hefty fine beats 3 points lost in the Hammers circumstances.

Mike.

Dave!

But if they get relegated, then that cash coulda came in handy......

besty

Seemingly Tevez can't play in any more of the games either. Could be very costly for them.

ciaran76

DaveMcG wrote:

But if they get relegated, then that cash coulda came in handy......

The Sky parachute money will keep them sweet if they do get relegated.

Necronomicon

besty wrote:

Seemingly Tevez can't play in any more of the games either. Could be very costly for them.

From my duplicate thread:

According to SSN they also have 24 hours to sort out the Tevez contract or he cannot play for West Ham again. AFAIK they have to make sure that there is no 3rd party ownership (which would seem unlikely, as I'm sure MSI won't just give him up like that) or else sort out a loan deal, which is why Mascherano is okay at Liverpool.

kensutz

They should relegate and fine West Ham

besty

I think they'll look after the first part themselves.

redspider

This was all a messy affair to begin with - it looked highly illegal at the time and that has panned out to be the case.

Whilst not reading the report, the FA must also be partially to blame for 'allowing' it to happen under their watch. If they had doubts about the players situation, then surely they should have just prevented the 2 players from playing.

And its still murky in the sense that Tevez's situation (and clearly he has been playing and helping a lot and helping to get West Ham points), was tenuous at best.

The English FA probably would have been perfectly within their rights to dock West Ham the same no. of points gained in each match he has played in. However, that would have resulted in automatic relegation for West Ham. I'd say a lot of negotiations have gone on behind closed doors.

The issue may not go away completely however, especially if West Ham stay up, as I'm sure other clubs will make appeals. Also, the players and their agents must have been complicit in 'bending' the rules.

dodgy all round ..... and from a Liverpool perspective, I hope it doesnt affect Mascherano.

Redspider

therecklessone

I keep having to point this out...the Premier League had jurisdiction in this matter, not the FA.

The charge was a PL one.

zAbbo

Then why is Gordon Taylor chipping in

PFA chief executive Gordon Taylor believes West Ham escaped a points deduction because of their predicament at the bottom of the Premiership.

I'd tend to agree with him, WH should have been docked points

leninbenjamin

yeah they got off relatively lucky. still can't see them staying up though, but then again you never know. maybe the PL were thinking that some of the interest in the relegation battle (and hence TV numbers) would be affected if they effectively relegated West Ham with the points deduction.

therecklessone

zabbo wrote:

Then why is Gordon Taylor chipping in

Asking me? If so, I'm not sure of the relevance...

Savman

Fair play to the PL for using some common sense and not docking them points causing them to be relegated. The whole Masch/Tevez thing smelt to high heaven, didnt take a genius to figure out and I'm glad they didn't get away with it.
Still though, it's perfectly ok to take the clubs table position into account when considering a point penalty, let's be honest things don't look good for West Ham and I think a points deduction would be pointless (unintentional pun:o) in this case.
As for Tevez, send him up to us in Villa Park

PHB

I don't know, I really want to stomp this MSI type thing out, so it wouldn't have been the worst thing in the world to see West Ham get docked points.

zAbbo

therecklessone wrote:

Asking me? If so, I'm not sure of the relevance...

just kinda ranting

Fines are a bit meaningless to PL clubs, hit them where it hurts, dock points.

fullstop

besty wrote:

Seemingly Tevez can't play in any more of the games either. Could be very costly for them.

He has been cleared to play.

Galvasean

I feel a points deduction and a smaller fine would have been more appropriate.

Bateman

I wonder what took so long to come to this decision?

astrofool

As in every decision, they never want to really punish the clubs, which docking points definitely does. Fines never really work in any walk of life when you're talking about multi million pound businesses. Sure MS were paying £1m fine daily in the EU and still making profit.

Also gives a license to the big rich clubs to do as they please, even if they get caught, the fine would probably be only equal to the gains they made anyway (and the chance of being caught is low).

However, whenever points docking does happen, it inevitably gets appealed and appealed for ages, making lots of clubs future uncertain as they never know what they are playing for.