Post by Neko Bazu on Nov 21, 2007 13:00:31 GMT -1
Before I start; please don't misunderstand this post. I'm not trying to defend Luton - we broke the rules, guilty parties should be punished etc. However, as a side note, there's been a lot of speculation that we're being used as a soft target, and that the FA wouldn't dare touch a Premiership club.
Interesting, then, that Birmingham and Newcastle have admitted to the same thing as Luton are being charged with, yet aren't having any action taken against them. And what ever happened to action being taken against the 16 clubs implicated in the Premier league's bungs enquiry?
It's interesting also seeing in writing that none of our charges actually relate to 'bungs' either.
From football.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2214469,00.html
*~*~*~*~*~*
What muscularity from the new-look, beefed-up Football Association! The England team may just flop into Euro 2008 tonight, so allowing the FA to leave questions unaddressed about the paucity of homegrown players and managers; and the governing body is way too timid to grasp nettles about the ownership of our top clubs or exclusionary ticket prices. But look: Luton Town and six players' agents have had the book thrown at them for alleged breaches of FA regulations, so we can all rest easy that the game is in capable hands.
Some who understood no more than the headlines last week seriously discussed the Luton charges as if they did show the FA growing tough on "corruption", tough on the causes of corruption, and described Mike Newell, the club's former manager, as having been "vindicated" in his famous whistleblowing on bungs.
Yet, on inquiry into the substance of the 55 charges, that view rather unravels. The bulk of them are very odd indeed, in which the FA seems to be saying that agents and clubs would be fine to break the rules, as long as they file some paperwork to support it. Some in the game are also accusing the FA of acting tough with a small club while shying away from charging any of 16 big clubs found by the Premier League's own Quest inquiry to have breached similar or identical rules, while Newcastle United and Birmingham City were found by two VAT tribunals to have done the same and also to have made false statements about it to the FA.
However, there is not a whiff of the FA bringing a single charge against any Premier League club. Within the Football League concerns are known to have been expressed at the FA's lack of consistency in implementing football's rules across all clubs.
To be clear, four of the charges against Luton allege that the club dealt with unlicensed agents, which does constitute a serious offence if proved. Yet the bulk of the charges relates to the allegation that the agents - all of them apparently acting legitimately, bringing players whom Luton and Newell wanted to sign, with no suggestion of "bungs" - were paid the fees due to them not directly by the club but by another company, Jayten. The FA's rules require clubs themselves to pay agents - but Jayten was, in fact, the holding company; it owned the club. So, although it may constitute a breach of the rules, and it is difficult to understand why the then chairman, Bill Tomlins, apparently admitted conducting the deals in this way, it does not quite coalesce into the scandal of the century.
The other multiple charge, laid against the club, Tomlins and the agents, looks more serious. Club and agents, the FA told us, "failed to enter into representation contracts". When signing nine players, Luton, or Jayten, paid the agents, the forms went to the FA saying the agents acted for the club but there were no written agreements.
The fact that the FA has brought such a charge seems only to demonstrate how surreally upside down the world of football transfers is. The agents were, in reality, acting for the players. They represented them and had written agreements with them to find the best deal around. Mike Berry, for example, an accountant who obtained his agent's licence in 1999 and has a clean record, introduced the Trinidadian midfielder Carlos Edwards to Luton after five years in which Edwards had dribbled winningly into the enduring affection of fans at Wrexham.
Berry says other clubs were clamouring to sign Edwards but Luton - and Newell - impressed them, so they chose Luton. Edwards was "on a Bosman", so Luton paid nothing to Wrexham and Berry earned a nice fee, £91,000. Following standard practice in football, the club, not the player, paid Berry. He says Tomlins asked him to invoice the club for £51,000, Jayten £40,000. Berry did so because he was asked but received, he says, no additional benefit from being paid in that way.
Incidentally Luton sold Edwards 19 months later, in January this year, to Sunderland, for £1.4m. Luton have said Newell's contract paid him a 10% commission on sales and, if true, he made £140,000 for selling Edwards on. Newell has never commented on the terms of his employment. He is suing Luton for wrongful dismissal and the case will be decided next June.
Berry is now charged, along with the other agents who acted in the same way, with failing to have a representation agreement - a written contract - with the club. Yet Berry was the player's agent; he had a contract with Edwards. If he entered into a representation agreement with the club as well, he would seem to be acting for both parties, which would be an apparent breach of FA rules. Yet the FA seems to be saying that would be fine but it just should all have been in writing.
In the cases of Newcastle and Birmingham the VAT tribunal proceedings were brought because HM Revenue and Customs contested this way of doing business. There, the clubs paid the players' agents directly, then reclaimed the VAT as if the agents had acted for the clubs. The tribunal ruled this was false because the agents clearly acted for the players and the Newcastle tribunal said it could even be illegal because of a conflict of interest. Both clubs are appealing, but neither denied the findings that they had filed misleading documents to the FA. More directly relevant to Luton, Newcastle, when signing 22 top players, told the FA on official forms that it had written agreements with the agents, when those agreements did not exist. "None of the documents generated by [Newcastle United]," the tribunal said, "can be relied upon as true and correct."
Birmingham, too, lost their case, the judgment making many unflattering observations about the club's conduct of transfers. Specifically it noted that in some deals Birmingham told the FA, "falsely, as [the chief executive Karren] Brady accepted", that it had a written contract with an agent, when "that was plainly not the case".
In December last year Lord Stevens presented Quest's preliminary findings in the Premier League "bungs" inquiry, "clearing" 95% of the deals conducted between January 2004 and January 2006 but saying this about the clubs' non-compliance with the FA's regulations:
"Sixteen Premier League clubs failed to document financial arrangements connected to their transfers appropriately. For example, on three occasions payments were made to agents with no supporting invoices; two clubs failed to enter into written agreements with the agents and [my italics] six clubs failed to identify an agent on the form when that agent acted in the transfer."
A spokesman said the FA is looking into these and all the issues raised by Quest, not just the 17 transfers left "uncleared", some of which are international and will require Fifa co-operation. However, 11 months since Quest's report, 15 since the Newcastle VAT judgment, six since Birmingham's, there is still no sign of the FA moving on any of the malpractices exposed.
That contrasts uncomfortably with the FA's bold announcement last week that 55 charges had been levelled against bumbling, benighted Luton Town after "an extensive investigation conducted since March this year".
Yet for those reading it, and the headlines which followed, it did really seem as if the FA was making an encouraging first step in rooting out "corruption" and, in the process, "vindicating" Mike Newell.
The agents in the Luton case have been sent standard forms by the FA which include the option of ticking a box for a guilty plea, but most of them are understood to be indignant at the charges and are considering fighting them.
Mike Berry said he had been told privately by an FA official that, even if found guilty, the offences registered "on a scale of seriousness, one to two out of 10". But he added: "My record is unblemished and I am very disappointed to be charged with any supposed offence. I am consulting my solicitor to see how I can fight this nonsense."
Privately, some agents are amazed that the FA has charged them for not having a representation contract with the club when they represented the players. Sky Andrew is another understood to be consulting a lawyer, as is David Manasseh. It is possible that some agents will join forces to contest the charges.
Interesting, then, that Birmingham and Newcastle have admitted to the same thing as Luton are being charged with, yet aren't having any action taken against them. And what ever happened to action being taken against the 16 clubs implicated in the Premier league's bungs enquiry?
It's interesting also seeing in writing that none of our charges actually relate to 'bungs' either.
From football.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2214469,00.html
*~*~*~*~*~*
What muscularity from the new-look, beefed-up Football Association! The England team may just flop into Euro 2008 tonight, so allowing the FA to leave questions unaddressed about the paucity of homegrown players and managers; and the governing body is way too timid to grasp nettles about the ownership of our top clubs or exclusionary ticket prices. But look: Luton Town and six players' agents have had the book thrown at them for alleged breaches of FA regulations, so we can all rest easy that the game is in capable hands.
Some who understood no more than the headlines last week seriously discussed the Luton charges as if they did show the FA growing tough on "corruption", tough on the causes of corruption, and described Mike Newell, the club's former manager, as having been "vindicated" in his famous whistleblowing on bungs.
Yet, on inquiry into the substance of the 55 charges, that view rather unravels. The bulk of them are very odd indeed, in which the FA seems to be saying that agents and clubs would be fine to break the rules, as long as they file some paperwork to support it. Some in the game are also accusing the FA of acting tough with a small club while shying away from charging any of 16 big clubs found by the Premier League's own Quest inquiry to have breached similar or identical rules, while Newcastle United and Birmingham City were found by two VAT tribunals to have done the same and also to have made false statements about it to the FA.
However, there is not a whiff of the FA bringing a single charge against any Premier League club. Within the Football League concerns are known to have been expressed at the FA's lack of consistency in implementing football's rules across all clubs.
To be clear, four of the charges against Luton allege that the club dealt with unlicensed agents, which does constitute a serious offence if proved. Yet the bulk of the charges relates to the allegation that the agents - all of them apparently acting legitimately, bringing players whom Luton and Newell wanted to sign, with no suggestion of "bungs" - were paid the fees due to them not directly by the club but by another company, Jayten. The FA's rules require clubs themselves to pay agents - but Jayten was, in fact, the holding company; it owned the club. So, although it may constitute a breach of the rules, and it is difficult to understand why the then chairman, Bill Tomlins, apparently admitted conducting the deals in this way, it does not quite coalesce into the scandal of the century.
The other multiple charge, laid against the club, Tomlins and the agents, looks more serious. Club and agents, the FA told us, "failed to enter into representation contracts". When signing nine players, Luton, or Jayten, paid the agents, the forms went to the FA saying the agents acted for the club but there were no written agreements.
The fact that the FA has brought such a charge seems only to demonstrate how surreally upside down the world of football transfers is. The agents were, in reality, acting for the players. They represented them and had written agreements with them to find the best deal around. Mike Berry, for example, an accountant who obtained his agent's licence in 1999 and has a clean record, introduced the Trinidadian midfielder Carlos Edwards to Luton after five years in which Edwards had dribbled winningly into the enduring affection of fans at Wrexham.
Berry says other clubs were clamouring to sign Edwards but Luton - and Newell - impressed them, so they chose Luton. Edwards was "on a Bosman", so Luton paid nothing to Wrexham and Berry earned a nice fee, £91,000. Following standard practice in football, the club, not the player, paid Berry. He says Tomlins asked him to invoice the club for £51,000, Jayten £40,000. Berry did so because he was asked but received, he says, no additional benefit from being paid in that way.
Incidentally Luton sold Edwards 19 months later, in January this year, to Sunderland, for £1.4m. Luton have said Newell's contract paid him a 10% commission on sales and, if true, he made £140,000 for selling Edwards on. Newell has never commented on the terms of his employment. He is suing Luton for wrongful dismissal and the case will be decided next June.
Berry is now charged, along with the other agents who acted in the same way, with failing to have a representation agreement - a written contract - with the club. Yet Berry was the player's agent; he had a contract with Edwards. If he entered into a representation agreement with the club as well, he would seem to be acting for both parties, which would be an apparent breach of FA rules. Yet the FA seems to be saying that would be fine but it just should all have been in writing.
In the cases of Newcastle and Birmingham the VAT tribunal proceedings were brought because HM Revenue and Customs contested this way of doing business. There, the clubs paid the players' agents directly, then reclaimed the VAT as if the agents had acted for the clubs. The tribunal ruled this was false because the agents clearly acted for the players and the Newcastle tribunal said it could even be illegal because of a conflict of interest. Both clubs are appealing, but neither denied the findings that they had filed misleading documents to the FA. More directly relevant to Luton, Newcastle, when signing 22 top players, told the FA on official forms that it had written agreements with the agents, when those agreements did not exist. "None of the documents generated by [Newcastle United]," the tribunal said, "can be relied upon as true and correct."
Birmingham, too, lost their case, the judgment making many unflattering observations about the club's conduct of transfers. Specifically it noted that in some deals Birmingham told the FA, "falsely, as [the chief executive Karren] Brady accepted", that it had a written contract with an agent, when "that was plainly not the case".
In December last year Lord Stevens presented Quest's preliminary findings in the Premier League "bungs" inquiry, "clearing" 95% of the deals conducted between January 2004 and January 2006 but saying this about the clubs' non-compliance with the FA's regulations:
"Sixteen Premier League clubs failed to document financial arrangements connected to their transfers appropriately. For example, on three occasions payments were made to agents with no supporting invoices; two clubs failed to enter into written agreements with the agents and [my italics] six clubs failed to identify an agent on the form when that agent acted in the transfer."
A spokesman said the FA is looking into these and all the issues raised by Quest, not just the 17 transfers left "uncleared", some of which are international and will require Fifa co-operation. However, 11 months since Quest's report, 15 since the Newcastle VAT judgment, six since Birmingham's, there is still no sign of the FA moving on any of the malpractices exposed.
That contrasts uncomfortably with the FA's bold announcement last week that 55 charges had been levelled against bumbling, benighted Luton Town after "an extensive investigation conducted since March this year".
Yet for those reading it, and the headlines which followed, it did really seem as if the FA was making an encouraging first step in rooting out "corruption" and, in the process, "vindicating" Mike Newell.
The agents in the Luton case have been sent standard forms by the FA which include the option of ticking a box for a guilty plea, but most of them are understood to be indignant at the charges and are considering fighting them.
Mike Berry said he had been told privately by an FA official that, even if found guilty, the offences registered "on a scale of seriousness, one to two out of 10". But he added: "My record is unblemished and I am very disappointed to be charged with any supposed offence. I am consulting my solicitor to see how I can fight this nonsense."
Privately, some agents are amazed that the FA has charged them for not having a representation contract with the club when they represented the players. Sky Andrew is another understood to be consulting a lawyer, as is David Manasseh. It is possible that some agents will join forces to contest the charges.
I can't begin to say!