The blame game

Barclay: football in a mess

The trouble with taking £30million from West Ham and giving it to Sheffield United is that you then give Sheffield United an advantage in the transfer window over promotion rivals such as Reading and so on, which is deeply unfair.

Patrick Barclay
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• West Ham United

Patrick Barclay says the finger must be pointed at the Premier League and the FA over the Carlos Tevez saga.

On Tuesday, it was announced that an FA arbitration had ruled in favour of the Blades against West Ham United in their compensation claim over the situation involving Argentina international Tevez.

The Premier League previously found West Ham guilty of failing to declare that Tevez's move to Upton Park had been engineered by Kia Joorabchian and that he was part-owned by the businessman's company.

The Hammers were handed a £5.5million fine by the Premier League but there was no points deduction, despite Tevez playing a crucial role in ensuring West Ham remained in England's top flight, condemning Sheffield United to relegation.

Sunday Telegraph writer Barclay feels the Premier League were too slow in dealing with the matter and the FA should have asked questions earlier.

And he now feels there is no fair solution or punishment and it provides another example of the problems facing our national game.

"A dreadful, dreadful error was made at the time of the transfer," Barclay told the Sunday Supplement.

"It was obvious and was documented by several newspapers and the media as a whole that something was fishy from the West Ham point of view about the signing of Tevez and Javier Mascherano in terms of the third-party ownership.

"The Premier League were blatantly hoodwinked over this. It was a dreadful, dreadful piece of administration and we are now unable to solve this one.

"You can solve it in the sense that you can in effect fine West Ham a further £30million on top of the £5.5million they were fined initially - but you can't now relegate them which is what should have happened.

"I don't agree that points-docking would solve anything. You need to relegate someone and you can't do that now.

"The trouble with taking £30million from West Ham and giving it to Sheffield United is that you then give Sheffield United an advantage in the transfer window over promotion rivals such as Reading and so on, which is deeply unfair.

"It may not come in time for this transfer window but it should in time for the summer window. It might be that £30million is light for what actually happened.

"I think that the FA are to blame. They should have come in and made sure that the Premier League acted at the right time.

"As Arsene Wenger said on Saturday when he was talking about video replays, justice must be swift. The game moves on.

"We have now got ourselves in a mess and as I've said before the government has to inquire into football. This is yet another reason.

"This game is in one hell of a mess and it's only going to get worse administratively."

Simple

However, John Richardson feels there is a simple solution to the affair - relegate the Hammers.

"In a court of law, if further evidence comes to light eight years down the line you can still come to trial," he said.

"Further evidence has been found here. West Ham, in my opinion, should still be relegated.

"Why run away from that?"