"If you want some accessible but informative insight into football then I suggest you couldn't do better than the Political Economy of Football website, which is not only intelligible but comes with the added bonus of being written by Addicks fan Wyn Grant." Ben Hayes - Charlton Athletic programme
An important court ruling is due this week on the ‘football creditor rule’ which gives so-called football creditors priority when a club goes bust. The football authorities see it as integral to the governance of the game.
Vladimir Antonov, the Russian owner of Portsmouth Football Club and his business partner Raimondos Baranauskas were bailed until 16 December by Westminster Magistrates Court today (Friday). They were arrested at their offices in Bishopgate on Thursday after the issue of a European Arrest Warrant.
They face an extradition request by the Lithuanian authorities in connection with alleged fraud and asset stripping at a Lithuanian bank. Should they be convicted, the Lithuanian court could impose sentences of up to ten years’ imprisonment.
Uefa faces a series of dilemmas in terms of its enforcing Financial Fair Play (FFP) regulations. If it doesn’t enforce them at all, it will look foolish and be weakened in relation to the top clubs. But devising sanctions that bite without undermining the Champions League itself is a real test of ingenuity.
The book I have edited with Borja Garcia from Spain and Arne Niemann from Germany on the transformation of European football has now been published by Manchester University Press. A 20 per cent discount is available to our readers who contact us through our e-mail address.
In the latest twist in the convoluted Olympic Stadium saga Tottenham Hostpur have rejected in the strongest possible terms allegations that they had organised the monitoring of all 14 members of the board of the Olympic Park Legacy Company (OPLC) by private investigators. The claim was made by Baroness Ford, the chair of the OPLC.
With the decision of Millwall to quit the stock market after 22 years as a public company there are now just four publicly listed clubs left. Tottenham and Celtic are both on the second tier Alternative Investment Market (AIM) and Arsenal and Rangers are on the small cap PLUS market. Spurs was one of the first clubs to list.
The Association for the Study of Sport and the European Union, of which I am a member, is providing a series of analyses of legal cases concerning sport, particularly football. The first of these concerns the so-called Murphy case on TV decoders which started with a Portsmouth landlady. It is provided by
It’s always been my view that the fate of Uefa’s financial fair play regulations will be decided in the courts. There is just too much at stake for a club who is sanctioned under them to accept the verdict without challenge. It’s therefore interesting to see that lawyers anticipate that clubs would use every route available to them under commercial and competition law – and no doubt a good lawyer could find many.
Predictably initial media reaction to yesterday’s European Court of Justice (ECJ) case involving Portsmouth publican Karen Murphy over simplified a complex set of issues. Indeed, the only certainty in this matter is that the winners will be the lawyers who will pocket substantial fees in subsequent litigation.
Although the Premier League lost its case on football brodcasting in the European Court today, and hence Sky lost as well, the outcome will not change that much, at least in the short run, although no doubt further litigation will follow.