Tip-toeing around them is absurd

IT IS an unfortunate quality in Richard Masters that he never ceases to give the impression that there is something he is desperate to conceal. When you are the chief executive of the Premier League, an organisation dedicated to greed and accumulation, it makes sense that there is a constant need for dissemblance. Add to that the fact that many of his member clubs are gripped by a visceral fear of the approach of an independent regulator that might force them to contribute more to the wider game, and it was inevitable Masters would look as uncomfortable as ever in front of MPs yesterday. If the League had scheduled its announcement that Everton and Nottingham Forest had been charged with breaching profit and sustainability rules to make them look competent and responsible in front of a select committee, the move backfired horribly. Masters spent most of the session trying to explain why the Premier League had still failed to agree a more equitable division of revenue with the Football League. If he had just quoted Crystal Palace chairman Steve Parish on supermarkets and corner shops, he could have saved us all a lot of time. Masters’ evasive, opaque, defensive, flat, uninspired, tone-deaf answers merely confirmed the suspicion that there is one approach to deal with clubs like Everton and Forest and another for Manchester City, who face a legion of accusations about alleged financial infractions. Masters told the MPs with considerable gravity that a date had now, finally, been set for City’s hearing. Then he said he could not reveal what that date was. Why not? Why this need to tip-toe around City? Why this constant and absurd secrecy, that merely gives the impression that the team that dominates football in this country is being protected, while the book is being thrown at Everton and Nottingham Forest? The sad reality is that, however complex it is, the longer the City case is allowed to drag on, the more doubt it casts not just over the legitimacy of the club’s status in our game, but the legitimacy of the Premier League itself. To add to the inanity of his performance, Masters managed to refer to Everton and Forest, who have won the European Cup more often than City, as ‘small clubs’. That, as you can imagine, went down well.