BangleMan

Premier League Rule L19: A Club which transfers or cancels the registration of a Player may not apply to register that Player within a year except with the prior written consent of the Board.

Tottenham loaned Jermain Defoe to Portsmouth at the end of last January. The permanent transfer was then completed at the end of the season.

Why then have Spurs been allowed to bypass Premier League rule L.19 and will be fielding a player who is clearly INELIGIBLE until May?

Secondly, why have none of the sports media so much as raised an eyebrow over this indisputable breach of PL rules ?

It seems odd, given their coverage of an ongoing story about a certain former West Ham Argentinian striker which is now running into its third year.

Is Lord Griffiths available to tell us how many points Defoe is worth to Tottenham between now and the end of the season.?

One of the relegated clubs might want to sue them ?.

I'll keep all of Henry Winter's headlines, just in case they need some hard evidence at the hearing that will never take place.

I note Spurs are playing Wigan on Sunday. What does Wigan's chairman, Dave Whelan think of this? What's that? He's not bothered? Why ? Oh right, because Wigan aren't likely to go down this year?

Ah, right, that's OK then. Everyone carry on

The Dean

There's a rule that prevents you buying back a player you sold within the previous year??

I can't believe that is the correct interpretation of that rule.

Any industrial tribunal would throw that one out in five minutes on the grounds of 'restraint of trade' (or whatever it's called). I bet the EU would overrule it too.

Also - it's complicated further by the sell-on clause that Spurs screwed out of Portsmouth - which apparently allows them to register the fee at only GBP9m........

BangleMan

The biggest joke is that the deal was held up by Defoe's insistence on his GBP700,000 loyalty bonus as he did not ask for a transfer !.....He'd only been there 11 months the little Judas, Mercenary, pile of stinking dog poo

In the end Spurs paid him it , and all to dress up like Dick Van Dyke when he was paraded before the Spurs fans in the week !

The Dean

So what is the interpretation of that rule?

I'm certain there cannot be a restriction on buying back a player you have sold if both transfers were legal and above board.

Inselaffen

does football every comply about rules on restraint of trade.
the football transfer window itself is restraint of trade.

also at the moment the mighty shrimps (Morecambe FC) have a transfer embargo because more than 60pct of their revenue goes on player salaries. This rule applies only to Division 2. Also a clear restraint of trade.

The Dean

There is also the little-known "Luton Town 30-point deduction" rule.

Clearly an artificially-imposed restraint of allowing the Hatters to be a comfortably mediocre League Two mid-table outfit............

.............and today's postponement delays even further the day on which they move to a positive points situation...........

BangleMan

Great piece in Th Guardian today by Russell Brand.....

Defoe defies bruised hearts of the spurned

It hurts that Spurs, rather than West Ham, are the striker's defining club but we must grit our teeth and move on


Behind the enveloping loathing that one feels upon seeing Jermain Defoe returning to White Hart Lane is dormant, wounded love. Prompted by unwelcome nostalgia, the mind's eye turns inward and once more it's 1999 and Prince seems pretty upbeat about something and there's young Jermain in claret and blue; fresh-faced, fleet-footed and chip-toothed, a febrile one man hubbub of potential and opportunity, his story yet to unfurl.

To be honest, it was pretty difficult to avoid nostalgia when Defoe, for his on-pitch unveiling last Wednesday, was togged up like an extra from Bugsy Malone — actually not an extra, he was dressed as Baby Face who, if memory serves, was a depression-era itinerant worker expertly played by a tiny Dexter Fletcher in a cloth cap that after hibernating ever since (but for a brief interlude where it shielded us from Mick Hucknall's scalp crimes) burst back on the scene in a blaze of flashbulbs and flash bastards for Tottenham's Carling Cup semi-final against Burnley.

Tottenham are Defoe's defining club, not West Ham, and any feelings of attachment have to be severed; chew through the umbilical cord with gritted teeth and move on. Perhaps Defoe's dental anomalies can be explained by his willingness to gnaw through any bonding that prevents his ambition being fulfilled, like a trapped fox who can only taste freedom after he has first tasted blood, bone and fur and given limb-tribute to his resolute steel captor.

Once perception is exposed as illusion it must be demolished or we cannot leave its throes. Only saints can continue to adore once spurned; when I hear of former girlfriends marrying or having children I am confronted with a world beyond my control – life goes on without me. Ex-players, like ex-girlfriends, should not continue to exist; they should dutifully march into some canyon beyond the known where their triumphs play out in silence and I don't have to witness the children I'll never have and the goals they'll get for Spurs and can remain blithely fixated on the illusion of self.

The reference of the successfully departed is more painful still when the present is so fractious; the Carlos Tevez saga will not die, the investigation into West Ham's employment of the Argentinian continues. The East End hasn't seen such a long-term commitment to eking out justice since the quest to snare Jack the Ripper. While we're raking over the past and persecuting the Hammers, perhaps Lord Griffiths' arbitration committee should reopen the case of that bracelet Bobby Moore was accused of nicking in Colombia before the 1970 World Cup – yes, he was exonerated but perhaps there's more to this. Who knows, perhaps since that day West Ham have been buoyed by a sense of indefatigability and have accrued undeserved points as a result.

Because that is what ultimately has to be ascertained – how many points can one player's contribution be said to have garnered? I would concur that towards the end of the 2006-07 season Tevez's play did aid the team but when he and Javier Mascherano arrived they were a right couple of bumpkin nitwits; they upset everything with their clumsy, South American, unrefined ways. They lambada'd into Upton Park knocking over vases and treading on toes like a pair of swarthy Frank Spencers.

The unrest they caused among the squad and the disharmony provoked between Alan Pardew and the board must've cost points – in fact, I'd like to calculate that it cost six points, a cup run and a jam sandwich and I want them back. Where's my tribunal? I want Lord Griffiths to work out what would've happened if I hadn't taken drugs as a kid, then compensate or penalise me accordingly.

There's justice, then there's the TV show Quantum Leap in which Scott Bakula "quantum leapt" into the past to poke his nose into people's affairs, usually with the best intentions; well I'd like to tell Scott Bakula and Lord Griffiths to **** right off – not least for his use of the phrase "oral cuddle" when describing alleged behind-the-scenes assurances offered by West Ham's board to Tevez's handlers when the initial inquiry was in progress back in 1892.

If the West Ham CEO, Scott Duxbury, is giving oral cuddles to Tevez's "agent", Kia Joorabchian, then financial irregularities are no longer my primary concern. Sexuality and linguistics must be given precedence.

I'd like to give the possibly soon-to-be-bankrupt chairman, Bjorgolfur Gudmundsson, a vocal rimming to assuage his economic adversity, then perhaps a quick verbal nosh job to allay his anxiety at the collapse of Landsbanki, which is one of those foreign words that makes you question whether or not foreigners really have a language or are just taking the piss. "An Icelandic bank? In which West Ham's Icelandic board were heavily invested? And what is it called, pray tell?" Landsbanki? Childish. "And your telephone communications company, what's that called? Phonio-plop-plop?"

Some bloke told me that the Icelandic consortium behind West Ham also invested in the frozen food chain Iceland; as if that wasn't influenced by the fact it's got the same name as their country. What a barmy way to make decisions. What else did they invest in? Ice poles? Vanilla Ice? I suppose we should be grateful that they didn't change the name of West Ham to "Frosty-Brrrr-Gets-Dark-Early United FC". The past cannot be retrieved or rewritten. Defoe, like Harry Redknapp, belongs to Spurs and West Ham's points belong to West Ham just as surely as relegation belonged to Sheffield United when they went down instead of us, and none of this can be undone but ought to be accepted with the agonised resolve of an exhausted, limping fox.

The Dean

What's funny about it?

Oh you're a West Ham fan........... yes, I see.................

lobby lou

I take it ure not a fan of SPURS then ......RATFLMAO.........

BangleMan

i hate them with a passion.....

Sky Blue

Is that why u hate Jermaine, because he agitated for a move straight after you got relegated?

lobby lou

[QUOTE=BangleMan;7148412]i hate them with a passion.....[/QUOTE

Does this same rule apply to Tevez......
If West Ham illegally bought two players which lead to the relagation of sheff utd.....should they..
A.get a huge fine..
B.be relagated
C.lose both players
D.all of the above

ASk the expats....phone a friend....or cry in ure milk!!!!!!!!

lobby lou

Its all gone quite over there .........................

BangleMan

Absolutely.....he put a transfer request in about 5 hours after we were relegated, after getting himself sent off twice in 3 games just prior to that, cos he didnt want to play for us any more.....

Spat his toys out of the pram cos he wasnt getting a game with Spurs, and wanted to move, only to do the same to Portsmouth, and then claim 700grand lotalty bonus.....

BangleMan

[QUOTE=lobby lou;7148446] They ddnt buy the players, that was the whole issue of the tribunal for which we were fined
a. It was a record fine, and that should have been the end of it
B. Sheff Utd were relegated cos they were utter crap, and blamed Tevez for the fact that they barely won an away game all season, that they could have saved themselves in the last game of the season, but couldnt even beat Wigan, and yet blamed Tevez who happened to be 150 miles down the motorway at the time
C. We did lose both players. Mascherano only played 6 games for us anyway, and Tevez was utter crap for 30 games, but no-one mentions that

If Tevez hadnt have played who's to say that someone else wouldnt have scored the few goals he got ??? Its all pure conjecture....