Do Sheffield United have a case?Anthony Sendall
Having lost out in their attempt to use the courts to force disciplinary action over the Carlos Tevez saga, Sheffield United now plan to sue West Ham for the cost of their relegation from the Premier League. Legally speaking, it is difficult to see how United can prove its case.

It is by no means clear precisely how the case will be put in law, but it seems from the club’s reference to “breaches of contract” that it will challenge West Ham’s adherence to the contract that underpins clubs’ membership of the Premier League. Sheffield United asserts that West Ham was dishonest with the league over the ownership by a third party of Tevez and Javier Mascherano. They are likely to assert that the misrepresentation was not only negligent but fraudulent.

Assuming United can prove that, they will still have a difficult battle to demonstrate what, if any, loss was suffered directly as a result.

The club is claiming that relegation cost £30 million to £50 million. But was that really all down to Tevez? Yes, his goal on the last day of the season was the final twist of the knife for the Blades – the irony of which cannot be lost on any follower of the game – but to claim that West Ham could not have stayed up without him is highly speculative.

Relegation depends on the outcome of all 38 games each team plays in a season. Tevez did not play in all of them and Sheffield United were consistently poor performers. And if West Ham couldn’t register him, they may have found another player of similar calibre.

Nor did presence certainly had no impact on United’s performance. It must also be remembered that United only had to draw against Wigan in the last game in order to stay up. To that extent, at least, the team’s survival was in its own hands. It is hard to see how United will come up with evidence compelling enough to get around that.

The author is a sports lawyer at Littleton Chambers

“cheated” is a meaningless term.

West Ham broke the rules. There has never been anyone break that particular rule before and there was no requirement under the rules to dock points. It was for the disciplinary panel to make the decision as to the punishment.

All the documents were produced at the arbitration panel (as pointed out by West Ham in their “#### off” tyoe statement to Sheff Utd yesterday night).

The bigger teams (yes Ahmed, them again) consistently break the “tapping up” rules e.g. Chelsea and when they were found guilty the rules stated that they MUST have a points deduction yet strangely they only got a fine. By the rules, that was more serious than what West Ham pleaded guilty to.

To all those who say it doesn’t matter, it does. This is about the standards of the game we love, and if they are allowed to sink then this ultimately robs all of us.

I am sure that Hammer Jammer is looking forwards to Man U being banned from all transfer activity for at least a season as a result of West Ham’s already stated claim for tapping up whilst enjoying the £20m transfer fee stashed away at the Boleyn from Real Madrid for the transfer of Tevez with minimal payment to MSI…..

We can all dream that the ball crossed the line at Ewood.

I’m not sure that FIFA offered any view on the substance of the dispute over registration. They are simply unwilling to get involved in an entirely domestic matter, effectively setting themselves up as some kind of appelate authority in such matters.

The NOTW report of an alleged eviction is a bit puzzling in view of the earlier Daily Star story that Tevez had “filled 14 cases as he cleaned out his Canary Wharf flat”. The eviction story suggested that Julien Faubert had moved in, but the media were offering desperately little information on what was really going on. The reports do not even suggest that West Ham were asked for an explanation.

Now anybody who has ever arranged in-company accommodation for mobile foreign employees knows that a certain amount of shuffling often goes on. Tevez was initially placed in a flat that was too small for his needs, and I understand that the Canary Wharf place was also inadequate in some ways. Faubert needed to be accommodated quickly and the Canary Wharf place had been “cleaned out” and was going to be unoccupied all summer. How does this state of affairs necessarily show that any “eviction” occurred?

If this story is the best piece of evidence that Graham Shear can find to argue that West Ham have relinquished their claims in the case, then the writ cannot have much substance. The High Court does not even sit in August and September, so there is no chance of an evidentiary hearing – at most a judge will hear arguments in chambers. By this time there may also be a case pending at the CAS in Geneva, with consequent technical problems over jurisdiction. This is already far beyond the scale of a case in which a judge in chambers will issue even an interim security measure.

The rest of your post is pure fantasy. I suspect that you haven’t read the award of the arbitration panel dated 3 July, but anyway, take a look at the second half of this award (paragraphs 40-80). West Ham complied with all FAPL instructions and have continued to do so to date. There is nothing to hang new disciplinary proceedings on. As for the suggestion that this can expose the Hemmers to civil liability towards another FAPL member, take a look at the FAPL rules and you will notice that they specifically limit any such liability to the outcome of disciplinary proceedings.

Sorry about the smug response, but this matter is a genuinely complex conflict that deserves a bit less tribal loyalty and a lot more serious analysis.

Eggert said previously that they ‘own’ Tevez and he is not for sale. They blocked the MU medical and claimed that MU made a deal without their consent.

1. Why then did they evict him from his flat?
2. Is that not contradictory to his public statements of the time?
3. Legally, is that a wise move seeing that this might now go to court?

When did they say that then? Serious question. Or did you just imagine it?

FIFA declined to act (they made it very clear that under FIFA rules they would have sided with MSI and it is not their job to enforce the FAPL more restrictive rules) so the argument that the commercial law would defer to sporting law is superceded.

CAS is an arbitration, not a court, and of course both parties have the option of going to binding arbitration or to Court.

I guess West Ham’s eviction of Tevez from his flat is going to be the most expensive eviction in history.

The FAPL are very neatly lining up West Ham as the recipients of Sheff U’s £50m damages claim with Scudamore’s “we gave West Ham three options and they chose the most difficult one but the only one which would keep Tevez playing.”

So if West Ham lose in the High Court, it is no collection of Man U’s £20m (and in your analogy of tenants, you do not go to the point at which the tenant receives the capital value of the asset when it is eventually sold which very clearly the FAPL requires in this case if West Ham are to avoid a seconf disciplinary hearing), a £50m payment to Sheff U plus the consequences of being clobbered by the new FAPL disciplinary which will inevitably mean relegation in 07/08- another £50m.

£130m loss on chucking Tevez out of his flat….

Eggert looks more like humpty dumpty every day.

It would be smart to reserve judgement on which party will eventually profit from the Tevez situation, as it’s not over yet. However, we can hardly blame the new regime at West Ham from skilfully playing the hand that they have been dealt.

The suggestion about what might “go to court in England” is interesting partly because England is probably the legal venue that would be most likely to uphold the view of the FAPL and WHU in this case. The main reason for this is that the English judiciary (and the UK government) traditionally view sport as a self-regulating domain. Efforts to secure judicial review are likely to founder on the fundamental question of competence, i.e. has the Premier League exceeded its powers in insisting that the club for which a player is registered is entitled to control the terms of any transfer of that player to another club while the registration remains current? If the court finds that the FAPL has acted within the margin of discretion that its rules allow, then the merits of the case will never be examined in court. This is in some ways the same insurmountable obstacle that Sheffield United ran into recently.

Even if the case was admissible in an English court, there is no guarantee that MSI would be adjudged to be entitled to a remedy. It is not the role of the courts to rescue the owners of businesses from the consequences of their own bad judgement. Nobody forced MSI to bring Tevez to England and see him registered as a West Ham player until 2010. In some ways this was like allowing a new tenant to gain sitting tenant rights in your home with the consent of a prospective buyer before settling the question of who owns the house. When the sale falls through you are left with a property now occupied by a sitting tenant who retains the right to occupy the property even if it is sold to a new owner. This may be a catastrophically expensive business blunder, but the court can give you no remedy unless some law was broken.

Things like this happen all the time in business, especially where intangible rights are concerned.

I think the situation might be significantly different if it concerned a transfer to a club competing in another part of the world. Such a club might petition its local league to register the player regardless of the current registration for another club in a foreign league. This would amount to de facto cancellation of that current registration, and the safest way to achieve this would clearly be through FIFA. In turn there would also be no question that the FIFA dispute resolution process had jurisdiction.

The irony of the contrast with Alex Ferguson’s attitude towards the projected transfer of Gabriel Heinze has also not been lost on many commentators.