To West Ham fans arbitration is a dirty word associated with Sheffield United’s persistent attempts to prove that one player, and one player alone, was the reason West Ham escaped relegation in 2007. Their fight was successful in as much as they were compensated to the tune of £25m, but you won’t find many people outside of the red half of Sheffield holding this up as a victory for football.
Football is not a black-and-white game. Pundits can agonise over slow-motion replays for days and still not reach agreement on whether the right decision was reached by the referee. A process exists where red cards can be challenged retrospectively with the potential of overturning a player’s suspension. Once that decision has been made it is in the interests of football as a whole that everyone abide by the decision and move on.
It is therefore a big source of embarrassment to me that my football club is attending an FA tribunal today to challenge the decision not to rescind Andy Carroll’s red card and subsequent three-match suspension.
The club cite a lack of “procedural fairness”, which is to say that the panel making this decision should exist of more than three people – or as many people as it takes for West Ham to get the decision they want. Perhaps there should be more heads on the panel, but that’s something that needs to be changed at an objective point in time (such as at the end of the season), not off the back of an emotive issue. David Gold’s comments betray that the appeal is borne out of desperation.
“If we were mid-table we would probably get on with it, but we are fighting for our lives to retain our Premier League status,” he explained yesterday. In other words, we might as well appeal as we have nothing to lose. This sentiment won’t curry much favour with the FA.
What troubles me further about this appeal is that it’s not even as though Andy Carroll was wholly innocent. For what it’s worth I don’t think he should have been sent off but the reality is that he deliberately swung his arm in the direction of Chico Flores with the result that he hit him on the head. Flores is a cheat and an embarrassment to his club, but we knew that already. Carroll was, at best, naïve.
The real reason we are all so angry is because of Flores’s playacting. Had Howard Webb sent off Carroll without this playacting – which admittedly he may well not have – then I doubt we would be appealing the decision so vigorously. To campaign for retrospective action for feigning injury is something worth fighting for. But that is very different to what we are doing.
After a week in which we took four points from six, there should be an upbeat mood amongst players and fans alike. Instead, the atmosphere is of impending doom, brought about by the reinforcement of the notion that without Andy Carroll we are nothing.
The real crime in all of this is that we have such a one-dimensional, unbalanced squad that we cannot create goals without Carroll in the team. Would we go to these lengths over the suspension of any other player? If we focused more on those things within our control, this whole issue would not exist.
Having argued on numerous occasions over the last six years that Carlos Tevez was not solely responsible for keeping us up in 2007, I refuse to be a hypocrite and argue that Carroll’s suspension will cause us to go down in 2014.
Principles aside, the negativity and victim mentality that comes with the appeal does not do our club any favours. I doubt many Sheffield United fans see their club’s victory in the courts as compensation for their downward spiral which could see them playing League Two football next season.
Let’s have faith in our ability to avoid relegation this season. And if we don’t stay up, let’s take a look at ourselves first when apportioning blame.
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