Courtesy of The Guradian :
How Manchester City and the league locked horns in a financial scandal … in 1906
There is a sense that the 130-plus
Premier League charges Manchester City are facing are unprecedented, and in terms of the potential fallout that may be true. City have the wealth and, it seems, the will to pursue extraordinarily costly legal action. If they are found guilty – and it should be stressed that they deny all charges – the implications for the club and the league could be seismic. But the charges are not unprecedented. Twice before in the 150-year history of English football, clubs have faced major investigations into illegal payments. Both had hugely significant consequences for the clubs involved.
The 1906 City scandal
Ardwick had been among the original members of the second division of the Football League when they were founded in 1892. They became Manchester City after financial problems in 1893-94 and, that summer, they signed Billy Meredith, a 19-year-old Welsh miner who played on the wing, from Northwich Victoria. A decade later Meredith had become the biggest star in the game, and City looked like becoming a major club. City had been promoted in 1899 and, in 1904, they won the FA Cup, beating Bolton 1-0 at Crystal Palace with a goal from Meredith.
They returned home to a great victory parade, the streets packed, people hanging from the upper stories of buildings, a brass band playing. It was the first trophy in City’s history, and there was every reason to believe they would soon go on to win a lot more. But two weeks later the Football Association secretary, Frederick Wall, and a member of the FA general council, John Lewis, arrived at the club’s Hyde Road ground and demanded to see the books.
Their investigation lasted all summer and concluded that missing cheques and forged receipts were evidence of illegal inducements offered to new signings. The club were fined £250 (at a time when the maximum wage for players was £4 a week), the ground was closed for a month and one player and four directors received suspensions, but essentially it seemed a trivial bureaucratic issue. The seeds of something far more serious, though, had been sown.
On the final day of the following season, 1904-05, City went to Aston Villa. If they won and Newcastle failed to win at Middlesbrough, they would be champions. As it was, Newcastle won 3-0 and so would have taken the title anyway, but City lost a bad-tempered game 3-2 amid crowd disturbances. The FA launched an inquiry, but it soon became apparent that its scope extended beyond the fracas at Villa Park. In August, came the shock verdict: Meredith was banned for the season for having tried to bribe the Villa captain, Alec Leake. Meredith vehemently denied the accusation, claiming he had made the offer as a joke, and hinted he was being scapegoated because of his work on the campaign to abolish the maximum wage.
City refused to pay Meredith during his suspension. Although he had an income from a sport shop he ran in Manchester, he felt betrayed by the club and, it appears, began passing on information about City’s finances to the FA. Another inquiry was set up in March 1906. It soon became apparent that the payment of wages and bonuses in excess of those permitted was endemic at the club. At the end of May, the inquiry announced its findings: a percentage of gate receipts was being siphoned off into private bank accounts that were then used to make the illegal payments to players. Meredith himself had been on £6 a week, 50% more than was permitted. “It is now proved,” the report concluded, “that the club had for years systematically broken the rules by very unscrupulous means.”
Seventeen current and former players were suspended for the rest of 1906 and issued with fines of £900. Meredith alone had to pay £100. Four directors were banned, two of them sine die, and the club were fined £250. Although it was an open secret that many other clubs had made similar payments, for City the consequences were severe. In the previous three seasons they had finished second, third and fifth. In the three that followed they finished 17th, third and 19th, which meant relegation in 1908-09.
But Meredith wasn’t finished. Stung by public criticism, he calculated the scandal had cost him £1,674. Manchester United agreed they would cover those costs if he signed for them, and the FA ruled there was no reason he should not receive back-pay for the period of his suspension. City had put their other suspended players up for sale at an auction staged at the Queen’s Hotel. Ernest Mangnall, United’s boater-wearing manager, tapped up four of them before the auction began. The following season, with five former City players in their squad, United won the league for the first time. When they won their first FA Cup the following year, the only goal in the final against Bristol City came from one of those former City players, Sandy Turnbull, who followed in after a Meredith shot had struck the bar.
City would not win the league until 1936-37.
Football is not the same game as it was 70 years ago, still less 120. The biggest clubs have financial advantages that didn’t exist then, an economic safety net that should stop them falling too far. But, equally,
were City to be convicted, and were the punishment to be severe, there are no guarantees they would immediately recover. A heavy points deduction leading to relegation could have a profound impact on future profitability and sustainability calculations. Sheikh Mansour may lose interest. Or perhaps they bounce back, galvanised by the sense of a world against them. Perhaps they are exonerated.
But if Manchester City are found guilty, the precedents are not good.
