The Sun have billed tonight’s cup game a £260m grudge match between the Hammers and the Blades.
The paper calculates that’s the price Sheffield United have missed out on since relegation from Premier League involvement.
However United fans don’t see it like that. When I asked leading Blades fan Martin Fox from about Tevez he replied: “I can’t remember the last time I thought about the issue, never mind talked about it.
It’s simply not something you tend to hear around the ground or on the message boards. We went down due to our own inability to secure enough points and due to a classic Sheffield United capitulation in snatching the worst possible outcome against the odds.
Make no mistake, survival was firmly in our own hands.This doesn’t change the fact that one side involved in the survival race broke the rules and continued to lie about breaking the rules.
I firmly believe if that Premier League had dealt with the issue as they should, instead of incompetently skirting around the issue, the Hammers would have been relegated.
I’d think the same, had it been Wigan relegated that day.The very fact we eventually ended up with a settlement and what happened the minute someone else wanted to sign Tevez confirm the validity of our complaint.
My main annoyance was with Richard Scudamore (and therefore the Premier League), those in charge of the Hammers at the time and the others, who to this day, still spout rubbish about the situation.
I personally have no bad feelings towards Carlos Tevez himself, he’s a talented player who was simply doing his job. Don’t get me wrong, it’ll certainly add spice to the fixture and I’m sure fans of both clubs will be desperate to get one over on the other, but my main dislike is merely the blinkered views that some still persist in.
We’ve even had Big Sam tAllardyce his week quoted as saying “I’m not so sure how guilty Sheffield United were on it”, it’s as if the side found irrefutably to have been breaking the rules was actually us.”
I was on KUMB earlier and posted a similar response, this isn’t an issue to any Blades fans that I have ever spoken to, to be honest it wasn’t a huge issue to them at the time, they accepted that they went down because they didn’t get the result they required. Duxbury deceived the FAPL initially about the third party contract for which we received a record fine. What I have never understood is why the club would agree to settle £25 million for a case that had already been ruled on and penalised, surely if the FAPL have fined us then Sheffield United’s case should not have been against the club but against the FAPL who had decided our penalty ? At the time when we received that record fine almost definitely we were going to be relegated because the majority of our games included 6 of the top 7 clubs the others were against our relegation rivals. The papers seem to be trying to stir up a rift and I hope our supporters don’t wear these stupid masks because it is an issue that was in the past that is entirely the fault of Duxbury and other insiders that were at teh club at the time making poor decisions.
It is all very well saying we should forget all about the tevez affair and move on but unfortunately that’s easier said than done.
Now I couldn’t care less about Sheff utd, they meant nothing to me then and even less today.
But what I continue to have a problem about is that after all this time the good name of the club is still tarnished and our standing has never fully recovered from being dragged through the mud.
It is worth remembering at the time 3rd party ownership wasn’t illegal and when tevez was signed we did nothing wrong.
A deal was done with scudamore to save his and the premier leagues face with I believe scudamore firmly believing we would go down.
But that wasn’t the only problem, because as part of the deal the egg “admitted guilt” and this is what caused all the legal problems later and subsequent fine.
But that is in the past now. The blunts went down because they weren’t good enough! We stayed up because rob green and bobby Zamora played out of their skins!
The truth will come out in the end and cheats never prosper!
Tonight if we play the team and not the hype we will win easily! 3-0 Hammers! COYI!
No32 the case should’ve been taken out against the epl but every team in the league signs an agreement when they join the league saying they will not under any circumstances Sue the league