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Watching Leicester today brought back the memories. Particularly with their celebrations after winning – like us, you get the sense for some of the players this is and will be the highlight of their career. You just know that the Chelsea players, manager and owner would never celebrate in the same way.
Anyway, it reminded me to pull this off my hard drive and upload it to youtube:
You may have already seen it – it was shown before the 1st rematch in 2014 (I’m not counting the league cup) on BT Sports. But anyway, I think it needs saving for posterity. There’s about 2 seconds of my footage from the celebrations after the goal in it so I reckon I’m OK to share it.
So on your premise every player could also just walk away as they are in the same situation as Cook. The PFA paid the wages at Bolton and Macc didn’t they? No players or managers walked away for nothing. For a man who alluded to being a socialist I’m surprised at Cook for walking away at this time but guess his stock is high. Seems to me that football is sleepwalking into armageddon . Clubs potentially have zero income this side of Xmas apart from TV money and its currently unclear how the hell crowds will return? I can’t see as a business model how any club outside the Premier league is sustainable.
I can’t say for sure that anyone (including Cook) could walk away as I haven’t seen the contracts, but for a restrictive covenant to be enforceable it generally has to be tied to consideration (compensation such as pay) and changing those terms unilaterally without cause from the employee is likely to at least partially void the contract in the eyes of a court.
The best way to explain it is to look at it the other way round – if a company (the club) stops paying you for no fault of yours can they hold onto you indefinitely and stop you getting paid elsewhere? That’s clearly restraint of trade and for the short working life of a footballer even more damaging.
I’m not a lawyer and don’t work in football, so don’t take this as gospel, but I’ve been on both sides of these negotiations in situations like this. 9 times out of 10 you let the employee go because it’s not worth trying to sue.
As for Cook’s politics, what would you do in this situation? I bet it’s been a hard decision for him, but he’s got a family to provide for and football managers don’t have the longest careers. If he’s got an offer from Bristol, it’s hard to turn down versus likely managing in L1 with no budget and no players, or even being out of a job completely.
This assumption that Cook no wages, breach of contract etc is guess work. That my friend about not been paid is bollocks. He has been paid just not in full. Until he has recieved no wages for a set period of time and no chance of that happening and the company is dissolved he remains contracted.
If he hasn’t been paid in full, they’re in breach. It doesn’t necessarily mean he can walk away, but it certainly weakens the administrator’s hands – his contract will contain language that says something like “for the agreed consideration of X per week, you will be employed. As part of that employment, if you decide to leave then the following conditions apply”. The moment they don’t fully pay him X, they’re in breach as that’s not the amount agreed.
No doubt you could try and argue severability or that the amount he has been paid now is enough to enforce the restrictive covenant, but that’s where m’learned friends come in and it stops being a case of free money for the administrators and starts being a gamble in court. Administrators don’t tend to gamble.
This assumption that Cook no wages, breach of contract etc is guess work. That my friend about not been paid is bollocks. He has been paid just not in full. Until he has recieved no wages for a set period of time and no chance of that happening and the company is dissolved he remains contracted.
If he hasn’t been paid in full, they’re in breach. It doesn’t necessarily mean he can walk away, but it certainly weakens the administrator’s hands – his contract will contain language that says something like “for the agreed consideration of X per week, you will be employed. As part of that employment, if you decide to leave then the following conditions apply”. The moment they don’t fully pay him X, they’re in breach as that’s not the amount agreed.
No doubt you could try and argue severability or that the amount he has been paid now is enough to enforce the restrictive covenant, but that’s where m’learned friends come in and it stops being a case of free money for the administrators and starts being a gamble.
Yes he has a contract, but the moment they stopped paying him his full wages, the club would be in breach.
This doesn’t necessarily mean he can just walk away, but it hugely weakens the club’s case if they sue, maybe to the point where it’s not worth even pursuing.
Realistically, if we beat Charlton, we almost certainly will only need a draw against Fulham.
Given how Brentford and West Brom are doing, it’s almost certain that Fulham will have absolutely zero to play for come the final game.
And since we can no longer be relegated without a points deduction did anyone notice?), the next season scenario is now moot.
I just read this:
https://mobile.twitter.com/marksparko/status/1279000646335836163
Now there is 100% something fishy about what’s gone on, but I don’t get how this betting angle would work.
Firstly my little bit of expertise – I’ve worked for betting companies for a long time and spend a lot of my life in Vegas and Macau. So I know a bit about how the legitimate sports betting business works.
I can say with high confidence, that there’s no legitimate sports book that would take anything like the size of the bet needed here on a Championship team being relegated, no matter who the bettor was. Firstly, if the theory is that they were betting on relegation before we went on the winning streak, then the odds at that time of Latics being relegated would be low – can anyone find out what they were? So to make back the 10s of millions being lost today you’d have to be betting at least 10s of millions. No bookmaker in the world would take that kind of action – the largest bet accepted by Caesars at the Superbowl this year was $1 million – and even if they did we’d have seen the odds on staying up go crashing through the floor as it got laid off.
This also applies if they placed bets recently when the odds on relegation had dropped – wouldn’t anyone notice that Wigan were odds-on to go down even though we were now 8 points clear? The only way you could place the bet would be literally just before calling the administrators – and good luck getting anyone to honour such an obvious fraud.
But even if we assume this was a private bet, you’d have to assume that they found someone willing to take a bet of 10s of millions on something without doing any due diligence that the person placing the bet can’t rig the outcome. And again, that such a person would honour the bet given what’s happened. Even then, it’s hardly a sure bet as we will hopefully keep winning and they’re screwed anyway.
Unless I’m missing something, it just doesn’t add up. But if I’m wrong people will get murdered over this and it’ll make a terrific film.
He took us down and should have stayed at least one more season to try to get us back, he looked out for himself and went to Everton.Hope he doesn’t win another trophy ever, i’ll be rooting for Brazil!
How do you live your life with such bitterness? He took us down, yes, but there was a small matter of an fa cup win. One of the best days of my life.
I wouldn’t trade another year in the premier league for that, and if you would then, fair play, but I think you’re mad as well as bitter.
I remember being at the Swansea game before the final. If we’d won that we’d probably stayed up. But I wouldn’t in a million years trade that for a loss at Wembley. And, looking at the championship table right now, I doubt there’s a Swansea fan that would not prefer winning an fa cup over their achievements since.
I think it’s brilliant what Roberto may achieve and the only scenario I won’t be cheering him on is a Belgium-England final
Hope so marrer I still have nightmares about walking off at Springy with us 0-3 down in THAT game.
I’m showing my age and rambling a bit but I’ll never forget staying to the end of that game. There was my father, my brother, a mate of mine from school and me all running around like lunatics in the ‘away’ end when the 4th and 5th went in (Well I say it was the away end, I don’t remember there ever being any away supporters in that shed at the top of the hill behind the goal, in fact I think we were the only ones there).
The other memory I have is going watch us getting battered by Everton in the FA cup the next year and when we went 2 down I told my dad “Well we were 2 down against Northwich in the 2nd round so there’s still a chance”, then when the 3rd went in I told him “Remember Port Vale”. I’ll never forget his response: “This isn’t Port Vale”.
Port Vale showed an impressionable kid that miracles can happen. Everton was when I grew up and realised they very rarely do.
Never thought Port Vale could be beaten as a Latics experience. But on 11th May 2013, by the biggest margin ever it was.
So if you missed Port Vale, I can tell you now that as long as you were at Wembley, you have it beat.
Yes BT will be showing clips…amongst others they interviewed my dad (star of my youtube video that now has 13000 hits). Just the other day he was in Tescos and someone shouted “How long to go” at him :)