When the mask slips...
Richard Masters is struggling to keep control.
“At the end of it, it’s fans that matter, without fans we don’t have a game.”
Richard Masters, DCMS Committee — 16.01.2024
If car crash TV is your idea of daytime entertainment, then tuning in to watch Premier League chief executive Richard Masters and EFL Chairman Rick Parry, appear before a Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee on Tuesday morning would have been ideal.
Plenty was covered in the two-hour discussion, in which the differences between Masters and Parry — not only in opinion, but to an extent in attitude — could not have been starker.
The major matter at hand was the failure of both organisations to come to an agreement on how money should trickle down from the Premier League and into the rest of the pyramid; or more acutely, how much.
The sad case of Reading was brought up, as was the need for an independent regulator — something which, after showing strong opposition in his last appearance in front of the same select committee — Masters now seems to have begrudgingly accepted is inevitable.
When the Chair of the Committee, Caroline Dinenage, quizzed Masters on the Profit and Sustainability Rules (PSR) charges filed Everton’s way, things started to get even messier.
Masters came across as arrogant and somewhat flippant throughout the meeting, and while his position in some regard is unenviable, and some of the questions directed his way across a wide range of subjects were perhaps rather bizarre, his response to this question and its follow-ups showed an executive struggling to keep his head above water.
When Masters was asked if he understood the cynicism around the Premier League’s cases against Everton — and now Forest — while the 115 charges against Manchester City and an investigation into Chelsea (who have already admitted their guilt to UEFA) hang in the air, he rushed to insist there was total parity across the Premier League.
Perhaps it was a Freudian slip, yet in doing so, he labelled two of the Premier League’s members as “small clubs”.
“I do understand the issue, and I’d like to separate the two in the sense that those standard directions are for everybody, they’re not just for small clubs. If anybody was found to be in breach, and put forward a PSR calculation that was above the threshold, they’d be doing exactly the same thing on exactly the same timeframe. There’s a very separate process for the other cases because they are fundamentally different in nature – unfortunately I can’t go into that today.”
- Richard Masters
Everton, who Masters had earlier stressed were an “important” part of the Premier League (they are a founding member of it, after all, as well as being a founding member of the Football League in the late 1800s) are nine-time English champions. Forest, meanwhile, have won two European cups. That’s more than Manchester City, and as many as Chelsea.
Both of these “small clubs” are shareholders in a 20-team league that Masters has been appointed to represent and administrate. In attempting to stress that rules would be applied fairly across the board to all clubs, no matter their scale — and that could well be true — Masters implied some of them matter more than others.
And this has been the core argument for many a year when it comes to the Premier League. It was evidenced in the executive board bowing down to the ‘big six’ when they attempted to form a breakaway European Super League, but still remain part of the Premier League — essentially trying to have their cake and eat it.
Those six clubs were apparently not able to be punished because of a loophole in the organisation’s regulations, but there didn’t seem any appetite from the Premier League to seriously consider a stricter punishment anyway.
As Masters then expanded on his initial answer, it only raised more questions.
“I do understand, from the outside looking in; fans are interested in what goes on on the pitch, they’re less interested in financial regulation unless it impacts their club. I think most fans want to know that regulatory bodies will enforce the rules and will have significant penalties for breaching important rules as a disincentive to do it. It is much better that all of our clubs comply with the rules, that’s the perfect world we’d all like to live in. That’s why we have to go through this process. We want to be transparent and open, we want people to understand it, we’re prepared to have a dialogue and we’re continuing to work with the clubs involved here on how that process plays out.”
- Richard Masters
While stressing his desire for the process to be “transparent and open”, Masters then went on to reveal a date had been set for City’s hearing to take place, but he could not confirm that date at this time. How transparent.
In fairness to Masters, this doesn’t appear to be one last attempt to cling onto power in the face of an impending regulator, and even then it must be stressed that he is, at least on the face of it, acting on behalf of what the Premier League shareholders want. The clubs are far from innocent in all of this and Masters is tasked with representing them and then, because of the Premier League’s own hubris, attempting to enforce regulation.
But his statements just made the whole matter more confusing.
As Everton’s Fan Advisory Board (FAB), whose secretary Julie Clarke positioned herself brilliantly behind Masters during the meeting, pointed out in a letter to Ms Dinenage, some of Masters’ comments contradicted the language used in the Independent Commission’s report from the original hearing back in October.
Furthermore, surely even Masters could not have believed his own bravado when he refuted the suggestion that the Premier League’s current PSR process was not “messy”.
After all, what could possibly be messy about:
A process that might see clubs not know their status after the league campaign has finished.
A process that is left totally to the discretion of an Independent Commission to decide punishments that are not aligned to any particular framework.
A process that can see member clubs explore litigation cases against each other.
A process that can see a team punished twice for what is essentially the same offence.
A process that can see a points deduction handed out that is more severe than the one served out for going into administration.
A process that is not transparent and open, with the Premier League ignoring requests from prominent politicians and local leaders for the disclosure of meeting minutes that are vital to the case at hand and would be vital in any appeal hearing.
A process that is set to change later in 2024, with Masters confirming on Tuesday that a shift to a UEFA-style, squad-based model will be voted on at an upcoming Premier League meeting next month.
No, nothing messy at all, Mr Masters.
Is the Premier League’s executive board corrupt? Not in this writer’s opinion.
Is the Premier League’s executive board responsible for Everton and Forest — and potentially Chelsea and Man City — spending beyond their means/breaching the rules. No, it is not.
But is the Premier League’s executive board in desperate need of reshaping and reform? Are there serious questions to be asked about how the organisation is run? Absolutely.
This is a case similar to that of PGMOL and its continued butchering of VAR — the people in charge are simply tied up in knots by their own rules, and unable to see the wood for the trees.
Referring to two of the Premier League’s teams as “small clubs”, even if accidentally, only increases the depth of feeling that some fans — some clubs — matter more to these people than others.
If the fans were at the forefront of Masters’ mind, then he would not have signed off on the Premier League’s statement, released belatedly on Monday, that confirmed the latest charges against Everton and Forest. A statement that dripped in arrogance and, as leading national journalist Henry Winter wrote on X, came across as “tone-deaf” and “sums up the organisation under Richard Masters.”
“Even if you agree with the importance of PSR, you have to show some understanding of what potential charges mean on a human level, to supporters and staff of the two clubs,” Winter finished.
Perhaps Masters really did have the fans in mind when he elected against pushing for harsher punishments for the breakaway Super League six. Perhaps he did have Newcastle fans in mind when, after years of austerity under Mike Ashley, the takeover of their club by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) was approved. Masters’ executive board were given “legally binding assurances” that the Saudi government would have no control of the north-east club; on Tuesday, shortly after the conclusion of the DCMS Committee meeting, The Athletic reported that Yasir Al-Rumayyan, Newcastle’s chairman, is accused of “having carried out the instructions” of the Saudi Arabian Crown Prince with “the malicious intent” of “harming, silencing and ultimately destroying” the family of the Gulf state’s former intelligence chief.
Another feather in the cap, Richard…
Whatever happens with the P&S cases that are ongoing or still to be heard, the Premier League’s executive board as it is, seems doomed to fail. Unfortunately for Masters, time should be running out on his tenure.
By Patric Ridge
Excellent piece. If he is so concerned about the fans perhaps he should be asked to advise on one piece of legislation that he has presided over that has directly benefited them. I struggle to think of any.