In football's crisis of confidence, the Premier League as a referee is difficult to digest | first division

“METERMost Premiership fans will have a lower league club they will also support,” Caroline Dinenage observed of the culture, media and sport committee last Tuesday afternoon. Like less than a week ago. Not in the 1970s, which was probably the last time the statement in question was true. Not in 2007, the last time the competition was called the Premiership. But anyway, we are at the forefront of modern football governance here. It seems like these guys are on top of everything!

In any case, a gentle interrogation by a toothless parliamentary committee – the interrogative equivalent of a toaster in its lowest setting – will have been the least of Richard Masters' problems last week. The announcement that Everton and Nottingham Forest have been referred to an independent panel for breaching the Premier League's profitability and sustainability rules now means that a fifth of the division's clubs (Manchester City and Chelsea, the others) are under some form of investigation for financial misconduct. Many of the others are stopping their usual January purchases to avoid sanctions. If this is not a crisis – of legitimacy, of probity, of trust – then it certainly will be until the crisis comes.

And, of course, immediately afterwards there has been the usual foam of tribalism, misinformation and demagoguery: a new form of terraced warfare, not fought with clubs or iron bars, but with small screenshots of pdf documents and the emoji of the rat. The main arguments, in increasing order of absurdity: fans are being unfairly punished for the sins of their club owners; financial fair play rules are a brake on ambition; he first division is endemically corrupt and run by a shady lizard cartel that somehow includes zero-time winners Tottenham Hotspur.

“The sanction,” writes Everton's fan advisory council in a letter sent to the appeal board reviewing the A deduction of 10 points is imposed on them. last year for previous violations of the rules, “left fans, and not just Everton fans, with the feeling that powerful and wealthy clubs will receive more favorable treatment.”

All of these arguments can be solidly refuted in turn. You can point out that there is a difference between “punishment of fans” and something you just don't like. It can be noted that two of the biggest clubs in the world, Manchester City and Chelsea, are also under investigation, that forcing clubs to sell to buy is not an egregious abuse of human freedom but literally how money works. That Everton and Forest are not simply helpless recipients of cartel justice, but equal shareholders of the Premier League who approved the very rules that now condemn them. That the “sell to buy” model worked quite well for Everton when they were trying to persuade Burnley to sell Dwight McNeil, or for Nottingham Forest when they were trying to buy Lewis O'Brien from Huddersfield Town.

One can point to the blatant opportunism of Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester, when he says that this “is not just Everton's fight but everyone's”, although it is not a fight in which he seemed to have much interest until Everton got involved. It can be noted that financial fair play rules exist not to punish fans but to protect them from the worst fate of all: bankruptcy, liquidation, oblivion, empty Saturday afternoons. And that for a billionaire owner or a homeless person, a mere financial penalty is no kind of penalty at all. If a punishment doesn't hurt, then you can argue if it really is a punishment.

Even so. Something about all of this doesn't quite add up. Partly it is the idea that the Premier League – a competition that has always been in thrall to extravagant and excessive spending, which built its entire appeal on the flaunting of excess and unequal playing fields – can judge anyone on any issue. Partly it's the idea that Everton can be punished twice for a set of scores that are mostly the same. But above all it is this sense that we are forced to relitigate the past, to reconsider and reevaluate seasons and events that have already taken place, simply because those who were in charge at the time failed in their duty.

In 2024 we will fight the battles that should have been fought in 2014 and 2004, or even earlier. Decisions that were failed, avoided and ignored years ago are now coming home. The free and unregulated struggle that allowed first oligarchs, and then venture capitalists, and then state actors, to claim a part of our territory. Players signed for ridiculous sums by sporting directors and owners who are no longer there. The decision to allow breakaway Super League clubs back into the competition with a paltry £3.7m fine for their troubles.

A media that largely, but not exclusively, did not ask the right questions at the right time, that simply greeted the vultures flying over the threshold, because these publications and these journalists made a living exchanging rumors of spurious transfers . , and put up absolutely impressive numbers. A ruling class that wanted no part of football, that never tried to understand the game or the ways it was changing, but was happy for the Premier League trophy to be flown on business visits.

Football has a governance crisis, an inequality crisis, a sustainability crisis and a crisis of middle-aged people still calling it the Premiership. But, above all, he has a crisis of confidence. Ahead of the proposal to introduce an independent regulator, the Premier League is desperately trying to show the world that it can regulate itself, with an urgency it probably should have shown two decades ago. He's trying to regain our trust. It may already be too late.

• Do you have any opinions on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section please Click here.