Integrity and the Premier League are the most unlikely bedfellows since Les Dennis and Amanda Holden.
Yet it has been a buzzword in the Project Restart discussions, Brighton’s Paul Barber bringing it to the table a few days back.
“Playing matches in neutral venues has … potential to have a material effect on the integrity of the competition.”
Integrity? This is the competition that sold its soul to television a long, long time ago.
Integrity? This is the competition that is, quite probably, about to nod through a club takeover by ownership funded by the Saudi Arabian state which executed 184 people in 2019, according to recent statistics.
Of course, Barber is referring to sporting integrity.
Leaving aside a rotten loan system that allows footballers to play against some teams but not others – there is not much integrity in that – the Premier League is, generally, a fair and honest environment.
But, as you are reminded on a minute-by-minute basis, these are unprecedented times.
Barber’s “integrity” argument was, unsurprisingly, followed up by Aston Villa’s chief executive Christian Purslow, who talked about whether this is “still a competition everybody signed up to”.
No, it is not. Because this is not an existence everybody signed up to.
Those of us who initially advocated the null and void option have long since lost that particular argument.
Against the wishes of many out there, the Premier League – for financial reasons rather than integrity, by the way – wants to finish the season.
The Government clearly wants it to come back sooner rather than later.
And if neutral venues are the safest way to get it done, then that is the way it will have to be done. Simple as that.
“Neutral grounds is a really serious issue for Aston Villa,” said Purslow, whose club were scheduled to play six of their remaining 10 matches at home.
“I don’t think the Premier League in any way, shape or form, wanted to entertain neutral grounds. I think that’s coming from the police.”
Call me old fashioned but it is usually the done thing to take police advice.
With Brighton also having more home than away fixtures to complete – five to four – Barber again sings from the same song sheet as Purslow, claiming that advantage is lost.
Yesterday, with Dan Ashworth for reinforcement, Barber went into even more detail about why playing at home was so important.
And Ashworth, the club’s technical director, said it gave a half-a-point advantage to Premier League teams and that was even bigger for clubs like Brighton.
But the statistics are from games with fans, home fans lifting the players, intimidating the opposition, influencing the referee. An empty stadium is an empty stadium. You can list factors that might contribute to home advantage in some minuscule way but surely it goes without saying that the biggest influence – if not the only one –comes from the crowd.
And wherever you play your matches, there is not going to be a crowd for a while.
Anyway, if some clubs do suffer a very slight disadvantage, that is just what happens when compromises have to be made.
And to get the Premier League back up and running, compromises have to be made.
It is obvious there is another layer to the objections of Purslow and Barber to neutral venues, a hope relegation might somehow be scrapped.
Now that would not have “a material effect on the integrity of the competition”, it would simply destroy it. Thankfully, that hope is faint and doomed.
With Government backing expected and economic need demanding it, Premier League football will be returning.
There are many compelling arguments why it should not… but the unfairness of playing out the season at neutral venues is not one of them.
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