West Ham have been charged with a breach of anti-doping rules after allegedly failing to abide by Football Association “club whereabouts” regulations.
Clubs are required to provide up-to-date details of training sessions and where each player is located so they are available for testing at all times. But the FA claims West Ham failed to live up to these expectations on three occasions over a 12-month period. They are the third Premier League side in the past two seasons to fall foul of the rule after Manchester City and Bournemouth were previously found to have broken it.
A statement from the FA on Tuesday confirmed that West Ham breached its rules. They were given seven days to respond and it is understood they will blame a computer glitch affecting the way the addresses of players appear on a form.
While the club said they are treating the matter with the utmost seriousness they maintain each of the alleged breaches are accidental and by no means intentional actions to evade FA anti-doping procedures.
A West Ham United spokesman said: “The breach relates to administrative oversights on the FA’s whereabouts system, for example a player’s address had been registered and the house number digits transposed, and the club will be responding to the FA in due course. We would like to make it clear that the breach is a club administrative matter and does not concern any of our players.”
Sanctions tend not to be as heavy for a club as they are for an individual with three whereabouts failings. Last year Manchester City were fined £35,000 and warned about future conduct for breaching anti-doping rules when they failed on three occasions within a year to ensure their information was accurate. Although a club medic, Dr Matthew Brown, did later admit that the charge brought the club’s “badge into disrepute”. Bournemouth also received a £35,000 fine for the same offence.
West Ham may receive a bigger fine as the FA reviewed its sanctions amid criticism that the punishment meted out to those two was too lenient.
