Top flight ditches in sea of moral fudge

On The Premier League:Richard Scudamore looked genuinely affronted when it was suggested this month that the Premier League is tarnished beyond repair.

"We are very happy with our product," the league's chief executive sputtered. "We believe it has never been stronger."

The journalists gathered in front of him could barely stifle their sniggers. Scudamore might have convinced himself his organisation is in rude health, but beyond the swollen balance sheets and slavering television schedulers, the top flight is diseased, brought to its knees by a series of perfectly avoidable scandals.

In the past, supporters of English football could view Europe's great corruption controversies - concocted by morally bankrupt owners, officials, players and ultras - with a sense of self-satisfied detachment. Such skullduggery was to be expected from Johnny Foreigner and his shady sidekicks: it was up to England, the land of fair play, to stand up for sporting integrity.

How hollow that posturing seems now. While Italian football has restored its reputation by casting its most famous denizen, Juventus, into Serie B and France sets a shining example in the firm treatment it metes out to clubs who slip into financial catastrophe, a combination of pathetically weak leadership and unscrupulous members has stripped the Premier League of all credibility.

Scudamore and his board have had two major issues to grapple with over the past three months and they have fudged both.

First, there was the Carlos Tevez affair, where the tediousness of the legislative process was matched only by the inevitability of its outcome.

Sheffield United were never going to persuade either the Premier League or the subsequent appeals panel that they should be rewarded their top-flight status at West Ham's expense: not because their case was unconvincing, or that they were an unfashionable northern club pitted against east London's media darlings, but simply because the game's power brokers did not fancy dealing with the fallout.

Far better to give West Ham's knuckles a rap, make some subtle revisions to the rule book regarding third-party ownership and pretend the whole sordid affair never happened. Too bad that a club found guilty of being deliberately deceitful should be allowed to keep their place among the elite, and that Sheffield United should be cast out.

Having waved a limp wrist at the Tevez affair, the Premier League might have saved some face had they responded to the former Thailand prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra's proposed takeover of Manchester City with a firmer hand.

On the surface, it was hard to see how they could do otherwise. This is a man who was charged by Amnesty International of permitting the extrajudicial execution of alleged drug-dealers, of using "excessive force" and torture against political dissidents and handing impunity to state officials accused of human rights violations, most notoriously in Tak Bai in October 2004, when 87 protesters died during clashes with police. And all that before he was charged with asset concealment and had some 1.5 billion of funds frozen by the current Thai government.

Set against this bloody and murky backdrop, even Ken Bates seems to look a paragon of virtue, yet - quite extraordinarily - the Premier League still allowed Shinawatra to pass its "fit and proper person" test. It all prompts a question: just what must you do to fail this rigorous examination: stage a military coup of the league's central London headquarters, perhaps, or punish your underachieving forwards by attaching electrodes to the more sensitive parts of their anatomies?

One of the flimsiest arguments offered by Scudamore by way of explanation for Shinawatra's unopposed takeover was delivered during an interview with BBC radio last week.

"If the UK government does not have a problem with someone," he said, "it is not up to us to start second-guessing."

What tosh! Taking a moral lead from this particular British government is akin to seeking medical advice from Dr Crippen, and the Premier League should be ashamed for having funked the opportunity of taking a strong stance on such a serious issue.

Political flip-flopping is no excuse for weak sporting leadership. When England's cricket team refused to travel to Harare to play Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe in the 2003 World Cup, they did so contrary to foreign-office advice. There was no dispute then as to whether they had made the right decision: it was morally imperative Nasser Hussain, the team captain, took a stand.

The contrast between the dignity shown then and the Premier League's craven attitude now could not be starker. Ultimately, the league made their decision on the same basis that they botched the Tevez debacle: because they could not face the consequences of a principled stance. Scudamore, as their leader, is lucky to have kept his job.