The Football League’s legal team, backed by the PFA, are insisting that contracts must be honoured. If so, this would mean that Bradford must come to an agreement with the players released, and not just a standard redundancy package as dispensed at Fir Park.
The League’s directors supposedly face two options for next season, if Bradford carry on with their action. 1) Refuse Bradford entry to next year’s competitions, effectively killing the club. 2) Allow them to ride roughshod over the players making contracts worthless and opening the floodgates for others affected by the ITV Digital collapse to do the same.
The PFA’s Brendan Batson said, “No other club which has survived going into administration has taken such drastic measures and these clubs, like Hull City and Crystal Palace, would lead protests if Bradford are allowed to carry out this action.”
For Bradford, the administrator Mike Moore says, “Mass termination of contracts does not contravene the League’s strict rules. We are confident the League board will take into account the interests of football as a whole.”
So how can we compare this to Motherwell? Apart from the colours and obvious numerical similarity, both clubs have used administration to terminate the contracts of the highest paid players at the clubs.
For £40K a week Carbone and £18K Ashley Ward, read Strong, Ready, Martinez etc. No-one will miss some of our players who frankly failed to justify the inflated wages they received, while the likes of Ready and Strong became victims of simple economics.
Like the PFA, the Scottish PFA have pledged to support the players. Surely the administrators at both clubs are aware of the legalities of redundancies and both claim to have acted within the law. I’m not sure whether English and Scottish law are different, but both are probably bound by European legislation. As a former PFA man, surely Pat Nevin was savvy to the technicalities. His position as regards the players has never been made public but his principles would surely have brought forth comment if the redundancies were illegal.
It does leave us with a few unanswered questions. There has been talk that the new Bradford owners would be liable for the contracts of the released players. Would that mean they could then be re-signed and would they want to? Greg Strong now looks likely for a move to Hull City, so would we then be entitled to a transfer fee? If our new owners are liable to take over the contracts could we then struggle to find someone willing to invest in the club? The next few weeks could prove interesting, especially if Bradford’s stance is ruled to be unfair.