Taking care of their own

 If you live long enough you will see a lot of weird stuff happening in football.  Wimbledon going from playing in the same league as the Poppies to winning the FA Cup.  And then playing the Poppies in the league again. Scotland getting to a World Cup finals.  Arsene Wenger actually seeing one of his players doing something wrong.  You know the kind of thing.

Personally one of the strangest footballing occurrences was the time, twenty plus years ago that Macclesfield Town were promoted as far as Division 3 (League 1) at the same time Manchester City had been relegated into the same division.  For at least one season, The Silkmen provided mighty Manchester City with their local league derby.  Classic!

Of course, within a few seasons the Footballing Gods had woken up and both clubs started heading back from whence they came, but it was amusing while it lasted.  If there's one thing the Footballing Gods, and their earthly authorities believe in is that there is a pecking order in the game, and you'd damn well better know where your place is within it.

Case in point?

Manchester City recently managed to overturn a Champions League ban for having their owners pump excess money into the club.  Of course they were guilty.  Sponsors don't usually pay 100 Billion quid to sponsor every ballboy.  The whole of football knows City spends infinitely more money than it can legitimately generate.  They were found guilty.  And then they got off due to a mixture of technicalities and the best army of lawyers that blood money can afford.  The status quo is restored and Pep can stop blubbing, safe in the knowledge he can f*ck-up next season's Champions League campaign.

Shortly after this happened, with far less media coverage, and after the season had ended, The Football League triggered a suspended points deduction against Macclesfield Town, causing their relegation back to Non-League.  Even though Stevenage were by far the worst football team in the league, they are reprieved, and the Silkmen were dumped back with us footballing non-entities.  No appeal.  No army of expensive lawyers this time.  

Off you pop Silkmen!

An official FL statement at the time read* "Know your place Macclesfield and f*ck off quietly.  Anyway, Stevenage have just built a new stand and it will look jolly nice (if sparsely occupied) on the Football League TV show on Quest TV next season."

As ever, one rule for the rich and another for the poor.

*probably