Broken leg forces Carlos out for 6 weeks.
By: Shaun Fuentes.[/size]
Trinidad and Tobago midfielder Carlos Edwards is out for a further six weeks after suffering a broken leg in Sunderland’s 1-0 win over Derby County on the weekend.
Edwards’ agent Mike Berry, in Trinidad on football business this week with former England international John Barnes, explained that Edwards suffered a blow on the calf which was strong enough to result in a broken fibia bone.
“The good thing is that it’s clean break with no other complications as such so it will take him about six weeks before he can be back on the pitch. But as the saying goes here in Trinidad, it seems like the guy needs a good bush bath because he has the worst run of injuries in the past year than he’s had in ten years or so,” Berry told TTFF Media.
“It’s been a nightmare for him. He got over the hamstring injury and came back against Everton and then got injured again versus Derby. The one good thing about Carlos is he’s a class player so we have to keep our fingers crossed that he’s not have further injury problems. It’s a clean break which means it will not take too long to heal and there are no ligament damage. We expect 4-6 weeks before he’s back and he is still going to be ready for the Ash Wednesday game against Guadeloupe which he’s looking forward to.”
“It wasn’t the start I was hoping for in the Premiership with the injury but these things happen and I have just got to move on and try to catch my form again after the injury heals. It took me three months to get back into the team and I must say this taught me a lot. I was patient before and now I have to wait a bit more again,” Edwards stated.
Berry was also pleased about Clayton Ince’s progress for Walsall in the English League One. The former Defence Force player was on Monday awarded the English League One “Player of the month” award.
“That’s really good for Clayton because it’s not often you see goalkeepers getting that award because normally that goes to an outfield player. He’s been in good form and he’s a fighter. He’s achieved quite a lot in England. He’s broken the clean sheet records at Crewe Alexandra and at Walsall and now he’s just hoping to keep this form going into the next qualifying campaign,” Berry said.
Ince added: “This award is good but it’s all because of the hard work of the club itself. We are hard working bunch and I just try to do my part.”
The English agent also touched on Barnes’ visit saying that the former Liverpool star will be in the Caribbean over the next few weeks working in football clinics with youth players in conjunction with the Caribbean Football Union and a leading company. Further will be revealed on this later in the month.
Excerpts from UK Guardian report published last Wednesday. Written by David Conn. The book thrown at Luton stops short of top clubs.
Selective FA corruption charges do nothing to prove a new toughness but smack of expedience. Some who understood no more than the headlines last week seriously discussed the Luton charges as if they did show the FA growing tough on "corruption", tough on the causes of corruption, and described Mike Newell, the club's former manager, as having been "vindicated" in his famous whistleblowing on bungs.
Yet, on inquiry into the substance of the 55 charges, that view rather unravels. The bulk of them are very odd indeed, in which the FA seems to be saying that agents and clubs would be fine to break the rules, as long as they file some paperwork to support it. Some in the game are also accusing the FA of acting tough with a small club while shying away from charging any of 16 big clubs found by the Premier League's own Quest inquiry to have breached similar or identical rules, while Newcastle United and Birmingham City were found by two VAT tribunals to have done the same and also to have made false statements about it to the FA.
However, there is not a whiff of the FA bringing a single charge against any Premier League club. Within the Football League concerns are known to have been expressed at the FA's lack of consistency in implementing football's rules across all clubs.
To be clear, four of the charges against Luton allege that the club dealt with unlicensed agents, which does constitute a serious offence if proved. Yet the bulk of the charges relates to the allegation that the agents - all of them apparently acting legitimately, bringing players whom Luton and Newell wanted to sign, with no suggestion of "bungs" - were paid the fees due to them not directly by the club but by another company, Jayten. The FA's rules require clubs themselves to pay agents - but Jayten was, in fact, the holding company; it owned the club. So, although it may constitute a breach of the rules, and it is difficult to understand why the then chairman, Bill Tomlins, apparently admitted conducting the deals in this way, it does not quite coalesce into the scandal of the century.
The fact that the FA has brought such a charge seems only to demonstrate how surreally upside down the world of football transfers is. The agents, including Mike Berry, were in reality, acting for the players. They represented them and had written agreements with them to find the best deal around. Mike Berry, for example, an accountant who obtained his agent's licence in 1999 and has a clean record, introduced the Trinidadian midfielder Carlos Edwards to Luton after five years in which Edwards had dribbled winningly into the enduring affection of fans at Wrexham.
Berry says other clubs were clamouring to sign Edwards but Luton - and Newell - impressed them, so they chose Luton. Edwards was "on a Bosman", so Luton paid nothing to Wrexham and Berry earned a nice fee, £91,000. Following standard practice in football, the club, not the player, paid Berry. He says Tomlins asked him to invoice the club for £51,000, Jayten £40,000. Berry did so because he was asked but received, he says, no additional benefit from being paid in that way.
Incidentally Luton sold Edwards 19 months later, in January this year, to Sunderland, for £1.4m. Luton have said Newell's contract paid him a 10% commission on sales and, if true, he made £140,000 for selling Edwards on. Newell has never commented on the terms of his employment. He is suing Luton for wrongful dismissal and the case will be decided next June.
Berry is now charged, along with the other agents who acted in the same way, with failing to have a representation agreement - a written contract - with the club. Yet Berry was the player's agent; he had a contract with Edwards. If he entered into a representation agreement with the club as well, he would seem to be acting for both parties, which would be an apparent breach of FA rules. Yet the FA seems to be saying that would be fine but it just should all have been in writing.
In the cases of Newcastle and Birmingham the VAT tribunal proceedings were brought because HM Revenue and Customs contested this way of doing business. There, the clubs paid the players' agents directly, then reclaimed the VAT as if the agents had acted for the clubs. The tribunal ruled this was false because the agents clearly acted for the players and the Newcastle tribunal said it could even be illegal because of a conflict of interest. Both clubs are appealing, but neither denied the findings that they had filed misleading documents to the FA. More directly relevant to Luton, Newcastle, when signing 22 top players, told the FA on official forms that it had written agreements with the agents, when those agreements did not exist. "None of the documents generated by [Newcastle United]," the tribunal said, "can be relied upon as true and correct."
The agents' fight.
The agents in the Luton case have been sent standard forms by the FA which include the option of ticking a box for a guilty plea, but most of them are understood to be indignant at the charges and are considering fighting them.
Mike Berry said he had been told privately by an FA official that, even if found guilty, the offences registered "on a scale of seriousness, one to two out of 10". But he added: "My record is unblemished and I am very disappointed to be charged with any supposed offence. I am consulting my solicitor to see how I can fight this nonsense."
Privately, some agents are amazed that the FA has charged them for not having a representation contract with the club when they represented the players. Sky Andrew is another understood to be consulting a lawyer, as is David Manasseh. It is possible that some agents will join forces to contest the charges.