This has been a vintage year for Premier League conspiracies, and one of its finest exports has been that of the “Red Cartel”. Great name, less great premise.
The general accusation is that three clubs which traditionally loathe each other – Manchester United, Arsenal and Liverpool (one Premier League title in the past decade) – surreptitiously plot to protect their status and stop Manchester City (six Premier League titles from the past seven) from growing and succeeding.
Part of this is down to their founding influence on the structure and rules of the “Greed is Good league”, part down to perceived benefits and leniency they receive from referees, financial regulations and the media. It stems from rival fans who can’t quite tell you how they’re doing it, but they’re sure it’s evil.
Right out of the block, it’s worth saying this Cosa Nostra in template kits clearly aren’t doing a very good job. City are the second-richest club in the world and England’s most successful of the past decade.
Newcastle qualified for the Champions League within two years of coming under new ownership. Aston Villa are top of this season’s league phase. The suggestion the rules somehow restrict non-Cartel teams succeeding is untrue by any metric.
But nevertheless, on Tuesday City fans parked a billboard outside the Premier League offices displaying the badges of the three Cartel clubs – and Tottenham – underneath the words “Richard’s Masters”, referencing league CEO Richard Masters and the recent case surrounding Associated Party Transaction (APT) rules.
For all the City strong-arming and bluster, the APT row – and the Premier League’s wider philosophical divide over its future and governance – is a very English clash between old money and new, between establishment and aspirational types. The fact that Newcastle, Chelsea, Aston Villa, Nottingham Forest and Everton supported City’s case illustrates that perfectly.
This is where I say the line – there’s no Red Cartel. There’s no conspiracy. All these clubs tried to break away into the Super League alongside Manchester City and Chelsea. Every Premier League club has the same voting power, and every vote needs 14 clubs behind it.
This is just a long story of convenient and inconvenient timings, and those who have benefitted from them at different points. It may not seem entirely fair, but life isn’t.
United, Arsenal and Liverpool happened to be part of the “Big Five” when the Premier League broke away. Manchester City and Chelsea weren’t, but both were taken over before effective financial rules were put in place.
Everton were part of the big five, but didn’t take advantage of it and now have the worst of all worlds. Newcastle are often held up as victims of Profitability and Sustainability Rules, but they’re an example of it doing exactly what it’s supposed to, all while allowing them to sustainably develop and grow, which they are.
The Red Cartel discourse is a consequence of fans rallying against attempts to maintain some consistency and competitive balance in English football because they don’t obviously benefit their teams.
But unlimited money shouldn’t mean unlimited ability to ignore the rules. Enforcing that isn’t a conspiracy, it’s just upholding some semblance of sporting integrity. The Premier League cannot and should not allow all clubs to benefit from lax regulation which threatens the fabric of sport just because some did once.
None of this is saying the Premier League’s generational wealth divide isn’t a fundamental problem, just that making it out to be something highly malicious is both disingenuous and deeply unhelpful.
But as is often the case with mafias, somewhere below the noise and myth and distraction is the actual mob.
They’re in your walls. They’re in your TVs. They’re on your podcasts.
They’re trying to sell you Huel and tell HILARIOUS stories about life under Sir Alex Ferguson/ Arsene Wenger/ Rafael Benitez. They’re writing another book and producing another documentary exposing the inner workings of an already exposed world. They are ex-Arsenal, United and Liverpool players and they are, quite frankly, everywhere.
If there’s any genuine semblance of a Red Cartel anywhere, it’s punditry. Again, there’s no great conspiracy behind this – these players represented the country’s most popular and successful clubs in a period long enough ago that they’re retired but not long enough ago they’re irrelevant. I completely understand why TV and podcast execs can’t get enough of them.
But on Sky Sports this season you’ll see a handful of Gary Neville, Roy Keane, Patrice Evra, Jamie Carragher, Jamie Redknapp, Daniel Sturridge, Ashley Young, Theo Walcott, Paul Merson, Michael Owen and Alan Smith every Saturday and Sunday, with some extra Carra on Mondays.
On TNT there’s Rio Ferdinand, Owen Hargreaves, Paul Scholes and Steve McManaman. Turn on TalkSport and you hear from Martin Keown and outspoken Arsenal fan Darren Bent.
Now, having played for a club doesn’t automatically bias these pundits, but there has increasingly been a gradual shifting of the Overton Window on exposing their partisanship. Most no longer even bother. Keane’s career depends on it. As with anti-Tory comics once they lost power, you wonder what Keane’s raison d’etre would be if United started winning again.
This all comes to a head on the Overlap podcast network. Run by a company founded by Neville, there’s increasingly a brazenly biased listen for every demographic, from Twitter tacticos and footballing history buffs to people whose happy place is a bar fight. This is Goalhanger’s “The Rest is” empire for one sport.
Their flagship show Stick to Football – comprising Neville, Ian Wright, Keane, Carragher and Jill Scott – averages over one million YouTube views per episode and will easily top that across podcast platforms.
Apple Podcasts ranks it second among all football podcasts in the UK, only behind The Rest is Football. There’s no denying its popularity or ubiquity. It’s not an impossible listen, however much the approach of starting each episode with five minutes of inane warm-up chat is infuriating.
But there have to be questions about its wider effects. The overarching Overlap-isation of football is only narrowing the scope of its content. Every book or documentary on Istanbul or the Invincibles takes up space which could be used to tell new stories and platform new voices. During Euro 2024, ITV hosted live episodes of the Overlap while using their pundits during matches.
The thriving cottage industry forged out of Manchester United’s chaos is just demand meeting supply, but that doesn’t mean it actually has any value other than keeping the Olympic flame of anger constantly burning.
And so, at a time where there should be calmer, more nuanced and less biased voices around a Premier League which has never been so mired in conspiracy and controversy and incompetence, we’re left with a punditry class dominated by the loudest voices from three parties on one side of a legitimate debate.
This isn’t a cartel by any definition, but that doesn’t mean it should continue. It’s hard to overstate the impact punditry has on the national football conscience, whether we like it or not. If you want to fight conspiracy, find people who are actually going to fight it.