- They're suing the wrong people. Sheffield United's beef is with the Premier League, not West Ham. It was them who failed to dock the club points and only impose a fine. Suing West Ham for damages is like a murder victim's family suing the murderer for getting out early for good behaviour. Utterly irrational.
- Playing the stiffs... against Man Utd. They only have themselves to blame for relegation. Sending out a weakened team against Man Utd, for instance, was suicidal - especially given West Ham took six points off United that season, proving conclusively that a team down the bottom can still do the big boys. It's not good enough to only try against sides outside the top four and blame others when you fail.
- Dodgy deals of their own. Sheffield United won only one of their last five - against Watford - who coincidentally weren't playing former Sheffield United striker Steve Kabba in that game due to a shady "gentlemen's agreement" between the two sides that he couldn't play. As Martin Samuel points out with more eloquence than I could ever muster, "who is to say that those three points for Sheffield United were any more, or less, significant than any match won by West Ham, with or without Tévez?"
- Tevez didn't keep West Ham up single-handedly. Only a mug would argue that Tevez made no impact on West Ham's late survival run-in. But by the same token, it could be argued he cost the team plenty of points at the start of the season as well. He played no less than 16 times in the Premier League before finally scoring a free-kick against Spurs in March. Was the impact another striker could have made in those games taken into account by Henry Winter and chums at the arbitration panel? The year before the club's second highest scoring striker (which was what Tevez was in 2006-7) had racked up 10 goals, compared to Tevez's 7. He arguably cost us points overall.
- The appointment of Bryan Robson. Immediately after Sheffield United's relegation and the resignation of Colin Warnock, the club appointed Bryan Robson, a man who had relegated every single club (Middlesbrough, Bradford and West Brom) he had managed previously. Any club serious about playing in the top flight wouldn't have appointed Knobbo. Your honour, I rest my case.
