Well, that did not take long. Just eight short months from the Lord Griffiths ruling that relegation can come down to one specific player, point, match or goal, and there is the whiff of lawyers in the air again as we approach the end of the Premier League season.
Everyone is playing their cards close to the chest, but the word is that Sunderland, Newcastle United and even Middlesbrough are considering legal action if Manchester United field a significantly weakened team at Hull City.
There is concern of a repeat of events two years ago, when Sir Alex Ferguson picked a team against West Ham with one eye on the FA Cup final, lost, and Sheffield United dropped. That is the Lord Griffiths interpretation of the matter anyway. He discounted the idea that Sheffield could have done anything to prevent their relegation when he made the ruling, preferring instead to put an entire season of results at two clubs down to one man, the murkily assigned Carlos Tevez, while upholding a compensation claim against West Ham.
It is a great irony that two years ago, the lawyers were arguing that Tevez should not have played and this time they will argue that he should. And yet, more than ever, we are aware that his owner is Kia Joorabchian and a group of investors, not a football club. Still, that little anomaly is for the grand intellects of law to assess, and what a fine job they have made of it so far.
The wider point is that the moment Lord Griffiths, 85, claimed the precise impact of any individual or any event can be quantified, and that a club was not responsible for its league position, he set football on an expressway to the courtroom at the end of each season. The first beneficiaries of his wisdom may also have been the second club asked to pay out had Barnsley been relegated and attached this circumstance to the head injury sustained by striker Iain Hume after a nasty challenge by Sheffield United’s Chris Morgan.
Now, if Hull defeat United’s second string, any one of three clubs might attempt to put their relegation down, not to a season of sub-standard football, but the random factor that Fergie rested players whose season had been run to keep them fresh for the small matter of the Champions League final.
Leaving aside that any manager in Ferguson’s position would send out a weakened team on Sunday, it is patent nonsense to believe relegation can be so specifically apportioned.
A thousand tiny moments contribute to the outcome of a single game, let alone a campaign, by the time team selection, injuries, the transfer market, not to mention the individual actions of every player over 90 minutes are taken into account. To claim it all boils down to whether Ferguson plays Cristiano Ronaldo is ludicrous, although no doubt there will be a legal team on hand to make exactly that case now a bonus rides on it. Welcome to the wonderful world of RelegationLawyers4U. This is only the beginning.
Martin Samuel is the chief sports writer of the Daily Mail, where his column appears on Monday and Wednesday