|
Tomlins has said, "Yes, I broke the rules, there's no doubt about it, but I didn't murder anyone or do anything illegal," he is quoted as saying to the Daily Mail. He then went on to say why he had made such payments to agents, because of Mike Newell's 'bullying'
Quoted from Sky Sports.com
"Michael became a nightmare with agents. I had to speak to agents directly - if I hadn't, we wouldn't get the player," he said.
Tomlins apparently described Newell as 'a bloody maniac', and claimed agents feared him.
"He said to one agent, when I was in the room, 'You're a ******* parasite. I'm coming round your house, finding out where you live and I'm gonna rip your ******* head off'.
"You know, that man is evil. He was a nasty boy around the club - a bully."
And he told the paper: "The rules for dealing with payments to agents were poorly policed so, when it came to it, I telephoned The FA to tell them I had been making irregular payments.
"I know it was a breach of the rules, but I thought I had reasonable grounds.
"I broke the rules, no question, from the time we went into the Championship, but I'll tell you it was to avoid the rantings, the ragings and the bullying of the manager."
So basically, Tomlins made payments because Mike Newell wouldn't. This revelation from Tomlins could have serious implications for the club, even though we probably aren't the only club who has done this sort of thing, and even though the management of the club has now changed completely. Although it is unclear what kind of implications there will be for the club, any integrity that Bill Tomlins had before these revelations have surely gone now. Firstly, I'm not quite sure what reasonable grounds Tomlins had for making these payments. The argument that he did it because he was scared of Mike Newell is pathetic in my eyes as well. If he was such a bully, then why didn't he sack him earlier than March 2007? Newell made his comments on agents in January 2006, and presumably Newell's 'bullying' had been going on before this. Instead, Tomlins waited over a year before he sacked Newell, when we just happened to be in serious relegation trouble. Maybe Newell was a bully, and if he was, then Tomlins still had many opportunities to get rid of him before. He could have sacked him for gross misconduct with his comments about Rayner and the board, for instance. However, he didn't, even though he had reasonable grounds to sack him, so Newell can't have been that bad then, presumably. Tomlins comment about him making way for the new chairman by stepping down also looks thin now. In any case, I don't think that many Luton fans will have any sympathy with Tomlins.