10 Biggest Premier League Controversies

The Background:

Bruce Grobbelaar, the flamboyant goalkeeper for Liverpool throughout their domination of the league in the 1980s and the hero of the 1984 European Cup Final, is now in the dying days of his career. The early seasons of the Premier League have seen him pushed aside in favour of new Reds keeper David James, leading to Grobbelaar joining Southampton in the summer of 1994.

The Controversy:

After losing £50,000 in a safari investment plan, Grobbelaar's business partner Chris Vincent leaks a video to The Sun in which the goalkeeper appears to admit taking £40,000 to fix Liverpool's 1993 Premier League match with Newcastle, a game the Reds lost 3-0.

This leads to Grobbelaar's arrest alongside Wimbledon's Hans Segers on charges of conspiracy to corrupt. Both goalkeepers are accused of accepting money to fix Premier League results to the benefit of an Asian betting syndicate.

Games featuring Grobbelaar during 1993 and 1994 come under scrutiny, including Saints' October 1994 appearance at Coventry in which a bad goalkeeping error from Grobbelaar had handed the Sky Blues the lead after just two minutes. (Southampton would go on to win the game 3-1 anyway).

The Aftermath:

After the juries in two successive trials fail to come to a verdict, Grobbelaar and Segers are finally cleared of the charges in November 1997. By this time Grobbelaar has lost his place in the Saints team and, after a season at Plymouth, spends his final years making sporadic appearances for a series of lower league clubs.

Grobbelaar sues The Sun for libel, the match-fixing allegations having permanently tainted his reputation. Although the libel case finds in the Zimbabwe international's favour, an appeal to the House Of Lords finds that, even with him not being found guilty of corruption, Grobbelaar "acted in a way in which no decent or honest footballer would act" and that his behaviour has undermined the integrity of the game.

Grobbelaar is awarded £1, the lowest possible amount for libel damages, and forced to pay The Sun's £500,000 legal costs, leaving him bankrupt.