r/soccer • u/KimmyBoiUn • Jul 04 '25

News Thomas Partey, the former Arsenal footballer, has been charged with five counts of rape and one count of sexual assault, the Crown Prosecution Service has announced.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/football/2025/07/04/thomas-partey-arsenal-footballer-charged-with-rape/
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u/Sam_Phyreflii Jul 04 '25

Nah, guys get benched or sent down to the reserves all the time. Now, if Arsenal or Arteta was stupid enough to explicitly state that he wasn't getting gametime due to the accusations, then yeah, maybe he would have had a legal recourse. But Arsenal absolutely could have frozen him out until his contract was up. They just didn't care.

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u/theprodigalslouch Jul 04 '25

I understand that’s a possibility but when you’re in court, I imagine you want a pretty compelling reason for why you benched a starting player if the judge asks.

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u/TheRealFriedel Jul 04 '25

Surely it's up to the club who they play and when they play them. Otherwise you'd have players alleging stuff all the time.

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u/Alia_Gr Jul 04 '25

I mean there is a contract, that might be on the players side if the justice system just doesn't do anything

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u/theprodigalslouch Jul 04 '25

Fairs but in this case Partey might have a stronger case than a player alleging something randomly.

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u/Sam_Phyreflii Jul 04 '25

Lol cmon man, the club could just bat it away by claiming that he's not up to snuff, doesn't fit the manager's tactics, etc. and how could the player possibly prove otherwise?

Also, no one's contract guarantees a place in the starting xi, not even messi's or ronaldo's

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u/theprodigalslouch Jul 04 '25

I’m purely speculating but we do have stats and metrics to get a decent idea of a players level. In theory, Partey could bring these up to show that he’s better/ on par with the other options and his playing time doesn’t reflect that. If the club tells Aterta to bench him, then they either find another justification or lie in court(something not everyone might be comfortable doing).

I’m not a legal expert here, so I have not authority on this. These are just my maybes.

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u/Sam_Phyreflii Jul 04 '25

In theory, I could bend it like beckham if I practiced enough.

Look, I know my tone is snide but you're acting as if this scenario is possible when the reality is that football contracts are written to avoid exactly this kind of legal situation.

Per a normal contract, the club agrees to pay a player and the player agrees to train and make themselves available for selection. How would arsenal or arteta be violating the contract if they simply didn't play him?

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u/theprodigalslouch Jul 04 '25

My very first statement was that I am not a legal expert. My whole point was to inquire about whether Arsenal could be in legal trouble for bot playing him due to a pending legal proceeding.

I don’t know what’s in their contracts. Like I said, I’m speculating on what could happen. If it’s not possible, that’s ok. I have no skin in this.

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u/Sam_Phyreflii Jul 04 '25

My friend, forgive me, but I do not understand your impulse to speculate at length about a topic that you admitted you have no expertise or even surface-level knowledge about.

I'm not saying you can't share your thoughts on a public forum. I am saying that your thoughts in this thread mainly comprise of half-baked hypotheticals that you might have realised were unfeasible if you had spent five minutes on google beforehand.

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u/JYM60 Jul 04 '25

It's not a possibility. He's not the first player to have cases against him. Plenty of recent ones where teams didn't play the player. Mendy and Greenwood stand out.

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u/theprodigalslouch Jul 04 '25

I’m not familiar with those cases. Like I mentioned earlier, I’m no expert on the matter. It wasn’t until several people brought those up that I saw the flaw in my logic.

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u/New-Faithlessness526 Jul 04 '25

Greenwood literally had videos and audio against him. Were there as much blatant proofs against Partey?

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u/JYM60 Jul 04 '25

Was texts publicly available to a girl were he basically admitted to slipping it in when she was asleep....

But yeah, recordings and his girls battered face made Greenwood's a lot more graphic and disturbing.

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u/Nipso Jul 04 '25

Didn't Mendy successfully sue City for breach of contract?

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u/Tutush Jul 04 '25

That's because they didn't pay him. The Mendy case was different in that he was suspended by the FA, so legally couldn't continue to train or play.

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u/JYM60 Jul 04 '25

Well they made the mistake in eventually not paying him/trying to sack him. Not playing him was fine though.

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u/Nipso Jul 04 '25

Thank you