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. The bombshell case leaves the Premier League club facing intense criticism for continuing to play him for almost three years in full knowledge of an investigation.
Telegraph Sport had exclusively revealed in July 2022 how a Premier League international had been arrested but only now can his name be published. Partey, 32, was one of the club’s top earners and a key figure in three consecutive title challenges and last season’s run to the Champions League semi-final.
The allegations relate to three separate women who reported incidents which took place between 2021 and 2022. The Ghanaian – whose Arsenal contract expired on Monday – will now appear at Westminster Magistrates Court on Tuesday 5 August 2025.
I suspect they'll play up the plausible deniability card, or the "innocent until proven guilty" card, but they were trying to renew his contract until last week. And then suddenly he's not coming back and here come the charges....yikes.
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So gross that they continued to play him and basically acted like nothing was wrong for so long, when this was all but public. How in the world does that happen? In any other job or profession, there is no way you're just going on with your regular duties with this kind of thing hanging over you.
Tough one. Gylfi Sigurdsson and Benjamin Mendy were both found not guilty. I think Mendy even sued City for backpay and won? Hard to suspend a player when he hasn't been charged with a crime.
Tough one. Gylfi Sigurdsson and Benjamin Mendy were both found not guilty. I think Mendy even sued City for backpay and won? Hard to suspend a player when he hasn't been charged with a crime.
It's not a tough one at all. Sigurdsson was suspended when the allegation came forth and never played another game for Everton.
There isn't a hard decision to make here. The right thing to do is to suspend the employee (with pay) until the allegations are dealt with. This has dragged on for four years, and they played him the whole time, knowing this is ridiculous. And the headlines of a "former" player are a complete joke. Everyone knew it was him, and the club and league just turned a blind eye. It's honestly disgusting, and not because of the club involved.
United also suspended Greenwood right away and he never played for them again. When the idea of him returning was floated, there was so much fan backlash that the idea was immediately shelved.
Everyone following PL football knew about Partey for years. Arsenal just turned a blind eye and they deserve to be criticized for it.
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Oh, I'm not defending Arsenal at all here, everyone knew he was under investigation for rape. What I'm getting at is that legally, they can't really send him home (even with pay) when he hadn't been charged with anything. Sigurdsson was charged with child porn, Mendy with rape. Partey hadn't been charged with anything until now.
Lawyers also share the belief that Arsenal should have stood down Partey from duties when it became clear a serious and significant investigation was taking place.
As Partey was charged, Dino Nocivelli, a Leigh Day partner who has worked on several high-profile abuse cases in sport, told Telegraph Sport: “I think the fact that the defendant in these cases has been able to continue his working life is wrong and clearly sends the wrong message for such serious allegations as rape and sexual assault.
“The player should have been suspended while his football club and the Football Association investigated the allegations, with no prospect of resuming his work until the investigations were concluded.”
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Oh, I'm not defending Arsenal at all here, everyone knew he was under investigation for rape. What I'm getting at is that legally, they can't really send him home (even with pay) when he hadn't been charged with anything. Sigurdsson was charged with child porn, Mendy with rape. Partey hadn't been charged with anything until now.
They didn't suspend him because he was useful to them on the field, which is why it's deplorable.
There are all sorts of risks around any action a club takes or doesn’t in these circumstances. However, it is so commonplace in football and other sports, there ought to be planning for when this situation arises. Arsenal shouldn’t have played him, there could’ve been an “undisclosed injury”.
That said, if I was wrongly accused of something and I lost my ability to perform it for so long, and was subsequently prevented from doing it, only to then be vindicated, I’d want reparations. Especially for a career that has such a short window while dealt by with a legal process moving at a pace that would embarrass a sloth.
For those wondering about the timing of the decision to prosecute, Keir Starmer used to head the Crown Prosecution Service. Now I genuinely don’t believe this had anything to do with it, but you don’t have to be the world’s most imaginative conspiracy theorist to make the link.
Last edited by Barnet Flame; 07-05-2025 at 04:44 AM.
Reason: Typos
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I agree that I’d want reparations and a false accusation is incredibly damaging. I think that you suspend him with pay, and that’s the right thing to do. There’s no way you can play the guy though, and it’s really unbelievable that they did nothing.
suspension with pay seems like an easy route. Of course, false allegations do happen and it absolutely sucks to those who have their name smeared. But at the same time, putting a lid over it for years feels wrong as well.
I cringed every time he played for us. He may have done nothing wrong, but when those allegations are out, right or wrong, some of it sticks.
Not playing him, and paying him is detrimental as well, but would’ve been the best move. Without knowing much if anything about what really happened, multiple independent allegations points to a much higher probability to me that there is some substance to the allegations.
If there is a big difference with Partey versus Mendy and Greenwood, it is both Mendy and Greenwood were actually charged before being suspended. Partey was arrested I believe, but not actually charged until now. So from a suspension standpoint it might have been more difficult to have valid cause to suspend Partey without an actual charge. I don't know if PL teams have that NFL "conduct detrimental to the team/league" lever to use where we see guys get suspended without any actual charge (like what just happened with Justin Tucker). But he was actually arrested, so you would think (hope?) Arsenal did an internal investigation to understand the validity of the possible charges. So in that case placing him on paid leave until that is finished would probably be valid. But who knows if they did do an internal investigation or just left it all to the police.
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If there is a big difference with Partey versus Mendy and Greenwood, it is both Mendy and Greenwood were actually charged before being suspended. Partey was arrested I believe, but not actually charged until now. So from a suspension standpoint it might have been more difficult to have valid cause to suspend Partey without an actual charge. I don't know if PL teams have that NFL "conduct detrimental to the team/league" lever to use where we see guys get suspended without any actual charge (like what just happened with Justin Tucker). But he was actually arrested, so you would think (hope?) Arsenal did an internal investigation to understand the validity of the possible charges. So in that case placing him on paid leave until that is finished would probably be valid. But who knows if they did do an internal investigation or just left it all to the police.
I don’t know about the actual allegations or investigations, but there’s was a girl who posted everything online. I think it was her (there are three victims here), who went to the club and she posted that they basically brushed her off. I didn’t read all of that though, so I don’t actually know any specifics.
And yes, innocent until proven guilty, of course. But he was bailed out 7 times. At some point you’d think the club would be like “this is a bad look, and we do have the women’s team that we’re trying to support, so maybe we should do the right thing”.
Which is why I'm curious if they even did an internal investigation. I understand that any police investigation will supersede their own investigation, but as you say it's not like there was one random tweet or something about this, the stories have been out there for three years now and they've been detailed and ugly. Given that they were trying to re-sign him as late as last week it would suggest they either did not do any investigation on this, or, if they did, they dropped the ball on it. Gonna be a PR nightmare for them for the foreseeable future.
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