From her previous role at Discovery’s Animal Planet, the new Premier League chief executive, Susanna Dinnage, will be aware of the propensity of large males of the species to fight long and seemingly pointless battles for pre-eminence in the herd. The beasts on prime-time wildlife shows at least have the excuse of deep-seated evolutionary programming, although what excuses the males of the species who own Premier League clubs, natural history is yet to explain.

Dinnage may well wonder that when she examines one of the issues left unresolved by her predecessor Richard Scudamore, who steps down as executive chairman this week with not all of the loose ends tied. The Premier League inquiry into the allegations of an illegal approach from Everton to Marco Silva when he was Watford manager in the early part of last season will be an introduction to how fragile the egos are around the table of owners, chairmen and chief execs Dinnage must guide and cajole.

If only those discreet wildlife film-makers could have set up their cameras in the Goodison Park boardroom on Nov 5 last year when Watford were the visitors. They would have captured footage of the rarely spotted Watford owner Gino Pozzo, a secretive hirsute creature whose tireless stockpiling has been crucial to his survival. In his company, Everton counterpart Farhad Moshiri, equally elusive but more predatorial. His approach since his entry into the Darwinian world of English football has been to copy the habits of the more ruthless denizens of the forest.

Everton are understood to contend this conversation ever took place. They refuse to comment at all on the inquiry, as do Watford – although it is alleged that at this meeting Moshiri made an offer to Pozzo for his manager, who had just lost 3-2 to an Everton team managed by David Unsworth. The allegation is that this conversation served as confirmation to Watford’s owner and chairman that all the rumours that had been swirling around his manager about Everton’s interest were true. Pozzo declined the offer and so began in earnest the battle for Silva.

Both parties will be back at Goodison tomorrow, an awkward anniversary of this strange, unresolved feud. A letter of complaint from Watford to the Premier League triggered the inquiry and no party will even name the QC in charge although he or she is not expected to return a verdict before Scudamore leaves office for the last time on Friday afternoon. Early signals are it looks bad for Everton. They may be best served with a settlement of £5 million-£8 million; if no compromise is reached, the disciplinary procedure could be even more costly.

For Dinnage it is an insight into the new world in which she must keep the peace. Watford have told Everton a principle is at stake. Mediation has failed. Attempts by Everton to prove that Watford made an illegal approach to Silva when he was Hull City manager are understood to have come to nought. There are established norms, such as the one that says clubs rarely poach one another’s manager midway through the season, although even those are being swept aside by a new breed of owner.

The story of the Premier League is a strange collision: a successful alliance of disparate self-interest. Competitive forces united by a common greed. Or, to quote Paul Simon, a loose affiliation of millionaires and billionaires. It is also the only major league in Europe that agrees to spend £200 million a year in payments to its grass-roots and Football League partners, as well as £240 million in parachute payments.

Scudamore was engaged in a draining dialogue with club owners, a fractious bunch at best and getting more disputatious. The restructuring of the overseas broadcast revenue payments from a straight split, as it had been since 1992, to a performance-related division had been a bloody battle finally resolved this summer. Everton, along with Leicester City and West Ham, were one of only three clubs outside the big six who supported the original move to tear up the founding principles and give more of the growing overseas market to the biggest clubs.

One of the key founder members of the League itself in 1992, Everton’s attitude towards the restructuring of the overseas broadcast revenue, as well as towards Watford and Silva, tells you where they see themselves in relation to the rest. The Silva judgment might seem relatively small compared to the big questions of the era to do with revenue share and Euro Super League breakaways. But it is a test of how willing clubs of all sizes are to submit to the rule of the executive. To curb their own over-vaulting ambition so the league itself remains strong.

There have been fallouts over the years, between more powerful and successful clubs than Everton and Watford, but the momentum of the League’s success has carried all before it. “The more the TV deals go up, the less incentive there is for any of our clubs to leave the Premier League,” Scudamore said in the press conference to mark his departure. “Why would you leave? £150 million a year? Good luck finding that, you won’t get it in the Champions League.”

Within weeks of his departure and Dinnage’s arrival, the Premier League may well be forced to fine one of its six ever-present members. It will be an early test of the solidarity, and a little flavour of the battles that lie ahead.

Arsenal players' laughing gas tame compared to Tony Adams' days

Dipping into Tony Adams’ seminal autobiography Addicted, you can start to feel a little woozy just keeping up with the sheer volume of booze. After that championship-clinching win at Anfield in 1989 he and Steve Bould punched out the polystyrene ceiling in the away dressing room, drank or sprayed all the champagne Liverpool had kept chilled for themselves and headed back to the magnificently low-rent nightclub “Winners” in Southgate, north London. “I was an alcoholic in development,” wrote Adams. Fans threw cans of beer up to him on the victory parade bus.

By comparison the Arsenal laughing gas party in August in Mayfair was tame. It was certainly more expensive in their Hanover Square VIP area than “Winners” – now sadly gone, it seems – but a lot less likely to develop any alcoholics. Henrikh Mkhitaryan’s greatest indulgence appears to have been a lollipop.

Having seen so many fractured, uninterested Arsenal sides over the years, my first reaction was that it was good to see a side out bonding together. They probably drank less combined than some of the thirstiest members of that great 1980s team would manage individually.