As pointed out the team in admin has gained an unfair advantage over the other teams in the league by living beyond their means. If we scrap the points deduction then I would replace it with giving 10 points to every other team in the league. As a taxpayer I would also like the HMRC to take a tougher line. It is madness that clubs are allowed to run up such huge tax bills. One tax payment missed should be enough to allow the HMRC to take action and allow the FA to impose transfer bans on the club until payment has been made. The same action could also be taken by any creditor. If a football club misses a single payment to anyone they should not be allowed to buy players.
Since Fran's brought it up, does anyone else think that the deferred penalty Saints got was particularly harsh? I've not seen that happen to any other team. They basically said "if you don't get relegated, we will relegate you, if you do, we'll penalise you later and make sure you stay down", its like being punished twice! Anyway, that's all water under the bridge now I suppose.
There is a cut-off date, after which this comes into effect. Had Saints gone into admin before the cut-off date they would have started life in League One on a level zero instead of the minus 10
It is unfair on teams who sell players/dont sign plyers and generally live within their means if there was no punishment for admin. I dont think points deductions are fair, because the timing of admin can be manipulated. My view on it is a lot harsher than a points deduction. Spending money you haven't got is breaking the rules of a compt, so I would throw teams out of it. FL club admin, relegated to Conference. end of.
Would never agree with throwing out a club for going into administration, because it punishes the fans who have nothing to do with it. We went into administration for a relatively small amount of money, because, whatever we thought of Lowe et al, they didn't go on trading when it was clear we were insolvent. We were bought and all debts paid and were made to start the following season with a 10 point deduction. Some would say that teams like Pompey enjoyed their success on the back of huge debts, but who really knew that. I'm pretty certain that our present success is based on solid foundations, but how would any fan know that for certain. Real criminals in football who are into things like money laundering don't care about the team anyway, except as a means to an end.
Did you have that opinion when Saints were in trouble? As a Saints fan would you have been happy with being expelled from the competition? I only ask because of your reputation for hating anything Blue related!
The debt should be transfered to the people responsible for it, as the only people who are really punished are the fans, who also seem to be the only people who fulfill their financial liabilities towards football 100% (buying tickets/merchandise). It's as true out of football as it is in, look at the banks for an example. Every single person who was at fault for the banking crash has not only got away scot-free, they've been paid off too. This will never change as the people who make the rules are of the same class and social circles, and are generally family and friends.
I'm not a big fan of points deductions as they tend to penalise the players and the fans rather than the scoundrels who mismanaged the club to cause the financial crisis in the first place. If a club goes into Administration, there's a good chance you'll lose all your best players, which'll probably seriously damage your points total anyway. An alternative to the points deduction would be to state that you cannot be promoted whilst they are in Administration / running at a significant loss. Whilst this certainly wouldn't stop all the problems (e.g. clubs spending resources they doesn't have to avoid the relegation drop) it would seriously hinder any club overspending at the top of the league.
Always had the same opinion Mikey, remember having a ding dong with some Boscombe chump on 606, when I said the same (before Saints went into admin). How is funding a club on the back of the taxpayer, Norwich Union or local businessmen fair in any way shape or form. Get rid of the football creditors rule, that would start to make clubs run their finances in the correct manner. Lawernce, Norris, ect ect who were signed after your premiership admin, would never have joined the club on those stupid wages, if there was a chance they would only get 10p in the £. The football creditors rule distorts the market. Players will sign for whoever offers the most money, clubs will seel to whoever offers the most money. Throw in the 10p in the £ scenario and players, agents and other clubs will only deal with clubs that are solid finanically. Community club is the way forward, great to see so many of you lot protesting after Sat's game, which one is you Mikey?
Good post Ducky - honest too! I wasn't in that photo Ducky, as I sit in the North Stand - but my hat goes off to those who stayed at the end! I agree 100% with you - the football creditors rule is a big problem in the game, why should a player get preferential treatment over the general tax payer? They shouldn't. I have had this happen to me recently - went unpaid from work for 2 months, left the company because of their inability to pay me. Now, because the company has gone into liquidation, I am only entitled to a % of what I am owed - had I been a footballer I would be laughing! The system is wrong from top to bottom.
To ian Thumwood, author of the original article: That's a fine article, and I wondered ... if I may reproduce it for the forthcoming Reading v Portsmouth game on the Reading FC forum "Royals Rendezvous" - clearly crediting you and the Not 606 forum (and giving the link, when up, on this very thread...).. You'll probably know that there is no great love between our teams, but I think it would be very good for our members to hear the common sense reasoning you give from the Pompey side. Of course, if you're against the idea just drop a line here to tell me so ... Cheers, daib0
Best thing to do, is PM him Daibo. Ian isn't on here that often, but what he makes up for, in lack of quantity, is an abundance in quality. I'm sure he wouldn't mind if you can't get hold of him though.
I'm sorry, but the original poster is so wide of the mark. Quite a few people have picked up on some of the flaws - -that overspending is unfair on other clubs who spend within their means; -that no one can know what the deterent effect is as we have no way of knowing how many more clubs would have gone into admin if the penalty was not there; -that the 'fact' of Portsmouth's '15 man squad' is due to not playing youth players as better run clubs have and do -that Portsmouth fans (the ones damaged by all of this) were not asking questions when silverwear was being collected and Man U Chelsea et al were coming to Fratton To these I'd like to add that: -my, perennially surviving, club, Watford, with a squad of 30-odd have a player wage budget roughly half of Portsmouth's "squad of 15." -if, as suggested, liabilities of a football club were to be transferred to directors in the event of mismanagement, you would have very few takers for those positions, and even fewer competent ones.
OK, added to Royals Rendezvous in the "Rivals, but Friends" section in a nice presentation, and can be found here: http://royalsrendezvous.co.uk/topic/9429878/1 In only this part of the site comments are even allowed by all without having signing up (but sociable and language decency please, or it wouldn't be fair to moderate our own members and not you guys!). Anyway, I feel sure this will be of great interest to our members, and will get them thinking much more about these types of unfortunate situations that the true fans don't deserve ... daib0 Moderator-Contributor for Royals Rendezvous
This situation isn't the Portsmouth fans' fault. Okay, over the last five years questions weren't being asked that should have been asked, but ultimately that was the extent of what fans were able to do. They had no real control. Nor were the situations at Leeds, Southampton or any other financially stricken club the fault of their fans, beyond the "why weren't you asking questions earlier?" caveat. This situation has come about because big clubs believe that they are untouchable, and has been exacerbated by the fact that to a large extent they are untouchable. Clubs can therefore offer whatever contracts they want, borrow whatever the hell they want off of whoever the hell they want and as far into the future as they want: as long as those funds cover the current season's football creditors, they're home free. Only sooner or later the borrowing bubble bursts. So how do we solve it? Rangers going to the wall and Pompey going to the wall down here might just put the necessary amount of fear into other big clubs. But that simply wouldn't be fair on Portsmouth. Why should they arbitrarily be the relatively big club to be forced to start over? Why didn't we start with Leeds? Or Southampton? No. While the way to do it is to put the fear of god into bigger clubs, it's just as important to introduce that fear in a fair way, so it does not arbitrarily destroy clubs whose darkest happen to be today rather than three, five or ten years ago. So I think the FA should announce now - but not bring it in until the 2018/19 season - a rule that any professional team that goes into administration should automatically be relegated to the Northern League, Southern League or Isthmian League at the end of that season. The six year window between this season and that one would give clubs with problems now the time they need to sort things out by any means necessary, even if it means selling talent and paying players £500 or £1k a week for a few years.
Arbitrarily? Portsmouth had their get out of jail free card. They had administration and a chance to write off 80% of their debt. There is nothing arbitrary about HMRC taking a team to the wall when they have effectively dodged tens of millions of tax through three administrations in 15 years. However, the point I wanted to make is that relegation is not a sufficient deterrent. As many Pompey fans have said, that doesn't punish the irresponsible people who steer clubs amongst the rocks. The two biggest things that could be done to stop big clubs taking such risks is to abolish the football creditors rule and stop owners from loaning money to a club (requiring instead that they invest in equity). If an owner knows that in bankruptcy they will get something back only after all creditors are paid (as is the case for shareholders under administration rules), they will be much more conservative with their finances. And if players know that they will be classed as normal employees rather than this ridiculous situation where they get paid in full ahead of any other creditor (which seems to be of highly dubious legality), they too will be much more conservative when choosing the team they sign with. On a related sidenote, I am fed up of this idea that fans have a right for their team to be in a certain division, or to compete for silverware. Did I enjoy being a Fulham fan in the early nineties when we were hovering at the bottom of the football league? Well, actually I did. Because I support my club no matter what, and the memories of those days are just as vivid to me as our run to Hamburg. Now, I'm not saying most Portsmouth fans are like that, but there's a sense of entitlement running through a certain group of fans across all clubs which is really winding me up. When Pompey's existance is threatened, I feel for the fans. When their squad quality or league status is threatened, there should be no sympathy (again, I am aware most Pompey fans are realistic about their situation).
So what about the likes of Chelsea and Man City or to a lesser extent Bolton and Fulham who continue to spend beyond their means and get away with it? Surely that's still gaining an unfair advantage over the top flight teams who spend money on transfers and wages only within the bound of what the clubs income allow. Is it fair to punish the fans of clubs who have overspent then lost funding from rich benefactors when clubs who do exactly the same thing get off scot free?
It's still the FAN who suffers though, because if his/her team goes bust they have no match to watch. Even to go down to BSP or Conference South is a bitter pill to swallow (no disrespect to those leagues). What about having a "no promotion possible" clause for between 2 and 5 years, according to the severity of the offences, so that at least the ordinary Joe Bloggs fan can see what he's always seen ...
