http://www.football365.com/story/0,1703 ... 50,00.html
Arguing about the problems with the 10 point deduction for going into administration.
Plymouth have become the latest club to incur a ten-point penalty for going into administration, condemning them to a relegation scrap that will most likely demote them to League Two. But is the punishment fair? Jack Felton comes up with ten(ish) arguments against it...
Let me start off by saying that I'm not a fan of any club that's had a points deduction, so there's no bias here. I just think points deductions are an absolutely shocking idea. I don't hate them any less now than I did when they were introduced in 2004. So for every point that gets deducted when a club goes into administration, here's a "point" in return about why it shouldn't happen. And yes, I'm even sure I can come up with 15 or 25 points, for the times when a club gets deducted that amount.
1 - It takes away the sanctity of the table, altering it for everyone else. It is said that the table doesn't lie, but when there is a points deduction for an off-field issue, the table does lie. It is wrong to mismanage clubs so that they go into administration, but not so heinous that it is worth manipulating the table. Clubs have been severely and often criminally mismanaged throughout history, but until 2004 we survived perfectly well without points deductions.
2 - It is a flat punishment that does not have a "rehabilitation" element. A transfer ban, for example, would encourage the clubs in question to change their behaviour in the future, since overspending in transfers is probably what got them into this state.
3 - It punishes the wrong people - the fans, players and manager, who are not responsible for the problem. However, it doesn't punish the owner who was at fault, who is usually long gone by this point and has already demonstrated that he didn't really care about the club anyway. This is enough of a problem even without points deductions: Darlington were relegated to the Conference last season after going into administration the previous year, after a corrupt former owner - who was eventually jailed - bankrupted the club by making the irreversible decision to build a large, usually empty new stadium. Wrexham, meanwhile, were deducted ten points in 2004 (while in League One) for having an owner who deliberately set out to bankrupt the club so that he could sell the ground to a developer. They are now in the Conference; the team that stayed up at their expense was MK Dons, whose history and place in the League are far more questionable, according to most fans.
4 - It's hypocritical. The FA tends to completely ignore obvious mismanagement of clubs when they are not actually bankrupt yet (various Premiership clubs come to mind) but then pretends to be surprised and shocked when the clubs eventually go under. It's ridiculous for the FA to be so laissez-faire until something goes wrong and then try to portray itself as tough when a problem does emerge - you can't have it both ways. Why should a small club be deliberately attacked because of a five-figure unpaid bill, while Manchester United is allowed to continue building up debts that will, at this rate, reach a ten-figure sum?
5 - While the clubs in question should be punished, they also need some degree of protection, as there is often a real danger that they will go out of business. Football is not like other industries, as people actually have genuine loyalty to the 'brands.' Making it likely that the club will be relegated, and therefore making a deliberate point of leaving it for dead, puts the FA in the same category as the guilty owner. Chester City were driven out of existence in such a way last year, punishing fans who had already been punished enough by the way the club was run.
6 - Points deductions are often not taken into account by history, tarnishing some players' and managers' reputations unfairly and tarnishing the achievements of other clubs who were promoted or avoided relegation as a result. Were Luton the worst club in the league when they were deducted 30 points? Are Dundee currently not good enough to go up to the SPL? I don't like Alan Pardew, but were Newcastle fans being fair when they said he "couldn't even take Southampton into the play-offs"?
7 - What would happen if there was an unforeseen crisis that caused a large number of clubs to go bankrupt, which is quite possible in the current economic climate? In 2002, the ITV Digital collapse caused a great many clubs to go into administration, and could potentially have affected more. Under the current rules, this would have made the table into a complete joke - it would have been more like giving clubs a points bonus for not going into administration.
8 - On-field punishments are for on-field offences, such as match fixing, fielding an ineligible player, or failing to turn up to a fixture. Off-field offences should be met with off-field punishments.
9 - On six occasions, deductions of between 15 and 30 points have been applied. This has turned the tables in question (especially the 2008-09 League Two table) into a farce, making it obvious who was going to be relegated and removing the incentive for weaker clubs to play well. What was the point of honouring Luton's League Two fixtures in 2008-09, for example? If any club is felt to deserve a 30-point deduction, it would be far better simply to relegate them to the next division down at the beginning of the season, imposing a stricter punishment but not affecting the table for other clubs.
10 - It's ultimately just a gimmick, of the kind that is abhorred 90% of the time in football. The beauty of football is in the simplicity of the rules. If we can't even embrace goal-line cameras, why do we need to make complicated American-style rules for the league table? Traditionally, everyone can understand the points system, and everyone can see how well each team performed, by looking at the table; that is how things should remain.
And hang on a minute:
11 - Neil Warnock helped to prompt the idea. And then jumped ship as quickly as possible when it happened to a club he was managing.
