stevegrant

OK then genius, say a club goes into administration in the middle of September, rather than at a point in the season where their fate may already be inevitable, what happens? While fans may rally behind a club that goes into administration for a handful of games towards the end of a season, even if they're going down, can you really see a club getting the support (both financially and numerically) it needs for pretty much an entire season safe in the knowledge that no matter how well or badly they do, they'll be playing in the league below next season? Players have professional pride, yes, but there comes a time when it all becomes a fairly futile exercise. Determining a relegation place 8 months in advance is a ridiculous idea. Much better to punish clubs for the little things that often lead to insolvency problems in the first place.

The problem with imposing any sort of "automatic relegation" punishment on a club that goes into administration is that clubs don't always go into administration during the summer, when it would be easy to relegate them and rejig the fixtures. In Pompey's case, they went into admin in February - with an auto-relegation rule, where's the incentive for them to bother trying for the rest of the season if they know they're going down anyway?

Almost certainly lower, the whole end combined holds about 4000

Well worth placing clubs under transfer embargoes outside the transfer window (and yes, I realise that covers out-of-window loans as well, but the emergency loan rules will be tightened up or even removed in the next couple of years) Rather than imposing ineffective registration bans, the Football League should take a leaf out of the Conference's book and hand out points deductions for non-compliance with financial regulations. For example: -1pt for every month the club's tax bill is paid late (or not at all), with the deduction rising each consecutive month, e.g. month 1 would be -1pt, if month 2 also goes unpaid, it's another -1pt for month 2, plus an additional -1 for consecutive months, etc. -1pt for every month the wage bill is paid late (or not at all), again with deductions rising each consecutive month -5pts for failing to publish the club's accounts by the deadline -10pts for entering administration Up to -25pts for exiting administration without agreement to pay 100% to creditors, sliding scale depending on the CVA agreement - this makes it in the buyer's interests to pay back as much of the debt as possible... now *that* would "maintain the integrity of the competition", as the Football League like to quote at any given opportunity. -5pts for altering the agreed timescale for a CVA -10pts for failing to make an agreed payment to a CVA I reckon you'd soon see more clubs fall into line pretty sharpish...

Yes. That squad should have won the league already. Watford

Ah, apparently the Halford money's not due until the summer

Wolves £500k, any more for any more?

Yeah I don't quite understand the massive fanfare over that, it's money they were entitled to anyway, being paid at exactly the time it was due to be paid along with the other 23 Championship clubs.

I did include Merthyr in my list, tbf

It's a historical thing, Wales has never had a fully professional football league of its own, and also technically Wales isn't actually a country, it's a principality. The Welsh clubs in the English pyramid (Swansea, Cardiff, Wrexham, Newport and Merthyr - I'm sure The9 will add any obvious ones I've missed ) are all full members of the FAW and affiliate members of the FA. This has made for some "interesting" disciplinary decisions over the years, because everything has been dealt with by the FAW despite them competing in English competitions. Cardiff and Swansea have both had some rather generous decisions when it comes to rescinding red cards on appeal, although I believe the FAW has handed control of that over to the FA now to prevent the very clear conflict of interests!

Only if they weren't playing in Scotland. When a new club seeks affiliation with a regional FA (and, as a result, the national FA), it has to provide details of its registered address and home ground. If both of those are in Scotland, there's no regional FA in England that would accept their application.

On a tangent, but in-keeping with the financial dealings of football clubs, here's an interesting set of questions posed by a Blackpool fan regarding the payment of ELEVEN MILLION POUNDS as a directors' salary to the club's major shareholder, Owen Oyston: http://upthepool.blogspot.com/2012/03/10-questions-that-should-be-answered.html A slightly lengthy read, but very well written.

AFC Wimbledon got about 2500 for their first Combined Counties League game (interesting fact: the first goal scored by an AFC Wimbledon player was none other than Glen Mulcaire, who is more famous for his more recent exploits as a private investigator employed by the News of the World), FC United of Manchester got about the same in the Northern League.

I give it less than 24 hours before someone on POL reads those posts and bans both of you. And you claim *they* are "fairly unintelligent"

To be honest, I'll probably avoid London Bridge until after the game. With such a big away following, the known pubs round that area will be packed. Charing Cross might be a better bet.

Birmingham's would have been higher at the start of the season, not so sure now they've moved on a load of their higher earners. Add Pompey to that list as well before they decided to stop paying the wages.

To be fair, their defence was an absolute shambles that night, and it was proven to not be a one-off for them as four days later they shipped 7 at Peterborough.

By the same criteria as they have always applied - i.e. a) does he have any past convictions for financial crimes, and b) has he been involved in two or more football club Insolvency Events - then yes, he will pass the test.

For me, that could be the defining moment of the season.

If he's not learned now, he never will

Pretty much Alternatively, you could spend £50m and probably buy us (with all the assets and infrastructure in place) debt-free. Tough choice.

All sounds feasible, but I can't see Ward coming here.

A fair point, you would certainly expect them to be able to move on some of the higher earners in the summer, even if it meant them subsidising the wages to the tune of a few thousand pounds a week. However, there's no guarantee they will be able to do that, and at this stage they have contractual obligations to pay that money so the prudent approach is to take the worst-case scenario. Their matchday income is pretty low (around £6-7m), and their broadcasting revenue's going to be reduced next season regardless of which division they're in as the new Sky deal for the Football League kicks in, which is a 25% reduction on the current deal. In the Championship, they get around £4m for this season's broadcasting rights, but next season that'll be reduced to around £3m, so another £1m that needs covering. If they go down to League One, they'd be getting about £700k, so they'd need to find another £3.3m from somewhere to cover that shortfall. Also, while most of their parachute payments since relegation will have gone to football creditors, not all of it will have done. They were due to receive £16m per year for the first two years and then £8m a year for the next two. We're in the middle of that four-year period now, so the revenue drops by another £8m, and of course we now know that they're not going to see a great deal of the money that's still outstanding there.

Liam Lawrence loaned to Cardiff until the end of the season.

Assuming Birch's comments that you'd need £11m just to satisfy next season's wage bill are correct, then automatically the answer is "no, it's not worth the cost or hassle". There are £14m of parachute payments outstanding, of which at least half are already set aside for football creditors, which only leaves (at the most) £7m to play with. If they're seriously considering chucking in £11m to get £7m out, they're in the wrong business, I suspect.