a question about what is considered sporting?

[lordswoodsaints]

i have read many posts on here about not taking our punishment,not accepting our -10 point penalty for not being sporting or trying to gain an advantage etc etc by exploiting a loophole.

 

a couple of seasons ago we went into about £7mil of debt to sustain a push for promotion out of the championship back to the land of money and corruption,better known as the premiership,where virtually every club goes into debt to gain an 'unsporting' advantage to try and stay there.

ok,we didnt make it,we couldnt pull it off after clocking up some debt which in a way we are still paying the price for today but is that seen as an unfair advantage over another team in the league who perhaps didnt have such a sympathetic bank manager and couldnt afford to splash a wedge on a few decent players that could see them push up the table?

 

does the FL turn a blind eye to clubs going into debt/big overdrafts/overspending as it makes for a better game with better players?

 

if buying better players does give you an advantage over your rivals then going into debt to buy those players must be considered an unsporting advantage shouldnt it?

 

is our scenario any better or worse than say liverpool or manu? both clubs generate plenty of money but still find it necessary to have massive overdrafts to compete at the highest level by trying to buy the best players in the world.

 

do we deserve to be penalised? probably, but so do every other club in virtually every professional league in this country as they are all trying to do exactly the same as us.....gain an advantage sporting or not over the rest of their alloted league.

[Thedelldays]

thing is....we cant afford to the repayments...liverpool/man u can

[shurlock]

But we never exploited the rules and flashed the cash to the extent that we were sure to go into admin. Playing the whole of last season with kids, selling our best players suggests a genuine willingness to try and live within our means - and the accounts suggest we were slowly going in the right direction (barclays overreacted). Again any deal will see the creditors paid - who knows how much. its not as if we've gone bust, the creditors are getting nothing and are in effect underwriting/subsidising our ability to start with a clean slate.

[Fan The Flames]

The problem is the gulf between the income from the Prem to the Championship. If you drop out you are almost forced to gamble big to get back up because you can not sustain a premiership club outside of the prem for very long.

 

Being a prem club demands a good ground, training facilities, academy, good wages etc and it can't be paid for on the second rate income the championship offers. So to say we had a sporting advantage three seasons ago is ludicrous we had one roll of the dice left and had to splash out. We also had no more family silver to plunder and we got into financial trouble at possible the worst time for decades.

 

The Prem/Champ gulf is a systematic failure in English football at the moment and one we are stilling being bashed over our heads for. The other league clubs probably fell we desearve it voting for the breakaway Premiership, but what could we do it was going to happen with or without us.

 

It was meant to help English Club compete better in Europe and help the national side by developing talent in this country. The English clubs do compete better but only on talent nutured elsewhere and the national side are as far off the grade as ever.