The wondrous hypocrisy they call the EPL and FA

I know I say you shouldn’t be surprised if you follow Portsmouth FC given what has gone on the past few seasons but every so often we allow ourselves as fans a moments grace to savour some good news and wouldn’t you know it just a couple of short hours later we see another new reality come crashing in on us.

By mid afternoon fans were rejoicing the removal of Aaron Mokena off the clubs books not only from a financial perspective but moreover a footballing one in the fact he’ll never be able to wear a Pompey shirt again and similarly Hayden Mullins exit too this time evidently more because of the wage factor. Whilst Mullins might never have been the most attractive player to watch his work rate and impact on the role he played in the team were highly evident and fans in the main will be sad to see him go and wish him well with his new club Birmingham City. I won’t mention where Mokoena is headed because I have no wish to follow his career at any further stage in the future.

So buoyant with the news that the clubs wage bill had been lowered of course the joy has to be short lived as it has been for the past few seasons, with the announcement that Pompey are facing another points deduction with the punishment being sanctioned by the Football league.

Now like a coin there are two sides to how to approach being docked ten points by the Football Association and two arguments to come back with and this is how I see it and for those who don’t really understand the reason behind the decision hopefully this will make it easier to understand. Don’t worry if you don’t I’ve spent the past hour and a half on the text explaining what’s going on and why so don’t feel ashamed.

When the club first went into administration it offered non footballing creditors 20 pence in the pound on their debt which despite the objections of the HMRC over 75% of those creditors agreed to the deal put on the table and the club was able to exit administration. No monies of that agreement were ever paid off so when the club went into administration a second time you have one set of creditor’s owed money already who are joined by a second new set. In reality the fact that they are old creditors or new ones shouldn’t have mattered they are all in the same queue waiting to be told what they can be offered and be given the option to vote on whether the proposed amount should be accepted. However this wasn’t the case in reality and what happened was the newest creditors were given the power of the vote whilst the original set were not allowed to which is why the club has been sanctioned with a ten point’s deduction. The logic being that in the opinion of the Football League had the first set of creditors been given the right to vote, having seen the figure of 20p fall to just one pence in the pound, they’d most likely had changed their minds and voted against the proposal which would have ended in the club being liquidated and going out of business. So in reality by bypassing the system if you take your fans hat off and imagine it wasn’t your club and it was someone else’s you can say the punishment fits the crime and that actually that’s one they’ve gotten away with as daft as it sounds. Leeds United and AFC Bournemouth I believe and certainly in the case of Luton Town were all handed higher points’ deductions in the past by the Football league.

But here’s where the argument will come in and why people are calling the punishment unjust and unfair given the fact the club has already been given two points deductions which has ultimately played its part in being relegated each time. That argument is thus; The powers that be in the English Premier League and their footballing counterparts in the Football Association are the ones that sanctioned the very same owners that took Portsmouth FC into such a sorry mess and who then with their football creditors law let them stand back in the queue and wait to be paid in full potentially if the club avoids liquidation and to compound matters without any sanctions or punishments being laid at their doors. Yet the fans, the businesses and charities and government agencies like the HMRC are the ones who are punished because of the failings of two professional footballing bodies for not being able to do their job properly in the first place.

One of the principle checks of a fit and proper persons test would surely to look into the backgrounds of owners coming in to buy a club and to ask for proof of funds from where the club will be purchased. If it’s a loan from a bank than (unless your Notts County) you’d be pretty much safe to think that if they were able to get a bank to loan them the money then chances are if the banks are happy then they would be happy to. A few more backgrounds checks to prove any companies they own are making money would also be handy would it not? So in the case of Gaydamak the son of a known arms dealer who’s businesses aren’t making the sort of money to fund a football club comes knocking at the door, surely this could have been the point where alarm bells started to ring for the Premier League? But no he was allowed to take control of the club despite the national press clambering over each other to tell the tale of his father’s misdemeanours over the years some of them in football as well with Beitar Jerusalem. But no he was deemed fit and proper and allowed to join the queue as a football creditor and stand in line to take more money out of the club once everything had gone so horribly wrong.

So the English Premier League learned their lesson. Yet they didn’t and allowed the club to fall into the hands of one Dr Suliaman Al Fahim who we learned isn’t actually a doctor and is certainly not a wealthy Arab businessman despite being alluded to as the Saudi Arabian equivalent of Lord Sugar. His stint at the club unravelled very quickly when the promised fifty million inject into the club soon became apparent that it wasn’t going to materialise. An international warrant was put out for the arrest of SAF for matters which weren’t anything to do with the club. So did the Premier League learn this time? No let’s throw in an owner who might not have even existed and a convicted fraudster and well I guess if you’re reading this as a fan you already know the outcome; administration, docked points and relegation and the HMRC and small businesses and charities being left out of pocket because they play second fiddle  to the football creditors law. So the English Premier League failed to be held accountable for allowing a succession of owners being able to do such damage one football club. No heads rolled and they sort fit to hand out punishments upon the club after the culprits had left yet allowed some of them to still wait back in line unpunished for monies owed to them in full. Wonderful system isn’t it? Try telling that to anyone that stood to now only gain twenty pence in the pound on monies owed to them.

Fast forward to a new governing body this time in the shape of the Football Association who had gone on record as saying that given what had gone on at Portsmouth during their time in the Premier League they would do everything in their power to make sure the same mistakes couldn’t happen again. We were lead to believe that the FA were going to make sure Pompey could be given a chance to right their wrongs and start afresh new and not make the same mistakes. So surely having stated this intention the FA would get the fit and proper persons test right. Surely if the US car giant didn’t want to do business with a man like Vladimir Antonov then they wouldn’t let him run a football club would they? A man whose father had been gunned down in the streets sounds a good bet to run a football club doesn’t he? Yeah sure he does here you go sun stamped fit and proper go and run a football club, we won’t ask why you didn’t manage to take over at either AFC Bournemouth or Rangers before attempting to buy Pompey. We won’t ask why you weren’t allowed a licence to operate a bank in the UK. What we will do is pass you fit and proper. So surprise, surprise when an international warrant is made after the collapse of his bank by the Lithuanian government which leads to CSI going into administration and then Portsmouth again, no one is held accountable at the level at which the deal was allowed to be sanctioned and they are allowed to join the queue for their money back. No punishments had been handed out once again either and no heads have rolled yet further sanctions have been laid at the door of the club following on from the ten points that had seen us relegated into the third tier of English football last season.

The promises to keep an eye on spending never materialised. The Football League should have imposed strict embargoes on the club at the very start of the season last season not going into this to avoid any of this happening. They could have easily imposed what they are proposing now but they chose not to. All the warning signs were there but the FA chose to say that yes we think this man is fit and proper and when it’s proven that he wasn’t they don’t apologise for the fact or take it into account, they hand out further punishments on the club because they couldn’t do their job properly in the first instance.

Bloody marvellous isn’t it that two footballing bodies cannot be held accountable for their errors or even acknowledge them and can be allowed to hand out further punishments on the club. I’m not suggesting the club doesn’t deserve to be punished because we cannot hide from the truth of what’s happened but we can only marvel at the wondrous levels of hypocrisy being muted from behind the doors of two football associations.