A Pointless Penalty

A Pointless Penalty

Jamie Barnard on how the latest points deduction imposed upon Portsmouth is an injustice...

 

It was late April 2003 and irony was dripping from the walls deep down in the bowels of Leicester City’s Walkers Stadium. Chairmen of the Football League’s seventy-two clubs had just voted on a proposal to impose points deductions on clubs entering administration. Seventy-one had assented, one objector. To the host, and Leicester City Chairman, the solitary demurring hand belonged.

If the Football League’s Annual General Meeting was close to home, the subject matter was even closer. Just six months prior Leicester City had themselves been placed in administration, riddled with debt. Adjacent to the threshold those seventy-one other chairmen had crossed upon arrival at the Walkers Stadium, collection tins had found parity with those holding them; shaken, rattled.

For Leicester City fans an additional outlay to add to the match day expenditure; contributions to funds to save their club. A supporter’s trust sprung into existence. No points deductions, but plenty lost. The punch that administration packed was being felt on the terraces.

Fast forward nine years and the same scene has been played out at football grounds up and down the country, however on these stages a new protagonist now resides. The points deduction.

In the midst of what are crucial days for Portsmouth in the fight for their survival, the Football League dealt another blow to the club earlier this month with the announcement that they will begin their campaign in League One with a penalty of ten points. Pay up Pompey, Pompey pay up. But the cost to Portsmouth will be in points as well as pounds.

From Premiership to stricken ship in three seasons, right now Fratton Park bears the resemblance of a rudderless ship. Above the Pompey chimes, alarm bells sound loudest and with the Football League’s latest penalty there’s every chance that next May Day will bring with it another relegation for the two-time FA Cup winners.

Concluding a season with fewer points than those won on football pitches up and down the country stinks of familiarity for Pompey. A points deduction for financial reasons is no novel burden for the football club hailing from Charles Dickens’ city.  Deductions in both the Premier League and the Championship aided their relegation from each of English football’s top two tiers. Great Expectations dashed, Hard Times, Fratton Park a very, very Bleak House.

Relegation and insolvency have history when it comes to football clubs. And some would claim it’s vicious and circular. Relegation and the decreased revenue streams such a plunge brings has many times before been the catalyst for a club’s entering into administration.

Groundhog Day. Portsmouth Football Club is spiralling.

 With nails already in the Pompey coffin there are several parties vying to be the one to hammer the final one in place. The Football League appear to be one. Hope for Pompey came in the form of prospective buyers Portpin, and former owner Balram Chainrai, but administrator Trevor Birch has already admitted that sanctions, of which a points deduction was one, have left the prospective new owners ‘reeling’.

Another of the parties is a collective of eight current Portsmouth players who are refusing to renege on lucrative contracts. The principles, legality and morality of such a stance is no black and white issue, the consequences of this stance being maintained an extremely blue and white one, with specs of crimson.

There may well be valid reasons as to why these eight players should refuse proposals intended to save the club, but for supporters faced with the prospect of losing that club, understanding why Tal Ben Haim won’t surrender the final year of his reported £35,000 per week contract is, to put it simply, difficult.

The conflict between a contract given and contract earned thus becomes a bone of contention. But these are the contracts handed out by owners who arrived at Portsmouth long after that fateful day at the Walkers Stadium, long after the Football League began talking of ‘fit and proper’. Now washed, how fit and proper were the hands of those who once held Portsmouth Football Club?

Justified it would be that Portsmouth fans bemoaned the hypocrisy of a governing body which has imposed sanctions to supposedly solve ‘the problem’ of administration, whilst simultaneously failing to regulate the ‘fit and proper’ owners that have been allowed to get clubs such as Portsmouth into such difficulties. After all, these sanctions were born of the same era.

And the great intention of introducing the points deduction? Deterrence.

Back in 2003, chairman of the Football League Sir Brian Mawhinney, who proposed the points penalty, said: "My own view is that after this has been in a few years you'll see less clubs going into administration because they will see it as an incentive. I would expect the number of clubs going into administration to decrease."

Since then, over twenty football clubs have been in administration.

If there is one thing that English football should take from the Portsmouth fable, it is that the points deduction hits hardest in all of the wrong places. When the horse has bolted, when the villains have exited stage, the points deduction comes into its element. Righteous and noble, it preaches to the wrong crowd.

For what do fans, players and staff have to learn from misjudgements and mistakes made by powers beyond all of their control?

If, and hopefully when, Portsmouth kick off their League One campaign against neighbours AFC Bournemouth in mid-August, the supporters that used to pack the Fratton End so vociferously in better times will be the ones feeling the pointless points deduction. As Birch said when a further deduction was announced: “"The fans, players and staff have suffered enough for something for which they weren't responsible. We feel it is unjustified for the club to be punished further.”

The Football League has persevered with a sanction for nine years which has long proved unfit for purpose. Clearly no deterrent, a hindrance to clubs intentions of achieving financial stability by handicapping them to the degree that they often fall further down the footballing ladder, punishment for those clearing up the mess left by their predecessors.

Were there a vote taken on the issue now, there would surely be more than just the one lone objector. More empathetic hands would likely be raised; Pompey’s pain has been felt by others. Whether the hand belonging to Portsmouth Football Club would be seen as the votes were cast around the table is a different matter.

Pompey are on their knees.

Credit Tal Ben Haim photo 'the-e' via Flickr

Credit fans photo 'ca1951rr' via Flickr

Credit Fratton Park photo 'beefy_n1' via Flickr