[LU] To Be Fair:...........

[Dr Michael Benjamin]

Hi
An article from the Guardian. It is not easy to find fault in it
Michael
=====================================================

And so after a year of acrimony, arbitration and appeal, Leeds United
have failed
to reclaim their missing 15
points<http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2008/may/01/leedsunited.leagueonefootball>.
The arbitration panel has spoken: there will be no recourse to the high
court, no giddy ascent to the European justice system. It all stops here.

The reinstatement of the docked points would have lifted Leeds above
Doncaster and into an automatic promotion place. Instead, Gary McAllister's
men will submit to the rigours of the play-offs.

And quite right, too. The decision of the panel to uphold the Football
League's censure of the club's financial management should be heartily
applauded. Not just by the chairmen of the other 71 Football League clubs
who have already voted overwhelmingly to sanction Leeds and then again to
uphold the original punishment. But also by anybody concerned with how
football is conducted in the leagues below the Premier, where financial
management is as much a part of success on the field as tactics and
training.

First, a recap. For anybody confused by the labyrinthine legal process,
here's how we arrived at today's verdict:

On May 4 last year Leeds called in the administrators and announced that the
club would be sold to a group of companies headed by Ken Bates. They were
immediately docked 10 points, ensuring relegation to League One, where they
were headed in any case.

After a summer of financial turmoil, the Football League granted Leeds
permission to play in League One this season, but only with an additional
15-point deduction. The penalty was a result of the club operating other
than under the Football League's well-established rules on insolvency while
a transfer of League membership was made to the legal entity (owner: Ken
Bates) to which the club now belonged.

Leeds immediately appealed. They lost. They appealed again, requesting the
high court arbitrate rather than the Football League. The basis of the
appeal was that a 15-point penalty was disproportionate to the offence.

In February this year they forced the issue by serving a high court writ on
the League. The League duly gave in to the request for an arbitration panel,
which would be composed of a representative from each side plus one
independent.

In April the panel confirmed it would make its decision by May 1, in order
to avoid complications with the League One play-offs. The issue at stake was
whether the club stood to gain unfairly from the way its administration was
managed; and also whether any divergence, however minor, from the League's
rules should be worthy of such heavy punishment. By inference, the answer is
yes on both accounts.

Still, some will conclude that this is all a rather shaggy legal issue:
bound up with due process and insolvency rules; and possibly with punishing
an occasionally unpopular club and a consistently unpopular owner.

This is far from the case. Above all this is a football issue. The rules on
going into administration are strict for a reason. This is much more than
just a balls-up by the bean counters. To clubs operating in the same league
going into administration amounts to a kind of betrayal, a queering of the
pitch, almost an act of sabotage.

On the morning that League Two Rotherham went into administration in March
this year, Brentford manager Andy Scott voiced the feelings of many when he
called for the club to be banned outright from promotion this season. "The
punishment for going into administration should be much more severe than
just 10 points," Scott said. "We drew 1-1 with Rotherham earlier in the
season and dropped two points against a team paying higher wages than they
can afford."

It's not just the points dropped either: it's what might have been in terms
of playing personnel in a division where budgets are worked out minutely.
Scott added: "They've signed players in the last year that we were after by
paying them higher wages - wages they couldn't actually afford. Those
players might be worth a lot more than 10 points. And they might have been
worth more to us. But they've still got them. It's the fault of the people
in charge, not Mark Robins and he'll be feeling just as cheated."

Leeds may have been a special case in some ways, what with the club's
extraordinary levels of debt, but the rules must be the same for all.
Competing in the Football League is as much about balancing a budget as
picking the right team and booting the ball into the net. And going into
administration is as much cheating - or incompetence - at an institutional
level as a handball or a foul are on the pitch.

Leeds may still go up this season. It's to their credit - and to the relief
of football as a whole - that if they do it will be through endeavour on the
field, not argument off it.


-- 
Dr Michael Benjamin,
Psychiatrist
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