Luton Lunacy

"It's like moving into the house of someone who has robbed a bank, being arrested for the crime yourself, being forced to plead guilty and then being sent to prison"

hatter 28 on the BBC 606 message boards

Luton Town are to start the new season with a staggering -30 points. They need 10 wins to have no points, and are almost certainly destined to be relegated (1/10 on with most bookies) from the football league because of it.

Having been docked 10 points last season for going into administration, the club were docked another 10 points last month for the start of this season, after being found guilty of paying agents via 3rd parties. A further 20 points have now been deducted because the club have "failed to satisfy the League's insolvency rules".

In just over 6 months the club have been docked 40 points.

Of course the Football League need to try and ensure that the clubs within it's leagues are capable of competing on equal grounds. It can be unfair for a club to go into administration and gain an intentional advantage because of bad management. But come on, Luton are obviously a club that have been in real trouble. A club that are soon to be taken over by a new consortium (LT2020) who have had nothing to do with the charges for which the club have been found guilty, they have in fact been open and honest with the footballing authorities and tried their damndest to prevent this from happening. Do they not deserve a chance to get the club back up off the floor again?

Football League chairman Brian Mawhinney believes the board had little option but to take a strong line with Luton.

"The board's primary responsibility is to protect the integrity of their competitions," said Mahwinney.

How can starting a team with -30 points protect the integrity of the competition? All that happens is the fans suffer, the club suffers even further and the Football League suffers because they are running competitions that contain teams which have little or no chance of being able to compete.

We are very fortunate in this country to have such a strong football pyramid - to most fans (of all clubs) the 90+ clubs in the top four divisions are essential to football in this country, it's our history, and our pride. Other countries do not have what we have in terms of depth in our lower leagues. That needs to be protected and quickly, because in the next few years we are going to see clubs going out of business left, right, and centre.

Luton Town, -30 points. No laws of the land have been broken and nobody is going to jail. Nobody currently at the club is being accused of anything. Who's being punished?