Livingston lose appeal

Unless the club decide to take their case to a higher authority, it looks as if Livingston FC will have to accept their fate and resign themselves to live in the lowest tier of senior football in Scotland.

An SFA appeals panel, chaired by Lord McLean, upheld an earlier decision by the Scottish Football League management committee to relegate the West Lothian club for breach of league rules over insolvency, having been forced into administration after previous owner Angelo Massone had accumulated debts over over £1m. While the club are free to take their case to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, victory there seems unlikely.

Despite all the public mud-slinging we spoke about yesterday (link), the facts remain the same: Livi where bankrupt and in breach of league rules. Livingston must now give up pursuing lost causes and concentrate on getting themselves our of the Third Division.

Where I do have sympathy for Livingston - and for that matter any club relegated after getting into financial difficulties - is that the punishment does not fit the crime. I've never understood how relegating a club and depriving them of the sources of revenue (gate receipts, sponsorship, TV-rights etc.) is a sensible way of dealing with clubs who are in financial trouble.

Relegation does two things: firstly, it penalises the fans, who now have to trudge along to less attractive fixtures, which in turn results in lower attendance and lower gate receipts; and secondly, it penalises the club, who end up paying higher division wages to players playing in an league where income is restricted already.

Both of these penalties place more strain on the very source of a club's problems: finances.

A better solution - and one suggested in the case of Livingston, but rejected by the SFL - is a points penalty, which would allow the club to continue to play in the same league while efforts are made to stabilize or sell the club to new owners. An added benefit of keeping a team in the league is that it would prevent the disruption we saw with Livingston's demotion (and Gretna's the year before).

The main drawback of keeping a club in the same division is that it can take time to lead the club out of difficulty while a solution is found to the club's predicament. It's possible therefore that after weeks and months of trying, the administrator decides that the club cannot be saved.

Putting a club into administration is not a sporting issue of course, but a legal one, one designed to ensure that creditors are paid, while at the same time keeping the core business in existence. Only in cases where this was not possible, as for example with Gretna, will the club be wound up. When that happens, for example, 3 months into the season, the chaos it would cause is immense.

Clearly, how to deal with clubs in administration is not an easy problem to solve. Obviously, not letting clubs spend beyond their means (e.g. Dundee a few years back, Gretna not to long ago) is one possible solution, but the SFA or the SPL has no direct say in how a club, which is essentially a business like any other, is run at Board level - the football authorities can only act after the event, and even then their only available course of action is to penalise the clubs even further.

Solving the question of Scottish football's finances is a debate that will rumble on for many years, by which time several more clubs may well have gone out of business. Losing a club is not only devastating for the fans of the club, but also for the communities that the clubs take an active part in.

Something needs to be done, but relegating a club and placing it into even more difficulty is not the answer.