Thetownend.com

I see that the FL chairman is to step down in March, he has been a relative success I suppose if a tad contraversial (sp ?) introducing the 10 point penalty for going into admin but I suppose he also introduced the fit and proper person test (although it needs to be tougher)

It will be interesting to see who his replacement will be though as I suspect they will have job on with the premiershit likely to be pushing for a Prem 1 & 2 in the future and then toughing up the fit and proper person test so the likes of Ken Bates cannot escape.

The fit and proper persons test is FL window dressing for PR consumption, nothing more. If Mawhinney wants some plaudits for it, he should close the loopholes you could currently drive a coach and horses through and maybe try actually enforcing it before he leaves in March. But as it's not designed to actually make football clubs more stable, just to make the FL look like responsible regulators without them actually having to be so, he won't.

The F&PP test is apparently different for the PL, the FL and the Conference,so they need one which is a uniform one, and as Paul D says, to out out all the loopholes, including naming and shaming all owners, so you don't get a Notts County/Leeds scenario.

How about one which also prevents serial bankrupts from running a club? Or one which looks at who actually runs a club (ie shadow directors) instead of looking at puppets named as directors? Or checking that self-declared billionaire new owners aren't just lying about it? And how about checking if people are suitable to run a football club before they actually start doing so? etc etc etc

Well said Paul.I had been hoping this week that we'd have seen Mawhinney showing some leadership
on behalf of the FL Clubs, with regard to Garside's proposals.As usual there was a deafening silence!

Fully agree Paul, as proved by what is happening at Chester with Stephen Vaughan, who has just been banned from being a director for 11 years but is still apparently running Chester into the ground.

Oops wrong thread.

Or indeed what happened at Swindon where a disqualified director was apparently allowed to act as "General Manager" for many years with similarly detrimental results

I think that under him the Football League have attempted to distance its top tier from the other 2 leagues.

But overrall you'd have to say he's done a good job.

I don't think fans of Luton, Bournemouth, Rotherham would agree with you. And nor would I. The two major things he's credited with are upping the penalties for going into administration and the fit and proper persons test. The first has usually punished the wrong people and excessively so. The second is so full of holes you could drive a Formula 1 car through it and on the few rare occasions where it could have been applied he (and the Football League) have completely bottled it. Briatore, Bates and whoever-the-fuck-it-actually-is-at-Notts-County are all still in place and laughing their tits off at Mawhinney's regulations. It's window dressing, it's all it was ever supposed to be and the abject failure to enforce it has shown it up for that.

So no, I don't think you'd have to say he's done a good job - he's punished people who don't deserve it (and excessively harshly at that) and when tested on his regulatory bluster has shown himself to be all piss and wind. That said, we'll probably end up looking back on his time in charge with nostalgia not because he was any good, but because we'll get some even more useless next.

MaWhinney has been the best chairman of the FL for many years, but that says more about the succession of morons that preceded him than anything.

The one thing I would give him credit for is making the agents fees transparent in the FL, other than that its all been headlines and no substance.

The whole points deduction thing has been a farce from the start. There was a huge and obvious loop-hole right from the start in that clubs could choose to go into admin at a time when the points deduction wouldnt hurt them.

A good chairman would have realised that and closed the loop-hole, instead of which he decided to hit Leeds with a second penalty, with the knock on effect that to be consistent they handed out equally harsh and undererved punishments to Luton etc

... and as the Stockport case from last season shows, the loop-hole still isnt closed even now!

Personally I think that whilst the point you make is correct, your exampes are way off the mark. Leeds weren't hit with a second penalty just because the first one didn't affect them - they broke more rules and the FL were actually quite lenient in letting them compete at all. And as much as Luton's punishment was huge, and undeserved from the point of the fans, it was nothing to do with being consistent after the Leeds saga. Since when have English football authorities given a toss about consistency?

I dont remember any discussion about punishing clubs for not agreeing a CVA prior to the Leeds case. It was only after they had effectively dodged the 10 point deduction that the rule was brought in. Maybe that was just a coincidence but I dont think so.

Once they had set that precedent, any other clubs that were unable to agree a CVA were bound to suffer similar punishments.

IIRC, 10 pts of Luton's punishment was from the FA not the FL, they got deducted 20 by the League, then two separate lots of deductions totalling 10 from the FA. But the point was the club got hammered for what the old board had done while the old board walked away laughing

I see the favorite to take over is ex Arsenal CEO Dein - remember him who wanted tyo take over Arsenal with that russian billionaire - not sure he'd be the right person with such close ties to the premiership

Arguably could make him better suited, as he'd probably be in a better position to pull in some favours from Prem chairmen and/or actually have some sway with them as opposed to some ex-politico.