Thetownend.com

It would appear that STFC have been fined £5,000 for fielding a "weakened" team in the JPT last month.  11 changes not acceptable to the FL!!  And we still won!! :roll:

Probably why Sturrock has indicated that he will field a strong team vs. Cheltenham!

ridiculous fine

 They might have to wait a while for it to be paid.

It's a fucking disgrace that you have to put your best side out in a tin pot trophy!

It's ok for Premiership teams to do the same in the Carling Cup though.  :wanker:

that is stupid .. like you say we won the game and those other players needed a chance to show what they can do

Its not stupid at all.  It stated in the rules that teams were not allowed to put out a weakened side and we broke those rules!

We deserve that fine - problem is we probably can't pay it.

Yup - the rules were in place - the topic was discussed on the matchday thread.

Needless fine.

Waste of time. Hope the FL will be patient waiting for the money  :wink:

Such a bullshit rule, it's so subjective. How can anyone definitively determine who the strongest team is anyway? If we lose a match with our supposed "Strongest team" then make eleven changes because they all performed shite and our other eleven wins a match, who's the fuck to say which is the strongest team. Do you then take into account the opposition? and what team they had fielded? It's a ridiculous rule and one that in theory can be successfully appealed every single time. Especially when you win four fucking one.

Of course it is a stupid rule. It's not like we can choose to not play in the cup is it? I believe you should be allowed to choose whether you can play in a crappy cup if you have to have new rules forced on you.

Do you seriously think we should have to adhere to these rules, possibly jeopardising our season, because some cunt who runs the JPT says we should field a strong team for a completely nothing competition?

As someone else mentioned, the big guns do it for the Carling cup...

I personally think it is disgusting that teams in the lower leagues have to field strong teams in a cup with no prestige, no glamour and no ability to grab the fans imagination and get them excited with dreams of becoming JPT Trophy holders. It's not like the FA Cup?

To use a word owned by Rich, it's shit.

I'm not saying its a good rule, I think its crap too but you completely missed the point!

I'm just saying its stupid to moan when we broke rules that were blatently in place that we should have abided by!

What makes us different that we shouldn't have to abide by them?

Rules are there to be broken.  8)

To be fair, this is the only way it will become a respected competition.

But as has been said before, maybe they should have punnished the top flight clubs who totally devalued the FA and League cups. Course the real reason is their lawyers are too good.

Not at the cost of a fine they're not.  If we can't find 25k to pay Cheltenham where are we going to find another 5k to pay this?

Fucking pathetic if you ask me.

Well if the Swindon board swallowed their fucking pride and finally sold up then it wouldn't be a problem would it!

Ahhhh, I understand! - The ambiguity of the written word!

Yes, okay, if we break a rule - that we know is in place - we deserve the fine. I stand corrected.  :D

Doesn't surprise me tbh. We all knew we would get fined for it.

It's not subjective at all. There are clear rules about the definition of "strongest team" to make sure there was no subjectivity involved.

Although I think the fact we won 4-1 makes a bit of a mockery of it all  :D

As always,the beautiful voice of reason

Especially as Brentford were unbeaten in the league and fielded what looked to be a pretty much full strength team against us.

A 5K fine is totally out of order.

The 'fielding a weakened team' rule was brought in, I would imagine, for two reasons:

1) The Football League want clubs to take the competition seriously. Fair enough.

2) They don't want paying customers to be subjected to a farcical, meaningless game. Also fair enough.

The only problem here is that we won the game, if I remember correctly, by four (count them FOUR) goals to one.

This fact alone proves, surely, that we were A) Taking the game seriously, and B) The paying customers AKA the fans, were most definitely not subjected to a farcical, meningless game. I can't imagine too many Town fans were complaining after the game. Equally, any Brentford fans who bothered to go, would hardly have been venting their anger at STFC for short-changing them and blackening the name of such an esteemed competition. They might have been having a go at their own players but surely not STFC.

In other words, when dishing out fines like it was Monopoly money, the Football League should be considering points 1) and 2) above and not the starting XI which is the business of the manager and no one else.

To sum up. this fine is horse shit and makes the Football League look like a bunch of incompetent pricks.

FACT!

From what little I understand, the rule is written such that clubs should field a team of players that have started the majority of league games, rather than explicitly stating your 'strongest' team, which I agree is somewhat subjective.

Hence, we broke the 'rules', as ridiculous as they are. In this day and age, football is a squad game, and why shouldn't Sturrock use it as a mechanism to look at some of his fringe players in a competitive match scenario (as opposed to the reserves).

Flip side of the coin though is that this competition is realistically the only competition that a club like ours can reach a final, held at Wembley. As opposed to the Carling Cup or FA Cup where you may be lucky and get a run through to the third or fourth rounds. Potential big payday and day out for the fans. What would you rather have?

Your call.......

If the same team started tomorrow, would it still be classed as weakened?

Who exactly decides its a weakened team?

As I understand it (did I say that before), if it doesn't contain a certain % of players that have started the majority (pick a figure!) of league games, then you are breaking the rules. Or something like that! I can't recall the numbers though.

Do we HAVE to enter the competion?

What would happen if we didnt?

this is fucking stupid, who the fuck are the FA to decide whether our team was a weak one or not?

Sure we made the best part of 11 changes, but we have a big squad......

Sturrock has always said he wants 22 first team players, so in effect we just played the other half of our first team squad

....and we fucking won 4-1 for fuck sake!

it's a little harsh as we gave debuts to a lot of players who have figured regularly since, so an appeal against the fine might be worthwhile.