Questions remain despite the fine

As the players, staff and fans of Queens Park Rangers rightfully celebrate their Championship victory, the club have also confirmed that the FA has fined them £875,000. This is as a result of the news the FA confirmed earlier today that the club have been found guilty of two of the seven charges aimed at QPR and their Chairman Gianni Paladini.

Thankfully, the Chairmen of both Swansea City and Cardiff City have both confirmed that they have no intention of appealing the decision which will allow the Championship play offs to go ahead as planned with no appeals process delaying the games.

This confirmation hints that the FA have made the correct decision as both clubs feel it is not worth pursuing the matter.

Two pertinent questions remain however. Number one, why did the FA release this information on the morning of the last day of the Championship, 45 minutes before kick off? Something dramatic must have happened between Friday afternoon (when the decision was meant to be announced but was delayed) and Saturday morning for the information to be released at this time. What or who forced the information out at this time?

And secondly, at what point will the FA announce what rules QPR have been found guilty of breaking? Will these be swept under the carpet on a day to break bad news?

 The importance of this is not to be underestimated as the regulations that the club broke (explored here last week http://www.footballfriendsonline.com/blogs/2011/5/1/what-to-do-with-a-problem-like-faurlin.html) have either been broken before by other clubs in the past and so have precedent when it comes to judgement or the charge of covering up the third-party ownership when it came to registering Faurlin which can be seen as the most important, has never been broken before so the ramifications are huge for the future.

The fact that the punishment QPR have received is a fine hints to me that the charges they have been found guilty of is related to third party ownership as this is the same punishment West Ham received for the Tevez & Mascherano affair.

Should this prove not to be the case, when the announcement of which charges QPR have been found guilty of comes around, the ramifications for the future is huge as it may lead to claims alleged at the FA of hypocrisy should precedent for rule breaking  not being followed.

We probably haven’t heard the end of this.

In other news, a story explored in this column a couple of weeks ago regarding Birmingham City and the possibility of their place in Europe being taken away from them has been resolved.

The issue came from an independent audit all Premier League clubs must take part in as a result of the Portsmouth situation last year. Birmingham’s auditor stated concerns about the ownership structure of the club and the club’s recent share activities.

The most recent one of these activities was a share release with a deadline of this month that was meant to raise £17.3 million. The share release appears to have made £3.63 million, dropping the club’s owner, Carson Yeung, stake in the club from 24.9% to 23.3%. Yeung put in an extra £4 million earlier this week but this would still appear to leave a £10 million hole in the finances aimed to be raised from the share release. Yeung also revealing the club’s debt stands at £27.7m.

The issue appears to have been resolved with the club being granted its licence to play in the Europe League but this observer wonders how a club’s ownership structure can appear clearer after the club’s owners % of the shares has dropped.

And finally, news from the south of Wales where Cardiff City and Swansea City are set to change the way in which Welsh clubs are governed.

Historically, Welsh clubs have been dealt with the FA of Wales when it came to both on field and off field regulation but this looks set to change with the two Championship sides looking to submit themselves to the powers of the FA.

The issue comes from the Welsh clubs playing in English competitions but falling under different disciplinary procedures and different regulations from their English club counterparts. This produces situations (such as earlier this year when a post-match incident occurred in the tunnel between Cardiff and Reading) where English clubs are disciplined faster due to the different processes of the FA and the FAW, thus punishing clubs in different manners.

The actual shape of the reform is yet to be confirmed but it looks as if a peculiar discrepancy in the discipline process in British football looks set to be rectified.