You will see no arguments from me about Reading receiving a points deduction. If you break the rules you have to deal with the consequences, and the Royals haven’t just broken the rules, they have obliterated them.
This has been coming for a considerable amount of time, given the club’s huge losses year after year. With the English Football League clamping down on profit and sustainability breaches in recent seasons, Reading’s violations were always going to catch up with them and you would have been naïve to think otherwise.
At present, talk of a points deduction is only coming from national media reports, with The Telegraph breaking the news last week that Reading are “locked in talks” with the EFL over a sanction and that these discussions are “at an advanced stage”.
The definite number of points set to be deducted remains unconfirmed, but is believed to be between six and nine. Unsurprisingly and understandably, no comment has been made by either the club or the league.
However, I hope that this is not something that stays in the rounds of rumour for too long. Reading deserve clarity from the EFL over exactly what their punishment is going to be and when they are going to receive it. Getting penalised is fair, prolonging the uncertainty is not.
Unfortunately, clarity doesn’t seem to be in the EFL’s vocabulary. Reading found that out this summer, as they sought insight from the governing body over exactly what business they could do in the transfer window while operating under an embargo. Veljko Paunovic and senior players spoke publicly on the matter, but it seems they were left uninformed for most of the summer.
In June, the EFL left both Derby County and Wycombe Wanderers in the dark over what division they would be playing in for the 2021-22 season when they published an “interchangeable fixture list” for the new campaign that featured options for if either club were in the Championship.
The reason being that the league were undecided on whether they would appeal an independent commission’s decision not to hand Derby a retrospective points deduction, which would have relegated the Rams to League One. They only confirmed that they would not be appealing, thus finally certifying both clubs’ league statuses, at the start of July, only a month before the start of the season.
I understand that these are not simple processes we’re talking about here, but clubs do not deserve to have their futures up in the air, no matter how badly they have wronged.
Everyone at Reading will be desperate for any points deduction to be applied as soon as possible as it would allow Paunovic to confidently plan for the rest of the season. The last thing we need is being in
March with the EFL still having not made their minds up. At that point it may threaten the club’s place in the Championship, as they could be in a position of not knowing how many points they will need to survive with an impending deduction hanging over their head.
It’s time for the league to start helping clubs, rather than making their lives more difficult.
By Olly Allen
