Thursday’s Football League board meeting was billed as D-Day for QPR and owner Flavio Briatore. In the end, predictably, there was more fudge on show than you get in a Thornton’s gift shop.

Who are you to brand others not fit and proper?
While I’ve often found myself typing ‘don’t feel sorry for anybody in football, because nobody will ever feel sorry for you’ in articles for LFW it is hard not to feel a little pang of sympathy and frustration on behalf of Bournemouth at the moment. Financially mismanaged by a host of owners over a number of seasons the Cherries, under new ownership and the guidance of the league’s youngest manager Eddie Howe, really seem to be getting it together this season.

They lost 2-1 at home to Chesterfield on Saturday but remain top of League Two with 25 points from 12 games played. This achievement is all the more remarkable because they are currently operating under a transfer embargo and are unable to sign players – they have a squad of 19 that is heavily beset by injuries and have been unable to field a full compliment of seven substitutes for seven games, at Port Vale last week they had just three on the bench. Attempts to sign former Portsmouth midfielder Steve Lovell, who once spent a week on loan at QPR without ever playing a game if you’re setting a pub quiz this week by the way, this week were flatly refused by the league despite Lovell offering to play for free and Bournemouth saying they are having to play young professionals while injured just to field a full eleven each week.

In 2008 the league docked Bournemouth ten points for going into administration and they were subsequently relegated from League One. The following season they were docked a further 17 points for still being in administration but managed to survive relegation to the Conference. Now they are being punished again with this embargo until all football creditors are paid because the league says Bournemouth accumulated a further million pounds worth of debt last season when they should have been living within their means. You could point out that it would have been a lot easier for the Cherries to live within their means, spend less on wages, not frantically sack managers etc had they not had to overcome a 17 point deduction to maintain their league status but the league would probably just shrug its collective shoulders at you. They even had a bash at excluding them from the FA Cup this season because the son of new owner Eddie Mitchell, a man determined to run Bournemouth within its means and pay the creditors just as the league wants, is involved at non-league Dorchester Town and there could be a conflict of interest. I have sat through some laborious and pointless council planning board meetings in my time but I have a feeling taking the minutes at the Football League’s monthly board meeting may try even my patience.

You see this is one thing the Football League under the guidance of Chairman Brian Mawhinney is really, really good at; finding a little club on its knees and giving it a bloody good kicking. One of the reasons Bournemouth survived last season despite the deduction was because Luton started off in an even worse position than them – minus 30 points. That was for offences committed by a previous board, and Luton had already been punished once with a ten point deduction that relegated them from League One but, hey, why only punish them once when you can kick them again and again and again. At QPR we struggled to stifle a giggle at all that after years of running the gauntlet of spit and bile, overzealous policing, away fan bans and all round unpleasantness at Kenilworth Road. In truth though, in the cold light of day, even most QPR fans would concede that deducting 40 points from a competitive League One club over the course of two seasons condemning them to non-league football for offences committed by a couple of board members no longer with the club is a little bit harsh from an organisation that apparently aims to safeguard its members interests.

Like I say, it’s what the league does really, really well.

What it does not do quite so well is tackle the bigger issues, or perhaps I should rephrase that as the people with bigger wallets. The board, chaired by Mawhinney and including Derby County chairman Adam Pearson who presumably doesn’t believe his club should be punished for the fraud committed by his predecessors at Pride Park in quite the same way Luton were because, well, just because, met on Thursday with the media focussing on three key aspects of the agenda. Firstly should the league ratify the takeover of Notts County despite fans of the club, the management and apparently the league as well not even knowing who it is that is taking them over and throwing money around all over the place, lumbering the club with people like Kasper Schmeichel, Sol Campbell and Sven Goran Eriksson whose wages would cripple County in less than a week should the owners, whoever they are, get bored and leave?

Secondly, five years after Ken Bates took over at Leeds who exactly owns the club is unclear after it was revealed that Bates made a mistake when he told a court in Jersey in January that he owned shares in the Leeds holding company Forward Sports Fund that is registered in the Caymen Islands. Bates, who was allowed to stay on despite failing the fit and proper person test for taking more than one company into administration and then having creditors write off £18m worth of debt on the proviso that he stayed in charge of the club, wrote to the court earlier this year saying in fact he is not involved with the Forward Sports Fund and doesn't actually know who is.

And thirdly whether our own Flavio Briatore now fails the league’s ‘fit and proper’ person test for club owners after being banned from F1 for his part in the ‘crashgate’ scandal at last year’s Singapore Grand Prix. This would appear, according to the press at least, to be the most clear cut of the three cases they had to deal with as firstly at least the league knows who the QPR owner is as opposed to the smoke and mirror routines being pulled at Meadow Lane and Elland Road and secondly the test does quite clearly state that people banned by other sports should not be allowed to continue as football club owners. It is of course much easier to apply a fit and proper person test when you know who you're applying it to, so the QPR case appeared to be the most cut and dried of the three prior to the meeting.

I would presume that when putting the test together the league had in mind a desire to prevent people who have defrauded or asset stripped clubs and teams in other sports coming into football and doing the same. I very much doubt they really see a need to stop somebody who puts weights in the front of a bobsled to make it go faster, or orders his F1 driver to crash into a wall so his team mate can win a race in Singapore, owning a football club. Because there is none.

Don’t give me all that gumph about Briatore risking Piquet Jnr’s life in that incident because I’m not having that– there are crashes every single week in F1, there are crashes every single day on the bloody M1, and yes people die and it’s dangerous stuff but the fact that Piquet not only didn’t say no to the idea, but then held it as some sort of bargaining tool or bribe against his team for a year rather than refusing to do it to start with or blowing the whistle straight afterwards tells me all I need to know about any potential threat to Piquet’s life.

Nevertheless Briatore is banned from F1 now, and therefore clearly fails the test. The league however emerged from five hours of deliberations on Thursday saying, basically, that Notts County had written to them and that was very nice of them, the league would be writing to Leeds United on the theme of “come on Ken you wily old goat what’s going on here?”, and Flavio would be invited down to the league headquarters at some point in the future for a bit of a chat about his ban. This was after taking legal advice apparently, which I would think at some point probably included the mention of just how messy and expensive it could be for the league should they actually try and remove Briatore from his position as QPR owner whether he fails their little test or not.

Whenever a football rule is challenged in court, and I’m thinking of Bosman and Webster among others here, it is always shown to be unlawful. My employer cannot sell me to another newspaper for £1m, and I can walk out of my job with four weeks notice – the whole idea of football transfers flout European employment law and whenever challenged by disgruntled players that is proven. Should Flavio go all the way in the courts with the league to prove that they cannot make him forfeit his business ownership just because he had a hand in a crash in a big game of Scalextric I am sure he would win, and the league’s fit and proper person test would be shown up for the farce that it is.

The league could of course simply prevent QPR from taking part in any of its competitions while Briatore is in charge leaving the Italian owning a football club with no football matches to play. But then how would that fit with its idea of safeguarding its members’ interests? And would it have the stomach (or the pockets) for that fight? I’m reminded of the assertion by Ricky Gervais in his stand up show that a daddy-long-legs contains the most deadly poison known to man but has no way of administering it because it doesn’t have any teeth. Flavio fails the test, quite clearly, he’s banned by the administration of another sport, but the league’s statement on Thursday had more fudge in it than the death by chocolate cake at the Crosspool Tavern’s Sunday carvery. Five hours they sat there and “we’re going to write them all a strongly worded letter” was what they came up with.

“The Board conducted a comprehensive review of the situation, including the receipt of advice from leading counsel. After considering all the information presently available to it and in the interest of due process, the board will seek responses from Mr Briatore before commenting further.” – Would you like cream with that? FL Statement on Thursday

I maintain that this will all blow over and Briatore will continue as QPR owner. At the moment the media have Flavio somewhere between Hitler and Harold Shipman on their scale of evil and they are going for his throat at every possible opportunity. When even experienced, respected and talented journalists are reporting that Briatore was sure to be kicked out of QPR on Thursday without any kind of hearing, any opportunity to put his side across, any legal proceedings, it’s clear that judgement is becoming clouded. I also maintain that is unfair for QPR to be punished for an offence committed in another sport – how ridiculous is it that a man can sack managers, allegedly interfere with team selections, force signings on managers, apparently order substitutions from the other wise of the world and so on and still be a fit football club owner but when he orders a bit of a prang in a car race the world bays for the book to be thrown in his leathery direction.

And incidentally, how ridiculous also that while Flavio apparently fails the fit and proper person test despite his relatively minor indiscretion, Lackshmi Mittal a man who many QPR fans including myself would like to see buy Briatore out would pass it despite a somewhat chequered past that is worth researching, even if it’s just through Wikipedia, when you have a spare moment. Not many deliberate car crashes in there admittedly, but some dodgy stuff all the same.

Still, I’m sure there’ll be a much more manageable Port Vale/Chesterfield/Carlisle United sized disaster for the league to wade into with steel toe caps shortly. All this attempted regulation of billionaires is too much like hard work.

Gerr’orf
It was a relief to hear assistant manager John Gorman commit his future to QPR over the weekend amid speculation linking him with the vacant manager’s position at Wycombe. While dead against the appointment of Jim Magilton during the summer I was delighted to see Gorman follow him into Loftus Road and think that, as a pair, they are doing excellent things for Rangers this season.

Gorman has always achieved great results as a coach, assistant manager, and manager until his personal circumstances halted his progress at Wycombe. This is a man who has been the assistant manager in the England set up. He seems like a thoughtful, tactically aware man who perhaps just lacks that aggression and ruthless edge to go on and be a top manager. Jim Magilton on the other hand seems to be from the Ian Holloway school of shout now ask questions later basing his managerial style around motivation and man management. Just as Holloway benefitted from having Kenny Jackett alongside him, so Magilton seems to improve when he manages alongside Gorman – certainly the Ipswich fans believe their side improved when Magilton was joined by Gorman.

As he did with another flawed manager Glenn Hoddle it seems Gorman is the ideal man to complement a strong personality in the number one spot. It would not surprise me at all if while Magilton was lambasting his players and naming names after the Accrington cup match, that Gorman wasn’t somewhere downstairs putting his arm around a few shoulders and giving hints and tips on how to improve the little things to make the overall picture a better one.

As I said in a recent match preview I’m certainly not going to sit here and apologise to Magilton for the things I said about him when he was appointed, because the sudden improvements we have seen recently could disappear just as quickly as they appeared in the first place should either Watson or Rowlands miss out for prolonged periods. Preston at home on Saturday will be monumentally difficult without either of them and I’d take a draw in that game if you offered me it now.

However we are undoubtedly playing well, we are good to watch, and we are not losing very often. That must be down to Magilton and Gorman more than anybody else and they are a double act that we must keep together.

Photo: Action Images

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