Leyton Orient have issued the following statement to "clarify" the incendary comments made by their manager, Martin Ling, yesterday which implied that Orient would themselves go to law if Leeds United won back their 15 points at the April tribunal and it subsequently affected Orient's potential promotion to the Championship:
"Following reports in some sections of Thursday's media, the club (Leyton Orient) can clarify its position as follows: Any quotes attributed to Martin Ling regarding the Leeds United arbitration case are personal and not those of Leyton Orient FC.
"Martin's comments were taken out of context and were not meant to reflect directly on Leyton Orient FC's position on the matter. This matter will be addressed directly with the newspaper first responsible for publishing his comments.
"Leyton Orient FC will be making no further comment on either the quotes attributed to Martin Ling or on the Leeds United arbitration case."
Pretty much says 'Leyton Orient will
not be doing what our manager says, and he will have a good kicking for being as silly as he was
Whether or not the points deduction was right or wrong it shouldn't be changed as it would throw the whole league in dispute, nobody wants promotion to be decided in the courtroom.
So if it was wrong Leeds should just suck it up?
It was disgusting the way it was handled and the league need to be brought to task, otherwise what's to stop them screwing someone else over? it's about time they were made to answer for their decision
What happens if the deduction is overturned and Leeds get pushed into an automatic promotion spot and the team who get pushed down into the playoffs get knocked out. Cue non stop legal battles that could continue well into next season, resulting in an absolute mess.
That would be a shame, but it would mean that the club that was 'pushed down' into the playoffs didn't deserve an automatic promotion spot. If they did they'd have enough points. The only team playing on an uneven keel is Leeds, through no fault of their own. That they were wrongly given a points deduction should neither be here nor there for the clubs around them.
Sometimes clubs get screwed over by the FA, it's not the first time and won't be the last, all you can do is bite your lip and get promotion the next year to prove them wrong.
No, the club should fight, as should any other club that gets screwed over, else it'll keep happening.
I agree.
Otherwise where would you draw the line for appeal decisions during a season?
Hypothetically a team could be 'mathematically' safe from relegation (or even guaranteed a play off place) with say 6 games to go. They may then decide to rest players, or experiment with some youth players - and then 2 weeks later they could find out that a team below them had had an earlier punishment overturned and that they were now facing the possibility of finishing further down the league than had earlier been 'mathematically' possible.
I know that this isn't the case in this situation, as the appeal should (?) be heard/decided before it gets too close to the end of the season.
But the league made a decision at the start of the season and IMO they have to stick with it. Overturning the decision mid-season would IMO bring the whole league setup into disrepute. Potentially you could have the Premiership 'champions' beaten on the final day of the season, by an overturned deduction to another team from earlier in the season.
If the league setup would be brought into disrepute the league themselves need to look at whether docking points is the way forward.
I find it difficult that someone is advocating the removal of points as a punishment with no right of appeal!
As i said, it could be a lot worse, at least you're playing/watching good quality football
To be fair, no we're not. We're playing League 1 football.
I think that the league need to have more foresight and understand that there will be more and more cases going through the courts. If they don't improve the way the handle the deduction/appeal process then I can see it won't be long before it becomes fairly common for relegation/promotion to effectively be decided in the courts.