Financial fair play rules are not perfect but clubs need protecting from themselves

As yorkshirepost recent report, Sixteen minutes into Reading’s League One match against Port Vale, home supporters invaded and refused to leave until the game was abandoned.informationguidenigeria

Illegal pitch invasions are something the Football League have rightly been hot on since the week more than 18 months ago which saw Sheffield United’s Billy Sharp assaulted by a Nottingham Forest fan and some unsavoury scenes after Huddersfield Town’s play-off semi-final against Luton Town.

So for the League’s statement to target the man Royals fans were protesting about rather than their actions was telling.

Reading’s fans came on because they are at their wit’s end with owner Dai Yongge, who has failed to meet his financial obligations for the last four months, threatening the existence of what this time last year was a Championship club and what is likely to be a League Two one come August if they get through this.

The League are just as frustrated with a man they tried and failed to have banned from football for 12 months late last year. That they had to ask an independent commission and were refused is infuriating.JAMB Portal

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They have deducted 16 points from Reading – hence the timing of the protest – since late 2021 for first ridiculous over-spending, then a failure to abide by the business plan agreed with the League as a result. Dai seems to have lost interest in running a football club properly, but to be in no hurry to sell it to someone who would. The issue so often in these cases is in tribalist football it is someone else’s problem. It could easily not be.

Dai and his brother Dai Xiu Li tried to buy Hull City in 2016 but when they failed the Premier League’s fit and proper person’s test, turned to Championship Reading a year later. What a lucky escape for the Tigers, now owned by a rich and engaged businessmen in Acun Ilicali.JAMB Result

Now Ilicali is pushing up against the limits of what Hull can spend to get out of the second tier. Up against, but not over, as Everton and Nottingham Forest have accepted they did in the Premier League, where the boundaries are different.NYSC Portal

Financial fair play under all its different names is far from perfect, and the rules still need tweaking. At times it feels more about protecting the status quo from new money but its job of protecting clubs from overstretching is crucial.

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