Crime & Punishment

Would appear to be the theme of the week so far. First we have the surprise announcement that Crystal Palace have been put in Administration. The penalty for this was duly imposed by the Football League today as the Eagles were landed within three points of a relegation place. The timing of this was very hard to understand with Palace having a potentially lucrative F A Cup tie at home to Wolves next week, although rumours of £30m of debt may have made it a simple necessity with a court visit scheduled for yesterday to hear a winding-up petition from HMRC. I suspect this story is far from done and that they may not come out of it nearly as quickly as other sides or in anything like the rude health that Southampton appear to be in. Simon Jordan has been keeping an unusually low profile so far but he looks heavily committed to much of the debt, so it will be interesting to see how far the Administrators go. The fact that Jordan was apparently "furious" that Agilo called in the liquidators may indicate that he's not out of the woods on this yet.

We then had the latest instalment of stupidity in the long-running career of Rio Ferdinand. The Football Association found him guilty of being a frivolous individual and his appeal against the standard three match ban for being such was increased to four. He was reminded by the panel that throwing a punch at a Championship player whilst coasting to a 4-0 win was completely unnecessary, even for a man with obvious learning difficulties.

The third crime, is currently awaiting punishment. The people running Portsmouth Football Club should take a long hard look at themselves in the mirror and if they don't believe they are part of the problem, they should do the honourable thing and resign to heap the responsibility where it it lies. They are all going to be out of work soon enough, so why not go now with some dignity. The latest chapter in the farce saw their web-site shut down because the people running it had not been paid. I am guessing that wasn't a fantastic sum of money (because it was paid today) but it shows you how desperate things are down there at the moment.

Chief Executive, Peter Storrie, is already facing criminal charges but this evening is openly pointing at a split within the club as they prepare to offload Younis Kaboul to Spurs, presumably to meet this months wage bill. The only surprise in this is that Spurs are rumoured to be prepared to pay £11m for him which I find astonishing given Pompey's plight. They are £60m in debt and their anonymous Arab owner has yet to make an appearance and doesn't look like he has the money to solve their problems. They too face a winding up order by HMRC a week on Wednesday and with relegation beckoning, it looks like just a matter of timing before they follow Palace and take the ten point penalty. Before long I can see them being back where they spent most of the last 50 years , in the third division.

Let's all get behind the team on Saturday and cheer them on to three vital points and a small step nearer avoiding a similar punishment of our own.