Sheffield Wednesday journalist Dom Howson has been sharing his thoughts on a potential appeal from the club regarding their recent 12-point deduction.
This comes after Howson recently made an appearance on Singing The Blues, a Wednesday-themed podcast, to discuss the latest news surrounding the club.
On the topic of the points deduction, Howson was asked if he expects the Owls to make an appeal against this decision to which he shared his thoughts on the situation.
He said: “You would’ve thought so, but then I suppose the counter-argument is the legal costs that Wednesday will have already forked out to get to this position, and they’ve won two out of the three legal battles but they’ve still ended up with a 12-point deduction, so do Wednesday weigh it up and go ‘we’re going to take our medicine here, take the hit, move on, draw a line under it’, or do you want to drag it on longer and it will actually then be going into the start of next season? When, let’s face it, the focus right now, a lot of it has to seriously be on rebuilding a very threadbare squad lacking in strength and depth and quality in a number of positions.”
Should the club appeal this points deduction?
Yes
No
It was revealed at the end of July that Wednesday have been ‘deducted 12 points by an independent disciplinary panel for the 2020/21 season for breaking spending rules.’
Specifically, the club ‘breached rules by including the sale of their Hillsborough Stadium home in their 2017-18 accounts despite the ground being sold a year later.’
Wednesday ended the 2019/20 Championship season in 16th place on the league table on 56 points, underneath Reading and Stoke City on goal difference.
TIF Thoughts…
Maybe the best thing for Wednesday to do now would be to not appeal this deduction and risk potentially losing money on it, and instead, just accept the decision and use what funds they have to improve their squad, as Howson suggested. If they focus on improving the squad for next season and end up finishing the 2020/21 campaign clear of the relegation places, the points deduction would not be an issue by then.