You Can Stick Your Premiership Up Your Arse - lower league football thread 2006-7

Still, at least BWP scored.

LOL

Ummm... yay?

And this IS the thread for talking about Juventus :)

also we get 3,000 at home easy ;)

also also: EXETER CITY 1 - FULHAM 0, chew on that, jimmy bullard

Anyway, the Dons got their second away win vs Conference opposition yesterday (damn you, Exeter City, for not letting us get a hat trick) - 2nd round of the FA Trophy, we beat 4th place Gravesend and Northfleet 1-0. Add that to the defeat of Aldershot in the previous round, and we've got a bit of momentum going...

http://www.confguide.com/cgi-bin/form.mpl?season=2006&where=all&num=6&submit=go

Weymouth need some sort of miracle to avoid going into free fall. Educated opinion seems to feel that G&N are in an inflated position and liable to falll away, while D&R will be lucky to find players to slot seamlessly into the spots of the two they're losing to the league.

Someone will go on a charge from now until the end of the season, and I haven't the foggiest who it will be. I don't really get that feeling from Oxford or Burton, I really hope it won't be Satanage, no-one wants to see that. Maybe York or Morecambe? There's an outside chance it'll be us, the team seems to be settling down into some kind of pattern and rhythm now our manager's been in for 6 months or so, but I'm not sure we have the strength in the middle to do it. I feel very hopeful that we'll finally make it into the play-off lottery.

Have any of you been keeping tabs on whether they're going to move to 3-up/3-down between the league and the conf anytime soon?

Their current position and Weymouth's both = aftermaths of the withdrawals of their respective non-league tinpot Abramoviches.

The FA has written a letter to Gravesend & Northfleet and to Rushden & Diamonds, with a copy to us, explaining the situation so that they can plan for all possible eventualities. Their letter says that there are three possible outcomes:

. The result stands
. The game is ordered to be replayed
. We are ejected from the competition and Gravesend and Northfleet are re-instated.

We will be making no further statement on this matter until the hearing is decided.

At a FA Trophy Sub-Committee meeting today, AFC Wimbledon were expelled from this season's competition after fielding an ineligible player in the Second Round Proper.

The club were charged on 19 January after Jermaine Darlington played in the tie against Gravesend & Northfleet on 13 January. Darlington had previously played for Cardiff City and had not obtained international clearance before representing AFC Wimbledon, as required by competition rules.

As a result, Gravesend & Northfleet have been reinstated into the competition and will receive the £5,000 prize fund payment from the Second Round Proper. They will now play Rushden & Diamonds on 3 February.

In addition, as Darlington also played in the previous FA Trophy ties against Eastleigh and Aldershot Town, AFC Wimbledon have been ordered to repay the prize money received from these rounds, totalling £7,000.

(Johnney B, what's going on? Is that 8 matches now without a win?)

No one could find it, and there was debate as to whether it existed, so this started up: Come anticipate the COCA COLA CHAMPIONSHIP, Leagues 1 & 2, Conference, Hellenic, Miverva Spartan etc. 2006/07 ! (but that didn't really get going either).

re: Wimbledon getting docked 18 points. Obviously this is a nightmare, but will it make any difference in terms of promotion / relegation? Last time I checked (which wasn't that recently, I'll confess) you were about 8th - would you have had much chance of going up? Will you be at risk of going down now or have you get enough 'legitimate' point racked up? I'm hoping you stay in the same place for another year as it looks like Harlow (who I used to watch when I was growing up) could get promoted into your division next season.

Yes, it's a kick in the teeth, but probably not the end of the world. I would guess AFCW take about £15,000 from each home game. I find it bizarre that the whole thing seems to come from an 'international' transfer from Wales.

Well, we're currently 7th, 2 points off the playoff spots with a game in hand, in our last game we defeated moneyed pacesetters Chelmsford 3-0 at their place, and we've beaten Conference opposition away in our last two trophy games (now, sadly, academic). So yes, promotion WAS a real possibility, though automatic promotion - i.e. finishing top - wasn't likely at all (we're 8 points behind Margate having played the same number of games).

As for relegation, it's pretty much not going to happen. A 19-point deduction would leave us 17th, 4 points above the relegation zone (but with fantastically better GD, unless they'd take that away too), and we're a class above pretty much all the teams in the bottom half of the league. So without meaning to sound cocky, we won't go down whatever happens.

As a result of these decisions, the Appeals Committee has deducted the eighteen points earned by AFC Wimbledon in the games in which Jermaine Darlington played whilst ineligible. The Committee has also fined the club £400 and the costs of the hearing. An appeal to the FA is allowed and must be lodged within 14 days.

The board of AFC Wimbledon is very disappointed with this outcome and intends to consider the options available to it. Until it has done so, there will be no further announcements.

Does this mean mid-table, Mark? There's no real danger of relegation is there?

The Conference is looking odd at the moment, D&R are doing really well, haplessly chased by a pack of about 10 clubs, none of whom seem particularly interested in putting a run together (except Kiddie, who were so dreadful earlier in the season).

I wasn't nearly so annoyed 3 weeks ago when we were in 11th and looking like staying there.

Ms McDonagh is angry that the FA do not allow a right of appeal in this case.

AFC Wimbledon have been docked 18 points, thrown out of the FA Trophy and forced to return prize money totalling £12,000. The punishment is because they signed left-back Jermaine Darlington from Cardiff City, and although they believed they had completed his registration correctly, they did not appear to realise that the transfer also required international clearance. The club does not deny that it made a mistake, but Ms McDonagh believes it was an honest (and understandable) mistake.

Ms McDonagh says:

"I think AFC Wimbledon fans have been very hard done by. The football authorities should never have allowed their club to move to Milton Keynes in the first place. The punishment the new fans' club has been given now would never have been given to a bigger club, and I want the Sports Minister to step in and stop them dishing out disproportionate punishments to small clubs. This puts an end to their promotion hopes for the season, and looks like wiping out most of this year's wages. They should think again."

She adds:

"The club certainly did not seek any advantage, and only discovered the mistake when the player was booked for the first time, after 11 League games. The stupid thing is that if he was a dirty player they would have learned their mistake earlier and faced a smaller punishment. The whole thing is unfair and the FA should treat Wimbledon's fans with as much respect as they would treat fans at big clubs."

(West Ham, Liverpool and Portsmouth have all been accused of signing or playing ineligible players this season)

bury were also offered an appeal, but it was BOUND to fail, but they were stupid and went ahead with it anyway. i'd imagine AFCW were in a similar spot but they have sensible lawyers who don't want to rip them off.

the FA would have 0 jurisdiction over penalties imposed by the league, in exactly the same way that they wouldn't if it happened to chelsea or liverpool, the leagues are self-regulating bodies...

i don't see how this is "dispropotionately affecting smaller clubs", the top flight clubs employ teams of people to stop this happening to them, nothing else...

the more i reread this the more i have NO FVCKING CLUE what she is on about, it's just random spouting...