Blackpool Supporters' Trust: Clubs' fates decided on and off the field

It is a testament to the passion and loyalty of supporters that all the away tickets for the derby defeat at Deepdale were snapped up very quickly. Whatever happens from here on in, the club will not lack for support.

It has, in truth, been a wretched season and with hindsight the impact of Neil Critchley’s surprise departure is all too clear.

Loyalty is a scarce commodity in professional football and we are sure the club has learned some hard lessons about how important contingency planning is. The season to date suggests we never recovered from that shock and thus find ourselves in a perilous position.

Our chances of escape are very hard to assess. The table suggests that a small group of clubs are becoming isolated at the bottom and that the number of clubs we can realistically finish above is very small. However, life in the EFL isn’t always what it seems and again points deductions are coming into play.

Wigan already know that is their fate – a three-point penalty was imposed, mainly due to persistent failure to pay staff wages on time. It makes their position a very difficult one and must be galling for supporters who have seen the players fight hard to stay in touch.

Reading fans have seen their team docked six points. Reading’s offences, on the face of it, seem quite technical as they are being punished for failing to adhere to a business plan agreed with the EFL.

They have been operating under a suspended points penalty as it is. It is difficult to feel much sympathy for those who own the club – their recent track record in terms of Financial Fair Play and cost control in general is abysmal – but it is the fans who could really suffer.

The final team to mention here is Huddersfield. The big uncertainty for them is whether the owner decides to put them into administration, though their survival hopes have been boosted by back-to-back wins.

This is the fifth season in a row that at least one club has had points deducted. In the last three, that deduction has made the difference between survival and relegation.

It is possible that for a fourth season in a row, a relegation place will be decided not on the field of play but in a disciplinary hearing at the EFL.

It is not hard to see why clubs get into this position. The financial gap between the EPL and the EFL is enormous and the perceived incentives for winning promotion have proved too much for some owners to resist.

Thus we see club after club mortgaging their future in the hope of buying success. The irony is that the vast majority of clubs who do reach the EPL find it almost impossible to make a profit there either and the consequences of being relegated back into the EFL can be grim.

A club of Blackpool’s modest size, with our historical levels of support, is bound to find the Championship a very, very difficult environment to survive in.

That is not to say it can’t be done. In recent seasons, we have seen smaller clubs like Brentford and Luton Town flourish. But they do so mainly because they attach huge importance to good recruitment, good use of data and enlightened approaches to coaching and tactics.

That kind of infrastructural investment can be vital and offer the edge that a club like ours needs. We know our club understands this all too well.

At national level, we have seen the football White Paper published and the work to create a new regulator via legislation is underway, albeit getting Parliamentary time to introduce it will be the next big challenge.

At BST our main focus is on Blackpool fans, our club and our community. They are the three pillars upon which all our work rests but the introduction of better, fairer rules dictating how the sport is run nationally is undoubtedly very important for us and the club we support.

We will, like every club, need to live up to some new standards in the way our club is managed. But we are likely to get a more even playing field in terms of financial resources. It’s a prize worth fighting for and a fight BST is very much up for.

To learn more about BST, get involved with our work or simply offer ideas about what we could usefully do, you can contact us on [email protected]