Locked Stocks and two Smoking Bramells

(Contributed by fellow mordant.org outcast L Martillo)

Anyone who has ever been involved in financial negotiations will know that you don’t start with your bottom line; a reasonable rule of thumb says "double it and then negotiate". So to agree to pay Sheffield United about half of the ridiculously inflated figure they asked for, seems to me to be tantamount to wandering down to the village green and restraining ourselves in the stocks, the medieval throne of public humiliation. Assaulted with a barrage of rotten tomatoes, or compensation claims as we call them these days, there seems little leeway to say anything other than, "It’s a fair cop – we’re guilty – punish us."

Had we negotiated an out of court settlement early on in this dispute, it is unlikely that the Premier League would have ordered a further enquiry and the whole business, though costly, would have been forgotten by now. If we had argued our corner at the hearing convened to adjudicate on compensation, we would probably have been no more financially inconvenienced than we have been but would at least still have been able to say the decision was unjust and we had been unfairly treated.

But what happens now? Sitting there like the aftermath of a comic relief red nose day fundraiser, I fear we may have left ourselves open to be hit with the cruelest punishment of all; a hefty points deduction that would be a bitter pillory to swallow.

"Remove our boots and beat our naked soles" in the words of Bastinado.