Leicester are a warning of what can go wrong for clubs on limit of budget | Jonathan Wilson

If financial regulations have been breached, it is only right that punishment follows but once a sport stops being decided on the pitch it is in trouble

“We want to move to a new system that people have confidence in and can comply with,” the Premier League’s chief executive, Richard Masters, said this past week, “and move away perhaps from normalising asterisks against league tables or long-running regulatory cases.”

That is surely right. That doesn’t mean a free-for-all or a return to the days of unregulated spending, but any competition is undermined if it becomes common practice for points won one week to be taken away by a committee the next. There appears a serious possibility of at least four clubs being docked points this season. Once a sport stops being decided on the pitch, it is in trouble.

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