You would have hoped that the EFL would have taken the fact that we had no income from gate receipts etc into account, however that didn't happen.
I don't think the gate receipts and other sales would have made a great deal of difference to Au Yeung, but it should have had an impact on the hearing result. The appeal was on the basis that covid had impacted our ability to meet our financial commitments, which at the time the appeal board ruled against, and yet that was clearly true. Whether the loss of that income would have seen us through to the end of the season is open to debate, but there clearly has been an impact. We would not have had to sell as many of our youth players to keep the club running for instance.
I think the EFL jumped the gun. I think that they should have approached the members of the board who were opposed to the administration and listened to their views before applying the 12 point deduction.
Having listened to them they would probably have come to the conclusion that the loan that Au Yeung/Choi were forcibly unloading on the club was the problem and as we all now know that loan has been removed from the process. Without that loan hanging over us the club could have been placed into administration and the EFL could have organised an emergency loan to see the club through to the season end avoiding the club becoming insolvent. There were plenty of assets that could have been sold off at the end of the season to repay that loan.
The whole problem was due to the structuring of the loan and the insistence of the majority shareholders to bail out, but I do think the EFL could have been more lenient.