Luton suffer severe points deduction

Reporter: Jan Harwood
Date online: 11/07/2008

Rochdale's fellow League Two side Luton Town will start the coming season on minus 30 points. The decision is likely to relegate the Hatters into non-league football, as they would require around 80 points to stay in the League.

The club had already been docked ten points for financial irregularities relating to previous transfers and the league have now added a further 20 point penalty because Luton came out of administration without a Company Voluntary Arrangement (CVA).

A Football League statement read: "Luton Town were unable to agree a CVA with their creditors and as a consequence are unable to satisfy the normal conditions of the League's insolvency policy for exiting administration.

"The board decided, however, that they were prepared to exercise their absolute discretion under their 'exceptional circumstances' provisions in order to accommodate the new entity.

"In accordance with recent precedent, the board decided to include the following principle conditions of entry as a pre-requisite to the exercise of that discretion.

"1) The new company (Luton Town 2020) should pay the unsecured creditors the amount offered at the time of the CVA hearing (16 pence in the pound).

"2) A 20-point deduction should apply in the 2008-09 season, which also takes into account the fact that this is the club's third insolvency event in the last 10 years."

Luton's only real hope of survival will come if Rotherham and Bournemouth are still in administration when the season starts as that would see them also start the campaign in negative figures.