The FA Cup ruling

Whilst I agree with the principal of your post, I think on this occasion his post could be viewed as useful as it offers a potential explanation in that if that role has changed or recently stopped it could go someway to explain how somethings may have been dropped in error.

 

When this first happened I thought well rules are rules. However, the FA's own rule as someone helpfully stated above states:
may remove the club from the Competition, and may impose further penalties against the club."
"May" is the operative word here. Not "Must" or even "should". I now think its two things at play here:
1. Incompetence from the club
2. The FA wanting to make the cup more interesting, hence Liverpool get a fine, they need the big boys in it. We get thrown out to keep a non-league/romance of the Cup type team in it. It's also better to keep the really little boys in it.
Then, not sure if its a third point or a continuation of the first point, we don't put up any kind of fight. You could after all be forgiven for thinking we weren't that bothered about it in the first place. If Liverpool had been kicked out you can imagine their lawyers arguing:
Didn't affect the result, showed no bad faith, we weren't trying to gain an unfair advantage, he wasn't cup tied, we are trying to help smaller clubs and develop potential by making loans, previous good character yada yada

 

I know you say it didn't affect the result but didn't he set up one of the goals?

 

I think if the club appealed for it, they would probably change it to a fine. Could be wrong, but I'd be surprised if not. Think a fine is probably worse for the club overall though, as much as I hate to say it

 

He did. But we won by more than that margin and he didn't swing the result. He was our player in the first place and if the club had sent the FA some documents three days earlier there would have been no issues. It's not playing him that's the issue, it's not filing some paperwork. You could argue if we'd started with Cosgrove or watters cos marsh wasn't available we'd have scored more.

 

Scored more with Cosgrove and Watters with their record?

 

I know, but against 7th tier opposition, especially when you think March was on loan at York and wasn't getting played