Welcome everybody to soccer 101. My name is Taylor Rockwell, and this week we're discussing a topic that will have Everton supporters feeling angry and Manchester City board members calling their lawyers its points deductions. What are they? How long have they been around? Who enforces them? And much, much more. Here to talk about that is a man who will never get a points deduction on this program. It's Graham Ruffin. Hello, Graham. Hello, Taylor Rockwell. Yeah, I hope I'll never get a points deduction, because that'll essentially mean either I've been excessively violent,

or I've entered administration, and neither of those things feel kind of in character for me.

They don't. And then I think also, in terms of the podcast, it would mean you're starting,

what, like 10 seconds before me?

So then we're just going to be out of sync and it's not going to be good audience. Well, sometimes that happens with Joe and his lag and his feed.

Which deserves the points deduction in and of itself.

Graham, let's start with the very basics.

What is a points deduction for people who are new to the idea?

Yeah, so first of all, obviously we try to keep Soccer 101 Evergreen, but there is an unavoidable

news hook with this one because of the 10-point deduction handed to Everton recently.

It feels like that won't be the last points deduction handed out, either in the Premier League

or around Europe in the coming seasons.

We had UV get a points deduction last season

as well. So this episode will be evergreen in that sense. And that's a bit of a depressing

thought that we're at the start of an era of soccer where it feels like this sort of thing is

going to become increasingly common. Sort of weirdly, points deduction is a term that I found

in the dictionary when I was doing

my research for this. And it is defined as a punishment given to a sports team or sports

person in which points are taken from them. Pretty self-explanatory and that pretty much

nails it. A lot of punishments and we'll come on to this more in depth a little bit later on. But

a lot of punishments in football are

financial based, so it'll be a fine or if it's an individual player, it could be a suspension

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