- Dan Plumley has insisted that the governing bodies need to ramp up punishments to stop alleged racist abuse within football after the unsavoury scenes in the West Brom win over Birmingham.
Juninho Bacuna accused a West Brom fan of using racist language in the 1-0 win at The Hawthorns, with a man having been arrested by West Midlands Police since.
The football finance expert admitted that points deductions and match forfeits have been discussed by FIFA, with more needing to be done to clamp down on the issue.
I think we need to have a real look at it,” he exclusively told West Brom News.
“The governing bodies, whoever it is, whether it is the FA or the leagues, they need to get together and think about how they really start to tackle this.
“It’s not directly the club, but the fans are part of the club and have an association with the club so if fans behave like idiots, the club suffers.
“That’s not all fans, but the reality of the situation is, that if we’re going to be serious about tackling some of this stuff, what we are doing at the minute is not working.
Protests and things like that we’ve seen are not strong enough, so at what point do we start talking about points deductions and hitting clubs where it really hurts? That affects the whole fan base and I just think until we start doing some of these severe things and FIFA themselves have mentioned this recently about forfeits of matches or points deductions, I think we’ve got to start ramping it up and it is the only way you start to tackle some of this head-on.
The punishments need to be stronger, that is one example but there have been two or three others in English football in recent weeks and it’s really unsavoury stuff.”
West Brom scenes are not good enough
This is not good enough, on any level, with the past couple of months simply embarrassing for the club.
After the trouble against Wolves had passed, it was only a matter of days before this shocking incident against Birmingham, with the club backing Bacuna afterwards.
Punishments are likely on the way, with fines almost guaranteed, let’s hope it will not be more.
