League to consider penalty shoot-outs

Football League clubs have agreed to consider a revolutionary proposal for penalty shoot-outs to decide all drawn matches as part of a wider review aimed at making the game more entertaining.

A meeting of the 72 league chairmen agreed to a working party being set up to consider the proposal among other ways of making their competitions more attractive.

The proposal was put forward by Football League chairman Lord Brian Mawhinney, and would see all drawn matches in professional league games outside the Premiership go to a shoot-out.

Mawhinney told PA Sport: “I suggested that for drawn matches each team gets a point and then maybe the team that wins a penalty shoot-out gets an extra point.

“Managers may hate shoot-outs but fans love them. The chairmen decided to use this proposal to have a broader look at a range of ideas that might refresh our product.

“Some people were strongly against it, some people were in favour of it but on both sides people said ’let’s be constructive and have a broad examination of what we have on offer’.”

The league’s working party will now seek other ideas from clubs and fans but will be limited by the

rules of the game – for example they would not be permitted to abandon the offside rule.

Mawhinney said it was important to constantly seek to improve the entertainment on offer.

He added: “We cannot afford to be complacent – people are always talking to be about how we can get more goals and more excitement in football.

“I understand that it is not instinctively where clubs would go but if you don’t change in a changing world then you can fall behind.”

The meeting also discussed where the end of season play-offs would be staged and Mawhinney said he was increasingly hopeful that they would be at the new Wembley stadium.

“It’s outside of our control but I’m more hopeful than I was some weeks ago,” he said. “If the ramp-up events go well and they get the safety certificate then we should be able to have the play-offs at Wembley.”