Goal-line technologists fails Fifa test

• Products of 10 companies fail to satisfy in Zurich trial
• International Board meets on 5 March to make decision

A shot from Frank Lampard crossed the Germany line in England's World Cup last-16 match in June, but a goal was not awarded. Photograph: Joern Pollex/Getty Images Fifa's plans to introduce goal-line technology have suffered a setback after every one of the 10 companies which took part in trials last week failed to meet the criteria set by the world game's governing body. As revealed in this column last month, firms expressing an interest in providing the technology were invited to Zurich to test their equipment in daytime and nighttime conditions.
A difficult environment probably contributed to the companies' problems. The artificial pitch made matters tricky for those companies who would seek to run cables around the goalmouth. The lack of a stadium and of a a crowd, with thousands of fans carrying mobile phones, also made conditions unrealistic. Hawk-Eye, the most established technology having already conducted stadium testing at Reading, declined even to take part in apparent anticipation of the difficult environment.
Companies had only a few months to strive for Fifa's criteria – 100% accuracy and relaying results back to the officials within one second – and it proved too exacting a task. But some influential individuals at Fifa still wish to launch the technology at a Fifa tournament before possible implementation at the 2014 World Cup.
"The results of the tests will go to the International Football Association Board meeting [at Celtic Manor on 5 March] and it will decide," said a Fifa spokesman. But the game's law-making body has previously opposed technology's introduction.
A proposal of the Uefa president, Michel Platini, for additional match officials, is also set to be discussed: it seems the best the inventors can hope for is a permit to carry on testing.


Argyle's skewed justice

Ask the Football League why a 10-point penalty was this week levied against Plymouth Argyle and it says it acted to protect the integrity of its competition. Clubs must repay their debts, and after the club sought bankruptcy protection from the courts the League felt it had to act.
It certainly applied its rules correctly but the rule itself is in this case misguided. Plymouth only intends to appoint an administrator: it has not yet. It could well do so once the court's 10-day grace period expires, since a buyer may well not be found. Still, stricken though Argyle undoubtedly is, it has yet to demand its creditors receive only a fraction of what they are owed.
Indeed, the only effect of applying the sanction now and not on 3 March is for the club, now bottom of the League One table, to become a less attractive proposition, making administration more likely. The League's insolvency rules are there to prevent clubs from turbo-charging their teams with unaffordable debts, skewing competitive balance. So compare Sheffield Wednesday's situation in December, when Milan Mandaric took over after the Co-operative Bank agreed to take a £15m hit on the club's £24m debt: no sanction was levied.
With Wednesday freely reducing their liabilities and Argyle penalised even before that has happened, the balance of justice has been skewed.


Hicks may get shirty

The Sport+Markt/PR Marketing report into the amounts spent on individual football clubs' merchandising goods puts Liverpool in third place. Dr Peter Rohlmann's study into how much money clubs are generating for themselves and their licensing partners through the sales of shirts and club shop tat is a fair barometer of a club's brand value. And so, with Tom Hicks claiming in the high court that he was left £140m out of pocket in the £300m enforced sale of the club last year, it might interest him that Arsenal (enterprise value £850m) did not even appear in a top 10 of clubs that did include Lyon and Fenerbahce.


The offence? Parody

Twitter's clampdown on some of the funniest parodies in football has put a lot of online fans' noses out of joint. Two of football's great satirists, @AndyDTownsend and @Thebig_Sam, have had their accounts shut down. After being put in touch with "Andy Townsend" – in real life, the Doncaster Rovers fan Glenn Wilson – by When Saturday Comes, it appears that Twitter acted after claiming such accounts offend its parody policy. Since "Townsend" had 5,000 followers and "Sam Allardyce" a staggering 40,000, there must be many supporters who are lamenting the silence of voices that captured their subjects so well.