The news that the independent three-man panel may not come to a decision until May 1 on whether the Football League were right to hit the Elland Road club with a 15-point penalty – just two days before the final day of the regular season – has understandably left many chairmen and managers furious.

Brighton & Hove Albion chairman Dick Knight, whose club are the only one capable of pipping Leeds to a place in the top six, spoke for many over the weekend when he described the situation as a "farce".

Equally vociferous in his criticism has been Steve Tilson, the manager of Southend United who grew up as an avid Leeds fan. Speaking before Saturday's win at Carlisle United, he said: "It does not affect us because we are almost guaranteed a play-off position. But doing it at this stage of the season is ridiculous."

Both views are typical of many in the third tier, but it is Tilson's comment that is perhaps the most pertinent with the timing being the most nonsensical part of this whole saga. And, worst of all, it could all have been avoided.

Leaving aside the validity of Leeds's case – that is best left to Sir Phillip Otton and his arbitration panel colleagues – surely the one point that is not open for discussion is that the Elland Road club were perfectly entitled to appeal against the deduction. That is a basic right in any democracy.

The key point is that once Leeds had indicated they wanted to take the matter further, the League should have acted straight away and set in motion the process that led to arbitration belatedly getting underway near Fleet Street in London last Wednesday.

If that had happened in the Autumn, arbitration could have been done and dusted before the Christmas decorations were up and everyone in League One would have known where they stood.

The clubs around Leeds in the table would have known exactly what they needed to do to either stay ahead of or leapfrog the Yorkshire side and the focus in the second half of the season would have been on the pitch.

Instead, the saga was allowed to drag on with it taking the serving of a High Court writ by United to bring an offer of arbitration from the League. And even then, they left it until the final day of a legally-set deadline to respond in late February.

Now, I appreciate there is no precedent for what has happened in the past year with Leeds and that could explain why the League did not move to resolve the matter earlier.

But, there can be little doubt that it is this delay that has led to the current farcical situation where the League One promotion race could be transformed with either one or two games remaining.

Whatever the final decision from the arbitration panel – and surely it will be a case of Leeds getting none or all 15 points back with the League either being right or wrong to punish the Elland Road outfit for what they perceived to be a failure to follow insolvency policy – it is to be hoped that lessons have been learned from the saga.

And that, come the summer, the League draw up a fixed process to deal with anything similar in the future to prevent a repeat of this long, drawn-out affair.