The Mail Bag
What can save our game?
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Looking through various posts, it is fairly obvious that people are rapidly being turned off by football, in particular the Premier League. From how Sky are marketing the bigger clubs to the dubious refereeing decisions which seemingly always go against the smaller club, it seems people are more disilusioned than ever before.
The dominance of the Sky 3 and Liverpool is really beginning to grate on me. It isn't down to the fact they have got more money or get more exposure than us that bothers me, it is how they are allowed to operate.
Chelsea can spend money they could never hope to generate as a business down to personal loans from Abramovich, Arsenal are sweeping up the continent's best young talent with impunity and Liverpool and Man Utd also have massive squads full of players who would get in virtually any team in the Premier League, but don't get a look in for them.
I believe the only way for football to become competitive again is to limit squad sizes to 20 players and limit the amount of debt a club can owe to one year's turnover. This would stop clubs hovering up all the best players and allow clubs to start devoloping their youth without Ferguson or Wenger snapping them up before they've had a chance to help the club who developed them.
It would also allow well run successful clubs an advantage which may lead to better financial management, something sadly lacking at our club!!
Ste Kenny, Posted 24/10/2008 at 19:20:56
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The top 4 in the league are just getting richer and richer. They panic if they lose 2 games a season. You now need 90 odd points to win the league. Even the 4th place team get nearly 80 points, which in most seasons would win you the league.
In 2004/05 when we finished 4th we only got 61 pts and were still 30 odd behind the champions.
The gap is massive and getting bigger.
As I’ve said before it is sad if 5th place is the height of your ambitions, but thats how it is.
Strong action needs to be taken now to make our league more competitive. take todays opponents, Man Utd. In the 15 years of Premier League our home record against them is won 2, drawn 1 lost 12.
During that time we have had regular top half finishes and still our record against them is appalling.
No wonder then that the club are still selling tickets for the match today. It is too predicatable
Reality: the Sky 4 in the UK are NEVER going to accept anything that will reduce their ability to make money. And the football authorities (and the television companies) will never ask them.
Under this system we will generally have teams playing against other teams with roughly comparable resources. Winning the English national league will become something genuinely worth having, especially since it will be highly competitive and provide a potential way in to the European league.
Unless Platini does something drastic to equalise the playing field between the ’top’ teams and the rest (he will fail), it is surely where we are heading?
They have a wage structure, not per player but for the whole squad. Say for example each Premier league team has a limit of £40m to spend on wages for the season, then it’s down to them how they spend it. Then can spend it all, they can spend half. They can pay 5 world class players £100k a week, then have only £14m for the rest of the squad for the season. They could have the budget spread evenly of 20 players on £35k per week each.
You could also limit the number of players in a squad. For international tournaments, each country has a limit of 23 players. I’d say 26 players is enough for a Premiership season.
However, none of this is likely to happen, the Sky 4 would never allow it and they have more control than the other 16 teams put together.
As nice as it would be for Chelski, Man Utd and Arsenal to fuck off to Europe, the wasteland left would generate so little income from TV rights as to send a good remainder of clubs to the wall as most including Everton rely on next year?s Sky money to pay for this year?s running costs.
Setanta were lined up in conjunction with major US TV companies to outbid the next Sky deal but the US part of the credit crunch will hit this big time and Setanta on their own are minnows. Unfortunately, as the credit crunch bites disposable incomes will hit hard the numbers of bums on seats will reduce and TV viewings will increase, as hard as it is there will always be a market for it.
Pity the greater proportion don?t just hit the web and dare I say it watch for nothing on the various websites available and screw Sky over. With the already growing dissatisfaction over the league monopoly with not a cat in hell?s chance of anything other than scraps for the also rans the viewing figures are already dropping for all but the Sky darlings.
I also like the idea Platini has been harping on about. Any investors/owners should have proven links to the city of whatever club is in question.
Give football back to the people. I?ll be honest, I?m looking at Oldham?s results with added interest these days. Just seems more like the game I remember and loved.
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1 Posted 25/10/2008 at 05:18:55
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Memory fails now, but it might 20yrs ago now EFC in their wisdom cut their scouting system to save money (nice one ) it was in the papers at the time, as a lot of ’ old names and loyal servents of the club got the chop...does any one else remember this??