The difference between our TV money - and the league winners...is not a great deal in terms of football finance..

I think you’re barking up the wrong tree.

Yes. If you remove the wage cap all the best players will go abroad. Fact.

The only way to enforce the rule is for FIFA to enforce it on every league in the world and that will be very tricky to implement.

Players would argue that Lawyers and Bankers are on big money but are not restricted by salary cap. Plus the argument would not stand up in court because we live in a capitalist society where salary is dependent on occupation.

Basically, it will never happen.

He maybe barking up the wrong tree, but the fundamentals of his argument are correct.
Only the mega rich clubs will prosper. But it’s not a new thing. Real Madrid have been doing it for years and the title gets tossed between them and Barca. So the spansh fans must be as pissed off as much as we are over here.

Totally agree. Wage cap and a fairer prize money distribution would do the trick.

Won’t happen though unless Platini gets his way, he won’t the English teams continue to dominate Europe.

Iv been saying it for years Dave but no one listens......The main reason this will continue is because the fans of the lesser well off teams will become more and more agitated and demand change. As this progresses through Europe the more regular, SKY 4 teams etc in each league will be pushed into a European Super League. The current set up off the Champions league is only temporary, this will become a European League leaving the less well off clubs behind. Its a FIFA Plot i tell you, wait and see. Fuck them all and THE FA....Keep our club in our own hands and in our own community, thats what its there for!

Gavin Harris, if Rugby can implement a wage cap and make it work, why cant football.....Legal bullshit.

I agree with most of it, however unfortunately the utter t***s at FIFA and the FA won’t do anything about it, ever.

It was only a few months ago some twat called Richard Scudamore wanted to move the Premier League abroad for a ludicrous "39th game" just so they could make even more money ontop of the incredible amount they make already.

It’s all about money-making, its the sole reason the FA just sit back and let people who know fuck all about our national sport come and buy our clubs and piss about with them as if they’ve just been created.

20-30 years ago, Arabs and American’s were not mentioned in the same breath as the word "Football" they were a distant million miles away from being involved, today though, Arabs and American’s have more influence over our game than any British person has.

Its a sad state of affairs, and like you said, everything has become predictable, the League is won in August between, what I think, are two teams, the League Cup is a standing joke to be fair, teams who haven’t won a trophy for 20-30 years can’t even be bothered to play in it, and the FA Cup either ends up at Stamford Bridge or Old Trafford now.

Money has destroyed the passion and the true beauty of Football, appearing on TV and playing in the Champions League are the only things clubs care about now.

Decent article, agree entirely with the sentiments. A few responses:

"It will never happen" is not a good enough response. They used to say that about banning the use of children of chimney sweeps.

An easy way of levelling the field is to reduce the number of subs you can name. It affects the richer clubs more with the larger squads. Return to 2+goalie.

But until we attack the fundamental cartel that is the champions league, things won’t change. stop t he league format and go back to a knock out; champions and maybe 2nd place only. If these rich clubs leave, so be it. Michel Platini has made the right noises but it will take a truly tough not to take these gangsters on.

You know, we were once the richest club in the country, the Mersey Millionaires. Yet even at that time, the disparities in wealth were not so great between any of the 1st division clubs as it is now thanks to the Champions League scam.

The Premier League and then the Champions League have made the gap bigger and reduced competition in football. We’ve benefited from one and we’re ’glass-ceilinged’ by the other. A move to the old-fashioned system where money was shared out down the leagues, and Champions League revenue between everyone would make things fairer, but the driving force behind these changes are the big clubs (the G-14, which has about 25 members or so) and they obviously fix things for their own benefit not everybody else’s.

It could be worse (and soon might be). In Spain even the top division don’t share TV revenue, which is why Barca and Fascist Madrid have so much more revenue than anyone else. I can see a breaking point where people simply lose interest. We as a club have already hit a glass ceiling, once three or four other clubs have done the same and all their fans realise the system is fixed against them, its possible TV audiences will go down and revenue will be hit. If it happens I don’t think its soon though.

Agree Dave.

My ’enjoyment’ of football now is totally different.

I really enjoy/enjoyed the European trips away because... well they’re an excuse to get away to sometimes unusual places and have a few beers.

And I love night games.

But to be honest, most of the rest of the time it’s a kind of force-of-habit thing.

Bar the odd ’battling’ draw, when we play sides who have massively outspent us, I go expecting to see us run around like mugs and lose 3-0

And when playing the rest, I have NO idea which Everton will turn up.

The Everton that turned up at home against City or the one that turned up against Hull way.

The tastiness of the curry, chips and fish (seperate) out of the Supper Bar is the only guaranteed pleasure.

And if I applied the same logic I do when considering other forms of entertainment, I’d have seen my last game when Rooney was sold (if nor before)

Phillip are you serious?

"Gavin Harris, if Rugby can implement a wage cap and make it work, why cant football.....Legal bullshit. "

There are two leagues in Rugby League, England and Australia, they have about 12-14 teams in each. Not exactly difficult to co-ordinate. Football is a slightly larger scale enterprise.

Mike the G14 disbanded after getting a deal with Platini over players injured on international duty.

However I wholly agree with your sentiments and agree that things may well get worse before they get better

I agree Dave, I somtimes wonder if I am actually a football fan anymore and am just a passionate fan of Everton and that it’s partly social going to the game. I got rid of Sky sports because I wasn’t watching any other games.

This close season I found myself thinking one of these years is going to be a freak. The top four will all be stricken by loss of form, injuries, bad luck whatever and someone in the following pack will just hit it right for a season and get lucky with injuries, I even dared to dream. It may yet happen one year, but the point is it shouldn’t be like that, it shouldn’t need a freak season, somone somehow has to find a way to level the playing field.

I think a good start would be to let the Premiership Champions and Runner Up only qualify automatically for the Champions League. The other two places to be awarded to the winners and runners up of a play off between those teams finishing between 3rd and 10th. Third would play tenth, fourth vs. ninth and so on over two legs until the two winners of each leg were granted entry to the qualifying stages of the Champions League. This would break the Sky4 self perpetuating stranglehold and give a lot of teams something to play for.

I feel the same way as Howard Don. I sometimes wonder if I am actually a football fan anymore or just an Evertonian.

I rarely watch other Premier League matches anymore, as I have lost interest and cannot really be bothered to waste time on it. However, I do enjoy watching lower league games, so I suppose there’s still hope.

Tonight I saw the Essex derby between Colchester and Southend in League 1. Muddy, terrible pitch. Average players. Small stadium. But REAL football! Brilliant!

I have said a long time ago that I preferred football as a supporter when the old First Division was the top league because at the start of the season almost every team in the league would have a chance of winning something. Bookies had odds for every team and teams like Ipswich won the league from time to time.

It was a level playing field without foreign players and we used to scoff at the Scottish league which only had two or three teams who could win their league... now we are exactly the same and no one would toss his hard earned cash away by backing any team outside the top 3 or 4.

I think that the league title is diminished in stature as it is no longer an open race... I hate to admit it, but Liverpool dominated football when it was an equal playing field and the league title was much harder earned.

Man Utd went from 1967 until 1994 without a league title but that is never mentioned by today's pundits because they reckon that football history only started with the Premier League.

Everton were Man Utd ’s bogey team for years and that is not my statement, but George Best’s.

Man Utd have just caught up with Liverpool for title wins but not within a level playing field situation.

Ferguson is a great manager because he took the chance of bringing his youths through at the same time and it proved a brilliant brain wave...perhaps we should be using the likes of Coleman and Rodwell a lot more and keeping our older players for the bench.

I'm afraid that DM is very much a creature of habit and stays loyal to his oldsters..he did the same with Stubbs, Weir and Naysmith so its no small wonder that Rooney moved away..In the first division the best teams were not always bought and many players were one club men almost throughout their careers.

Nowadays its a mercenary bunch who ply their trade in the premier and loyalty is definitely in short supply.

Most players who stay at clubs presently, do so because they would not command a fee.

Let's face it, Rooney was our only monetary asset at the time he was sold..

Football is still a great spectacle and I would love to be able to swap places with any of the top 4 for money and ambition... we must just continue to look to history and memories of a fast fading time when Everton were truly the school of science and had great players.

I'm afraid that most of the players that are made EFC legends of recent times would not get into any of the past truly great teams we enjoyed watching.

Liverpool's present lot are much the same...only Reina and perhaps Gerard would get a bench place.

I reached the point you’re at now about five years ago Dave Lynch - the only thing that keeps me interested is forlorn hope and blind optimism.

It will take some very big names going out of business for anything to change.

But for now the FA could ban leveraged buy outs and implement the ’right and proper persons’ rules they already have in existence.

They won’t though- the overwhelming mass of evidence suggests that FA, UEFA and FIFA are institutionally corrupt and in the pockets of the ’Digger’ Murdoch empire and the big media corporations - who really don’t give a fuck how level the playing field is as long as a 600 million Worldwide audience tune in to watch Man Yooo every other week.

We’re only there to make up the numbers and we will be cast aside like sweaty socks when the Euro League becomes reality...

Face it - we’re fucked and in the long term so is domestic league football.

Guys, when will people ever learn that the only currency in modern football is money? Either you get it from a huge fanbase built up due to decades of success, especially in Europe, or you get it from a billionaire benefactor. That’s the beginning and ending of the matter.

If anyone wants to harp on about "hard work", and other anachronistic purist delusions, fine, go and support Accrington Stanley. But in the here and now of the EPL, it’s already 20-30 years too late to start romanticising about building a top class squad from scratch — and that’s also a rebuke to that whingey QPR fan that everyone’s lauding as some sort of folk hero.

Thor, you make a good point. If I’m walking past my local park pitches and there’s a game on, I’ll always stop and watch for a while. I guess it’s not the game we’re sick of but the culture surounding it at the top level.

Yesterday in the US of A they had the superbowl, now I’m not a fan of American football, but what I do know that no team of teams dominate the way they do in proper football. And if the cash-obsessed yanks can do it so can we.

As for a European superleague? it’s a non-starter, what keeps domestic leagues exciting-well-interesting, is that all of the teams have something to play for up until the last month & beyond. If the European SL doesn’t have relegation, or of course a place in Europe, what would be the point of watching Standard Leige v Liverpool for instance when they had no chance of winning a trophy? and that would be replicated throughout the fixture list-70% of games would be like pre-season friendlies

American football is a strange one because most league matches they are ’on paper’ (and to the bookies) very unevenly matched. Handicaps are usually implemented on every game. The English Premier League is well known to be one of the most unpredictable leagues (of any sport)game-by-game (from my experience working for a bookie). At the moment its only really when Man Utd or Chelsea play at home to Hull do you see odds of 1/16, for instance.

But on the other hand, the NFL team who is most likely to win the Superbowl of their respective confrences is largely unknown at the beginning. I think this is down to the draft system they have when picking college players. There’s no point me explaining it..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NFL_Draft

It would be interesting to see how this could perhaps be implemented, if at all, to the EPL.

How can you coordinate a Draft System in football (real football, not the one with kelvar shoulder pads) when you can pick up a lad in a land called Africa who never completed his GSCEs let alone went to uni (not college, University)? Football is a global sport, not like the World Series = USA.

It’s a captialist world and I’m afraid many like it that way, least of all those goons at FIFA, UEFA, FA and importantly the TV stations.

I guess we could all make a start by cancelling our Sky subscriptions. Murdoch would be horrified along with the Big 4. But it also needs a change of direction from the FA, Premier League, Fifa and so on and I really can’t see that happening however much Platini tries.

We also need to change the substitute rule as mentioned above and drastically reduce foreign player numbers. Of course wouldn’t it be great if every fan refused to renew their season tickets? But I can’t see it happening.

I have to say it — I love football.

Mike Ellis...The basis of your argument was that it couldnt work because it is illegal. If its illegal why dont the top top players in Rugby leagues go to court over not being allowed to earn what they like? Please explain

I don’t if you mean me Phil but I have no idea about the legalities or not of a salary cap. If you can have one in America I’d reckon you can have one anywhere. My point is not legal its logistical. There are too many leagues, clubs and competitions to organise, and a salary cap rule couldn’t be agreed on, or implemented if it was, there simply isn’t the will on the part of the people that matter. That wasn’t the case in Rugby League, the two sports are far too different in scope to be comparable.