Football is facing the biggest reality check its history and it really is time we all woke up to the fact.
There is a feeling among many that this is a self-insulating game where billionaires simply continue to pour more and more money into the game or that it is somehow self-maintaining.
It’s a business and with no income, it ceases – like any other in the capitalist system.
In the current circumstances with huge wage bills to fund and no TV money to pay them or anything else, no shop sales, no season ticket money available, the future looks grim.
We have all become too used to saying: “They want £60 million for the player – just pay it.”
That’s gonna have to end if we want our clubs to survive but their recovery will start from the lowest low in their history like all others across the world.
There’s hope of course and everything we have heard from Government suggests 12 weeks or hopefully a little earlier will see us returning to the world as we know it.
I base this on the fact that initially the elderly were told to isolate for 12 WEEKS, then Boris Johnson talked of a turning tide in 12 weeks, now pubs, nightclubs etc have been closed for 12 weeks.
And despite suggestions, the ‘warmer weather kills the virus’ argument is false, in vast Australia and South America, coronavirus cases are less than 1,000. We need a temperature rise asap.
We have seen advice to NHS staff explaining that the virus hates the heat and the figures above -which you can check on Google for yourself – confirm it.
As a by the way, make sure you regularly drink hot water as this helps kills the virus should you be unfortunate in being affected, taking it straight into the stomach where it is killed by the gastric acids in your stomach.
Everything we have heard so far from central government seems to firmly suggest that we will be looking at 12 weeks out so the game is not up and we all expect a return.
But let’s not continue with the unrealistic belief that clubs will be in the same shape as we believed them to be before this situation developed.
We will see the flattest transfer market ever and a delay to next season with TV money and season tickets etc still on hold could be disastrous for all clubs.
Let’s get real!
The endless self pity of football club owners, administrators, players about the finances of the elite game do not matter to most of us who are trying to survive. We are possibly entering a depression rather than a recession. Five million plus self employed do t know how they will feed their families, children are being sent home from school so venerable grandparents are becoming carers, soup kitchens are closing, grass roots sports clubs are shut down, etc ..Does anyone still spare a thought for the musings of Karen Brady, and David Sullivan? Or worry about who our next left back will be?
DUE RESPECT – WHY ARE YOU READING THIS IN THAT CASE? This is a football site
Don’t forget our ‘hero’ giving up his weekly column allowance. I agree on your sentiment, if football restarts in September will cost Sullivan and Gold a max of £50m, which they will happily loan to the club at 5pct above base rate. The players dont seem to be rushing to reduce contracts. So no pity for anyone in top flight football, been a gravy train for years, with no support to those below. Expect a few top teans will go broke, to be taken over by another billionaire
Why would another billionaire take over such a situation and how with no revenue can anyone continue to fund any club. Are you thinking this through. Do you know hen Cvid 19 will be extinguished and how without TV money the wages – currently paid by that – will be found..
After any financial meltdown the vultures come to the party. Sullivan at West Ham, new owners at Leics, Southampton and Bournemouth all when in dire financial trouble. As GSB likes to remind us they saved us. As long as future revenue is likely the money men will be on the scene
But this will hit so many clubs and the game will take a long time to recover plus Sky/BT will think log and hard about their packages having been hit so badly. Football won’t be the golden goose it has been for a long time mate. Billionaires and astute businessmen aren’t pouring out of the cupbaord now why should they be in far bleaker circumstances. The game is in real trouble and we need to get that I believe
For all the EPL posturing and anti-Brady sentiment, the most sensible solution would be to suspend and void the season now. Player’s contracts would expire in June as usual, they could all have an extended pre-season for the new campaign and transfer activity – as Hugh says, probably at lower levels and much more sensible lower prices – would reshape teams for a new season.
With the Euros postponed, we could arse about extending the season so Liverpool finally win the damn thing, then all complain that the players hadn’t had a proper summer break. But the reality is that the whole of sport will have to rethink, with F1 having nothing at all, cricket having a year off and the Olympics in Japan postponed (not yet, but I can’t see how they can go on). In among this, the EPL alone will try to salvage the end of a dead season. With players isolated, fans unable to attend and a genuine nervousness arounf infection that is going to last for months, let’s call it a day and work out how to finish it. If Liverpool really wanted to win it so much, they wouldn’t have jetted off to play the pointless World Champions thing and abandoned their game with us; had they been made to play the game against s in parallel, the reserve team they would have fielded would have been the one that drew with Shrewsbury, which even we might have had a chance against. Just saying….
about 25 years ago i wrote a letter to the fa headquaters in london, it was an idea of mine because at the time many lower division teams were in financial crisis.
i proposed, that the top teams would, in order of finishing the league in their respectful positions, would adopt a team from the lower division, and help them financially.
so if we assume liverpool win the prem this year, their team of adoption would be the bottom team of the lowest division, 2nd team in prem would adopt 2nd team from bottom division etc etc until all teams have a financial partner.
i also know full well that teams all need money, as a buisness, so each bigger team could donate a percentage of the income,out of only profit to the lower team.
also now, with the dreaded virus, its a great time to put it into action , if we love our sport.
oh , just in case you were wondering, i got no reply to my letter.
Out of these terrible circumstances might come some good.
For far too long football has been awash with money.Average players on ridiculous contracts.
Maybe when we do eventually get rid of this virus clubs will “cut their coat according to their cloth”although i will hold my breath on that.
Okay sky/BT have bought big money to the table but for that they can at anytime change the games to different days and times.
Maybe this is a waking up time for football.
Paul, I have long thought that this would work for countries too. The richest (US) would “ adopt” the poorest, and so on. Or, if not the poorest then a large country with real financial problems – silly to waste the wealth of the US on a tiny Pacific island!