How To Kill English Football
Submitted by
BillyIdle on Fri, 11/06/2009 at 8:30pm.
How to kill English football in one move
Fri Nov 06 09:37AM
Had he been around the American Midwest in the pioneering days of the nineteenth century, Bolton's chairman Phil Gartside would have no doubt appointed himself commander of any wagon trains heading towards the Californian gold rush.
At the first hint of a problem - a wheel nut working loose, a horse going lame, a passenger eating a few too many beans for breakfast - he would have had the wagons quickly formed in a circle, the better to repel any attackers real or imagined.
Next week Gartside is to propose to his fellow Premier League club owners that they develop a new method for their competition. Gartside wants a two-tier Premier League, two divisions of 20 clubs each, including the two Glasgow teams. At the end of each season three clubs would move from the second tier upwards, and three go in the opposite direction.
Here Gartside reveals his true purpose - there would be no relegation from the second tier downwards. In other words, the Premier League would become a closed shop, isolated from the rest of the English footballing world, a place that denies entry to the aspirational. And, more to the point, prevents any of its members suffering the sort of indignities of decline felt by Leeds, Norwich, Southampton and Charlton in recent seasons. It is, in short, the most naked bit of protectionism this side of a UKIP election manifesto.
Something that always amazes foreign players when they come to this country is the depth of our footballing pool. The fact that Oxford United, in the fifth tier of the game, sitting currently 93rd in our professional rankings, can regularly draw home crowds of over 6,000 is viewed with something close to awe. It simply doesn't happen in Italy, Spain, Germany or France, where the professional game consists of no more than 30 clubs and the rest are amateur, watched on a Saturday by no more than parents and friends of the players. The passion and commitment of our lower leagues is something utterly unique. And Garstide wants casually to do away with it.
Because that is what would happen should his ideas be accepted. At its heart, what Gartside's proposal is all about is money. Or rather the keeping of money. Say what you like about the Premier League as it stands, but in fact Richard Scudamore runs a surprisingly re-distributive ship: currently more money is handed out by the top division to the lower leagues than was raised from the entire television revenue when the Premier League was formed.
All that would stop under Gartside's suggestions: the top would cut itself off from the rest, keep everything to itself, starving the lower leagues of both immediate funds and the possibility of self-improvement through promotion.
He claims it is necessary to stop teams like Charlton and Southampton haemorrhaging cash as their desperate dash to stay in the Premier League implodes. But then, even staying up doesn't necessarily turn you into a self-sustaining economic unit: Gartside's own Bolton are about to announce losses for last season amounting to some £18 million.
Perhaps what is needed rather than destroying everyone else in the bid to stay solvent is a little sensible budgeting closer to home. If Gartside wanted some lessons in how to do that, he could do worse than look at some of the clubs in the lower league, managing to sustain a plausible footballing outfit on annual turnover smaller than the players' car valeting bill at the Reebok.
The likes of Gartside, with their assumption that all that matters is what goes on in the top tier, insult the many tens of thousands of fans who support lower league outfits. Why should the needs of Bolton be regarded as more important to the wider well-being of the game than those of Rochdale down the road? Why is it that the commercial interests of Hull should be sustained at all costs while those of Grimsby next door should be dismissed as irrelevant?
Plus, who is going to be in Garstide's privileged 40? Assuming he wants Celtic and Rangers in there, plus those sides down on their luck like Leeds, Charlton, Norwich and Southampton, does that mean he is permanently going to cut adrift the likes of Peterborough, Doncaster, Plymouth and Blackpool simply because they don't fit his idea of what a Premier League club should be? Never mind that they have proven themselves to be better and more sustainable than those fallen giants on the one place where it matters in football: the pitch.
Gartside's proposal is unlikely to gain much support this time round. The worry is, as the recession continues to undermine the finances of many, the idea that the best way out of a crisis is to kick those less fortunate than yourself could well gain momentum. If it does, and Gartside succeeds in his ambition, then English football will be destroyed. Simple as that.
WHITE, EuroSport
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