BluessinceHydeRoad
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- 26 Mar 2012
- Messages
- 2,562
city91 said:I might be a minority on here with this view but I agree that something needs to be done about money in football because some of the fees and wages in football is getting truly ridiculous. Also the fact that clubs like Everton, Villa and Newcastle only hope of competiting for the league is down to getting a rich benefactor shows how unfair football is.
However it pisses me off the way people blame City for this situation as if we are the ones who have ruined football. All we have done is spend money to catch up with the likes of United, Chelsea and Liverpool who have been spending millions for years.
Another thing what pisses me off is the fact that other football fans actually think United, Arsenal and Liverpool etc are acting out of the fairness of football rather than for their own interests.
Liverpool are the club who not long ago was talking about clubs negotiating their own TV deal.
United are the club who earn the most money and have the most sponsorship deals and are the top dogs income wise in the league.
Chelsea can fuck right off the bunch of hypocritical wankers. They have done all their spending and now want no other clubs to catch up.
Arsenal would be fucked if they didn't receive top money for their players
I would like City to propose some proper fair play proposals and watch United, Arsenal, Liverpool, Chelsea and Spurs squirm at the thought of them.
1. Propose that all match prices are set 20 pound per ticket for every match for every team.
2. Propose that teams may have a maximum of 10 sponsors.
3. Propose to Uefa that the Europa league gets more prize money so it is equal to the champions league.
4. Propose that all clubs can spend a maximum of 50 mil per transfer window.
This would properly make football fair but I'd guarantee that the majority of top European teams would be against it.
There is a feeling that is widespread that "something needs doing about money in football", but there is little agreement on what or why. There is a vague feeling that the levels of debt are too high ("unsustainable" is the buzz word), that wages are too high and that tickets cost too much. If these are the problems then the PL's regulations and UEFA's do nothing at all to tackle them. This is because most of the proposed solutions are moyivated by caims which are designed to nobble a club or clubs, rather than solve real problems.
Any treatment of problems has to acknowledge that football does not operate in a vacuum. Football is a business as well as a sport and it always has been. It is subject to British and EC commercial law, and this makes it very difficult indeed to prevent any shareholde from investing in a club. The courts regard this as an almost sacred right.
Then there is the question of wages. The problem here is that football across Europe is by far the most popular foem of entertainment, and the PL has been more successful, in financial terms, than any other league. The revenues it generatesare truly colossal. Many complain that City spent £250 million to climb from 10th to 3rd and £100 million more to go from 3rd to champions. No-one bothers to ask why it should cost so much. It never used to before the late 90s! The answer is that the wealth generated by the PL is not divided anything like evenly - it's very true to say that the teams are in the same division bit , in financial terms, in a different league. But the revenues of relegated sides take a hammering, and consequently, many clubs would rather contract debts than go down. Until relegation stops being a terminal condition little can be done about this. And to stay in the PL you need good players and you have to compete with clubs throughout Europe for them, and then pay them well. Players won't want to play in Stoke rather than Capua a Spanish city, for example, but the PL brand does attract players.
At the top, it's not avoiding relegation which is the concern, it's qualifying for the CL. Platini may trot out the fiction that it's a private tournament by invitation only, but that won't wash with the courts. And income from the league stage is around £25 - 30 million. Altogether, winning the trophy can be worth getting on for £100 million. Your team needs good, expensive players on big wages to give you the best chance...And can you expect fans to pay the same to watch a mundane PL match as the game with Real or Barca in the CL?
These are the realities. Any discussion which starts with notions of "sugar daddies", "greedy players" or any of the other moralising rubbish of "goodies and baddies" will never stand a chance of making football a more competitive game than it is now.