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Slipperduke

The Camden Cad
Joined
Aug 24, 2004
Messages
4,333
Location
North London
They say that a week is a long time in politics but, in football, it's a veritable epoch. This time seven days ago, Manchester City were struggling to pay their players, West Ham were enjoying their best start to a season in nine years and, at a surprisingly perky and entertaining Newcastle United, there was barely a hint of the chaos to come. What the hell happened?

I can't recall a time when I've ever felt so uneasy about the future of the game. Manchester City's inconceivable windfall is dangerous enough, but it is the other clubs and their reaction to it that concerns me most. They're running scared, and rightly so. Everton have ruled themselves out of contention for honours with chairman Bill Kenwright admitting that only a billionaire owner of their own could make them competitive. Rafa Benitez has acknowledged that Dr Al-Fayim's new toy are contenders for a Champions League place, a scenario which could lead to his own team tumbing into financial oblivion. Meanwhile, at West Ham and Newcastle, two relatively new owners appear to have concluded that the best route to success is to panic and engage upon a policy of undermining their manager at every step.

Chelsea's apparently limitless wealth is dwarfed by the fortunes piled up at the Middle Eastlands. With Manchester United still, for the moment, able to draw on the combined resources of their global branding and debt-funded transfer kitty, that's three superpowered football teams, light years ahead of the chasing pack.

Arsenal are too sensible to join in the cash-frenzy and Liverpool can't afford to, so that's them out of the equation. I don't like a world where Liverpool cannot, under anything other than freakish circumstances, win the league. I know that they haven't been in a genuine title race since Paula Abdul was in the charts, but I always assumed that one day someone would come and restore them. If a team like Liverpool, with all of their history and support, are out of contention, then what hope is there for the rest of us?

It is now simply a battle of the 'haves'. The 'have-nots' may as well pack up and go home, especially now that West Ham and Newcastle have demonstrated that it is incompetence that prevails in the chasing pack. What chance does anyone have now of breaking into the top four, and how long can they continue to throw cash at this hopeless cause?

I know that money has always played a part in football, but it's never been to this extent. Fifteen years ago, my own Southend United were in contention for a Premier League place. That will never happen again. Dr Al-Fayem could buy my club and the other 23 in their division without noticing it on his bank statement. He could buy anyone on the planet with just a small fraction of his fortune. The only way that anyone can compete is by...erm...being bought out by another ludicrously rich individual.

Eventually people will tire of watching teams that are doomed, though a lack of funding, to mediocrity. It is hope that makes football so compelling, but this week, for many clubs, the light at the end of the tunnel was snuffed out. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe this is the start of some golden era, but I 'm concerned. A combination of stupidity and rampant opulence may yet be the death of the English Premier League.
 
We have lost 2 English managers this week to be more than likely replaced by 2 more foreigners.

The premiership is destroying the soul of English football. Sorry has.
 
I agree with most of your points Slipper, and am also worried that these things are starting to make me hate the game I've loved all my life. Hell, I haven't even wanted to play Pro Evo for a few months now...

But (usually) for every cause of action there's a reaction.

And I wonder if we might see players breaking away, sticking to contracts, snubbing these kind of teams etc.

Who knows? Maybe in some way or another, it'll do the world of football some good down the line when it realises just how far its crawled up its own over-fed and bulbous arsehole. With the financial crisis looming, things can't go on like this. It might take a few clubs going under, some players being shown up for the cash-guzzling phonies that they are, but somewhere along the line some magic will shine through.

I point to Wimbledon AFC as an example of something good coming out of someone else's greed (though I'm aware their success in the lower leagues is now unfair on their brethren). Or Cardiff getting to last years Cup final. Or a certain evening we beat Man Utd.

Footballs always been a bit unfair. And admittedly, success is now just getting plain insummountable over a whole season for most teams. But its amazing what an underdog mentality can achieve on the odd occasion, and as long as we still get our moments of unexpected joy at a rivals expense or by our own doing, then football (in some format or another) will limp on...
 
We have lost 2 English managers this week to be more than likely replaced by 2 more foreigners.

The premiership is destroying the soul of English football. Sorry has.

The soul of football is still intact, John - it's just no longer in the Premier League, which is a soul-less aberration now. What we have to concentrate on is that football lower down the pyramid isn't affected by this malaise.

Top level football is an anti-competetive farce.
 
The soul of football is still intact, John - it's just no longer in the Premier League, which is a soul-less aberration now. What we have to concentrate on is that football lower down the pyramid isn't affected by this malaise.

Top level football is an anti-competetive farce.

Well yeah thats true.
 
The soul of football is still intact, John - it's just no longer in the Premier League, which is a soul-less aberration now. What we have to concentrate on is that football lower down the pyramid isn't affected by this malaise.

Top level football is an anti-competetive farce.

I'm starting to feel that the lower leagues are being dragged the same way to be honest.

I still live in the vain hope that at one point money won't be that important when players are deciding on clubs. Is there definitely no way the Premier League itself could own the contracts to the players and distribute wages within x% of the mean?

I'm a strong believer in free market economics but it seems a little flawed in football. How can you possibly tell that to the people making all the money? Well, I guess we'll have to wait for a Premiership chairman who has the balls to stand up for the competitiveness of his league and values football over money.
 
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I'm starting to feel that the lower leagues are being dragged the same way to be honest.

I still live in the vain hope that at one point money won't be that important when players are deciding on clubs. Is there definitely no way the Premier League itself could own the contracts to the players and distribute wages within x% of the mean?

I'm a strong believer in free market economics but it seems a little flawed in football. How can you possibly tell that to the people making all the money> Well, I guess we'll have to wait for a Premiership chairman sho has the balls to stand up for the competitiveness of his league and values football over money.

I certainly believe the championship is going the way of the premier, with all and sundry falling over themselves to win promotion to the promised land of the premier league and mortgaging their future to this end as well.

I'm sorry to say that I think we won't see a prem chairman take a stand until one of these clubs collapses into insolvency under the weight of debts from these idiotic spending sprees.
 
I certainly believe the championship is going the way of the premier, with all and sundry falling over themselves to win promotion to the promised land of the premier league and mortgaging their future to this end as well.

I'm sorry to say that I think we won't see a prem chairman take a stand until one of these clubs collapses into insolvency under the weight of debts from these idiotic spending sprees.

Leeds should be shining example John but clearly they are not.
 
Leeds should be shining example John but clearly they are not.

Indeed - their conniving chairman conned his way out of it.

Ipswich, Southampton, Watford, Barnsley, Bradford, Coventry, Leicester - how many more will have to go to the brink of collapse before these clubs learn?
 
More specifically Englands football team will continue to get worse until the point where we are classed alongside the likes of Scotland (no offence to any scots) in that just qualifying will be an achievement.
 
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