Coventry the latest club in trouble

Coventry now have a transfer embargo. Port Vale about to go into Administration. I'm beginning to wonder how many more teams are walking a financial tightrope.

It looks like this time some teams will actually cease to exist. Very sad for those fans and football in general.

 

It's sad, but it's always the result of mismanagement.

 

The good times bubble is bursting. Once again, I blame the Premier League and SKY with the huge amounts of money washing around, starting way back in 1992. When there was much less money, all clubs trod a much safer financial path, because the rewards were nothing like as great. They simply couldn't get into such trouble. I think a lot of clubs are going to fall, hopefully to resurface, in the long run as professional/semi-professional non-league. I would hate to see clubs disappear altogether.

 

It's going to go the same way as American Football in the US. With the Premier League being the equivalent of the NFL and the rest of the leagues being semi-professional.

All the money available in football is being soaked up by the Premier League with none left to spare for the rest of the football league pyramid. This is exactly what has happened in the States with American Football.

 

Unfortunately, the genie really cannot be put back into the bottle there. Wonder whether a Football League-only television channel, with revenues shared equally between all the clubs, would be viable...certainly wouldn't generate enough income for everyone involved to get filthy rich, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but if it closed the gap on the Prem a little (and the gap between the larger and smaller clubs in the FL itself), it might relieve a little of the financial pressure. Or it would just cause them to spend the windfall in an evermore ridiculous fashion, but at least you'd get to see your soon-to-be-liquidated team on television now and again.

 

Of course, I quite agree.

Interesting idea of a separate channel. With the wash of digital channels around, I think there could be a place for this.

 

Birmingham are also now under a transfer embargo, just days after signing three players. They must have known this was about to happen and got what they could before it was sanctioned.

 

Completely agree, Sky have such an inluence in the game this year it's ruining the football league imo

 

Especially if they were to get a bit creative with scheduling...you could conceivably feature as many as 11 games a week, three Saturday/three Sunday, and a game each weekday night split between the three levels. Fear that overexposure could devalue their PL rights might cause SKY and company to throw a fit (unless they were doing it, naturally), but it doesn't seem as if there's a saturation point nearby in football.

Heck, if the FL were really creative, they'd look into doing what the major sports networks in North America have: skipping the middleman and offering an online streaming service that features a large number of games, paid for by subscription and with advertising up the wazoo. Obviously wouldn't be possible to show all games, as the NBA does (for about $100 US/year, unless you're me and get screwed over as a Canadian by their bizarre rights policy), but I bet that they could make a fair bit of coin that way with minimal overhead and without the risk of another ITV situation.

 

Indeed, that is another way to go. I was thinking of ITV3 or ITV4 before, when considering suitable digital channels, and immediately dismissed them as goers. They'd only pull the plug once every club was signed up and heavily committed.

 

The BBC article actually claims just that:

"The Championship promotion chasers had anticipated the penalty, signing three players earlier this week"

And they also signed Huseklepp from Pompey last week when I'm sure they must have known then that this was coming.

So how the f*ck does that work then...??

Surely that's a case of gaining an unfair advantage, or cheating if you want to put it another way...!!

 

It's not Skys fault teams spend money they haven't got.

 

could be wrong, but i thought cov were taken over by a group that was sniffing after us in the days before Markus

 

SISU - let's just say lucky escape.

 

Heard about the Rangers players refusing to take anything upto a 75% pay cut. So much for team spirit, eh..? As for Birmingham and Coventry, it doesn't look anything like as bad. Pompey are obviously in serious trouble.

I thought you lot had the go ahead for your stadium..?