Spot on Yarco. I mourn the game I used to know as well. I think I must be the only person in the world who doesn't have SKY, and I will never stoop that low!!!!
I started reading this and then half way through I thought who cares about the Scottish clubs any way! If they get independence the whole of their country will be bankrupt so I praise the HMRC in getting the cash before we go our seperate ways!
the point of my article was not to sympathise with scottish clubs but to ask whether it highlights the route the game down south will take
There are many professional football clubs in England who are on the brink of going bust mainly due to the greed of the Premier League and FA. In the next 10 years I can see there being only 2 fully professional leagues. How can clubs continue to survive on gates of less than 2,000 per week!
I do not follow this ' blame Sky ' arguement. Football is an entertainment product which Sky won the right to televise in a bidding process organised by the Football Authorities. These same authorities had to decide how to spend the money - not Sky. These authorities decided to just give the money to the Clubs without any control on how to spend it - they could have insisted in minimum sums to be spent on academies etc - and the Clubs have just spent in on transfers and wages. That is not the fault of Sky but the fault of the Premier League and the Clubs themselves. We also have the ' poor innocent fan ' myth. Portsmouth won the Cup by allowing Arry to spend vast sums on big name players and high wages. Did the fans protest at the time because it was unsustainable or were they saying ' a couple more high profile signings and we can do well in Europe ' ? When Leeds went 'Europe or bust' many years ago the fans did not protest when it looked like being ' Europe ' but protested when it was ' bust ' Many people outside the Club could see what was happening at Rangers but the fans couldn't care less, until it fell apart, as long as they were competing with Celtic. How many Chelsea and Man City fans want the spending to stop in case the owners back out? Most of them are only interested in trying to buy a trophy or two. Look at the Arsenal board. Despite the huge success on and off the field under Wenger many supporters want him out because he won't compete with many clubs on ludicrous fees and wages to buy/keep top players and prefers to bring youngsters through. Buying trophies is obviously more important than financial stability. Properly used the money from Sky could have done the game a lot of good but it has been completely misused and that coupled with the success at all cost attitude of Clubs/owners, egged on by the supporters, are the real reasons why it will all end in tears.
Of course it's down to SKY, they put the amount of money in and keep putting more and more in every year so they can maximise their profits. If they didn't put the money in then Rooney and Co wouldn't be on £250.000 a week, and you wouldn't have legions of so called supporters watching football on the telly every Saturday/Sunday/Monday etc. Lets get this clear SKY aren't in it for the football, they're in it for the money and it's contaminated the game I love! By the way, who gives a **** about the Scottish leagues? The owner of Hearts only bought the club because he thought the TV money would come rolling in, it didn't, serves him right!
We are obviously never going to agree on this point. The Premier League offered for sale TV rights for packages of live games in a bidding process with the highest bid winning. Sky won the auction by bidding more than the rest. The Premier League pocketed the money and misused it - how can that be the fault of Sky? Let us assume that Sky did not bid and, say, the BBC got the TV rights. You would have still had the same number of games on the tele, less money in the coffers and more people watching it as no subsciption would have been involved. How does that improve things? If you object to live matches on TV then blame the Premier League for putting the packages out for bids. If you object to what the money has been spent on then blame the Premier League and the Clubs for misuse of the proceeds. All Sky have done is put in the highest bid at an auction, designed by the Premier League, to raise as much money as possible. I suspect that your obvious dislike of Sky is colouring your views.
The point I made earlier in the thread was that SKY can only make high bids,if we the customers keep paying the extortionate fees,and the clubs keep increasing ticket prices because we the customers are brainwashed into believing how good Prem football is,and we cannot live without it. I would gladly allow the top 4-5 teams in the Prem to join a Euro League,and allow the rest to revert back to pre -Sky days of !st,2nd Div etc football,then we could see games every Saturday at 3pm and no extended International breaks. Give me one good thing that SKY has given Football,and I will give you a dozen things they have ruined And please don't get me started on Abramovich.
You may well be right, but I don't believe I'm that shallow. If you think that paying footballers £250.000 a week while the rest of us are struggling under the recession is acceptable then that's your opinion, it's NOT mine, and I believe that while people keep paying for SKY subscriptions then those wages will keep going up! I'm with Yarco on this one!!
Well said ILD,the sooner the £250K a week footballers are things of the past,the better. F F sake,I consider myself to have a goob job,but it takes me over 8 years to earn that.
For the record, I don't have Sky; I can't justify the cost of any subscription tv. That said, I agree with 1950canary. Football in this country has been changing for decades, long before the advent of saturation television coverage of matches; the social and economic conditions which produced league football as ILD mourns it, are long gone, and the range of leisure opportunities available to most, if not all, has massively expanded. But the changes we are talking about are the direct result, not of Sky, or television generally, but the actions of football authorities, in particular in this country the formation of the Premier League, but also UEFA with the creation of the European Championship, and FIFA. Television was the major enabler of these developments, but the primary responsibility lies with those who created the mass appeal televisual product.
I agree with 1950. SKY is not in any way to blame for the demise of football as we know and its quite easy to blame foreign owners. Foreign ownership first. Chelsea and Blackburn were two clubs going nowhere, we used to whip the pants off Chelsea time after time. Then Jack Walker, who at that stage was worth £400M which was probably worth a Billion now, decided he was going to but the title. And he did. Thereby creating the road map by which clubs could achieve success. Matthew Harding, not Abramovic, started throwing money at Chelsea and put them on the new road map for achieving success. So before we blame Johnny Foreigner, lets look at history first. Personally, I would take the NFL approach of trying to even things up so that dynasties cannot be created. That would limit ownership let alone foreign ones. SKY outbid all the other channels for the football package. Just the same as we outbid Birmingham for Hughton and Colchester for Lambert. When SKY were first successful, Alan Sugar begged all the owners and Chairman like Swales and his peers to create a foundation. Take half the money and spend it on players, players wages and ground improvements. The rest would remain in trust and would not be used to bolster wages etc. Admission prices could be kept to a minimum and grounds improved to make them marketing areas to bring families into football thus creating the next generation and increased indirect income. He said if you take it all, the players will take it. And he was right. But no, the majority wanted the money straight away. And no amount of calls for planning for the future could dissuade the clubs from throwing money away in an attempt to gain the upper hand on their rivals. I know some people don't like SKY because of Murdoch. Let me tell you that as the National Secretary of the Printers Union in NZ, I negotiated with Murdoch and found him to be a reasonably fair man, willing to negotiate and ready to listen to opposing arguments. And willing to concede. So why the animosity toward him as a business man I don't know. Some of his friends stink and I wouldn't piss on them if they were on fire. So I put the blame fairly and squarely on the shoulders of the players. Too many of them make me puke to be honest. John Terry, who I personally don't think is a racist, is a piece of **** for his other behaviour. As is Rio Ferdinand for his behaviour. As is Ched Evans. As is Shearer. I could go on. Why do most of us despise dole bludgers and tax avoiders but think footballers are not deserving of our spite? Managers sit and pontificate about how badly clubs treat them but can't wait to jump into their mates shoes once they are sacked. I know JWM might think I'm a Pinko but football needs a revolution. Stop going to watch. No matter how much money SKY gives clubs, they won't play it at empty grounds. And SKY would accordingly reduce the amount of money they pay because their advertisers won't be queuing up. But nobody is going to that are they?
A very good comment Redruthyella and you raise many valid points, as well as reminding me of my dislike of many footballers I get exasperated at the amount of fixture changes owing to the fact that Sky have decided to broadcast a game, it happened to me a couple of times last year, my clubs fixture against Arsenal was reschedulled so Sky could televise it. It was moved from a Saturday to a Monday, we were planning to make a weekend of it, apart from the money lost, my cousins who I was travelling with would have lost two days work, so it was a no go. Many other things can get in the way of match fixtures, a cup run, European games, and good old British weather, so it was disappointing as well as annoying, a personal issue I know but still annoying.
There are, as redruth says, players who are a disgrace; but the large majority are not. And I can't agree that the players as such are responsible for the current situation. As redruth himself points out, it was Alan Sugar's fellow chairmen and other people in control of clubs and the honey pot who turned their backs on Sugar's proposal and ignored his warnings. The main reason for inflated salaries is that they are required to bring foreign managers and top class players from all over the world into the Premier League. Before the foundation of the PL, quality foreign players steered clear of English football, which, with the exception of one or two clubs, remained set in its ideas and tactically behind the times. Why swap Italy or Spain for London or Manchester, the Mediterranean climate for the English winter, and lay yourself open to a higher probability of career threatening injury? Even now, despite the inflated wages, the PL still doesn't manage to attract the really top class players in their prime. So the high wages are not really a sign of players' greed; they are a reflection of the Premier League's need to bring top players to this country to maintain the marketability of the "product".
Having lost my local team (Kings Lynn) to unsettled tax bills, it goes to show how deep the rot goes. The entire football pyramid is based on unsustainable finances whereby clubs have little choice but to spend beyond their means to survive at their level. At least NCFC have an apparently sound policy in terms of financial planning. Unlike our neighbours...
Of course I did forget to mention the stupid Bosman ruling. Another great contributor to players demands encouraging clubs to break their structures. I don't want to sound an Anglophile but I really do despair at the amount of players from outside of these shores who ply their trade here. I don't hear of Rolls Royce getting their apprentices from Poland because they are cheaper. And please don't tell me that players were slaves before Bosman. They were all dragged kicking and screaming into the profession I suppose.
As one of the 'older' posters on here, I'm just so glad that I can remember when football was played for the love of the game. When players would think nothing of playing twice a week on pitches that sometimes resembled cow fields. When a sliding tackle was a skill, when a player would only lay prostrate if he'd broken a limb, when your hero would chat to you and sign his autograph with pleasure. I know, 'jumpers for goal posts' and all that, but the only thing I miss about the old days is pissing up against the green slimey brick wall 'toilets' at the back of the River End terrace !
Can we also throw Football Agents into the mix here, a scourge on football today, not only because of the extortionate fees they are paid for their services, the discontent they create, and the mischief they create via press leaks when they wish to gain some sort of leverage for their clients. In the season 2008/2009 £70m was spent by clubs in the Premier League, last season £14.1m was spent by Championship clubs, huge amounts of money, if a player decides to use an agent they should be solely responsible for paying said agent, it shouldn't come from the clubs involved.
Spot on. All these eloquent players can't negotiate for themselves. What the hell is the PFA for. 70M would cover quite a few smaller clubs budgets. And agents take that money out of the game. We hear so much about Clarke Carlisle's massive IQ. Why doesn't he negotiate for them? I've just signed a 4 year deal but want to renegotiate it after 6 months. Fcuk off the lot of you. I would rather see inferior football for a while played by 16 year old just to bring this lot to its senses. And I've had a few pees up that awful bloody funny at the back of the Barclay. It didn't even have a roof on it. It had a direct pipeline to the Watneys Starlight vat.
