Someone better tell Burnley. Their issues come from massive overspending, not a lack of support, they were simply living beyond their means.
But why should they though? Why should football be any different to any other businesses when it comes to living beyond their means etc... We are all huge football fans hence why we spend our time on here, at games and following it etc but that sometimes leaves us blinkered. Why should a football club just keep not paying their bills and keep going knowing the EFL have rules to stop them going bust, would those rules extend to one people they owe money to who could be family run small businesses who are owed 1000s etc.? As I said it's awful to see clubs in trouble but I just can't see why it should be any different just because it's a football club and not a shop/pub/theme park/swimming pool/restaurant etc.
Clubs at the top (rich) end need the ecosystem of clubs at lower down (less rich) for the game to survive. An existence for professional football with just the top 16 or 20 super rich teams and nothing below is not sustainable. That's why football is different to shops and the other businesses you listed. Dennis has it right - clubs need to be governed more strongly so that they live within their means. FFP is a start but it is retrospective and not evenly enforced, the EFL must step up and improve the financial performance of their members so that their members don't go bust - it's a move that would advantage those same members. If that was in place, then allowing a bit more PL money to dribble down the lower leagues could be done with much more certainty that it wouldn't be squandered by wasters and crooks.
We don’t have massive clubs on our doorstep but averaged less in the PL than Bolton did during their 11 consecutive years there.
Burnley is nearer to Leeds than we are apart from the clubs like Man Utd and City being near. Yet they still get about a quarter of the town turning up. Maybe there are some but never seen a Burnley white. The long and the short of it is some places are more football towns than others.
that is so marginal. bolton's stadium holds about 3000 more than ours and we averaged more in our five years in the prem than they did in their last 8 seasons up there. on top of that, bolton had four top ten finishes, whereas we once managed 16th.
It just seems to me that the EPL want their cake and eat it. They want clubs in lower leagues to be there so they can loan out their academy players, and get paid by the lower league clubs for the privilege, they want the lower league clubs to be there for pick up talent. They hoover up a lot of young talent and put them in academy's, a large percentage of which never make it. These young players started by playing league football and progressing from there, which is vastly different than being cocooned in an academy set up. My point is that grassroots football, which is the bedrock of the game doesn't see these vast amounts of money in the game trickling down. EPL clubs IMO are in a position to help maintain the great game as a whole Football is. I'm a secretary of a junior football club, I have run teams in the past, and when I see great clubs like Bolton and Bury likely to disappear, then something needs to change. I agree clubs should be able to stand on their own 2 feet, but the increasing power of the EPL is damaging the lower leagues and something needs to be done about it. My suggestion of a levy was just one way, but I feel the FL's have to take more responsibility and be proactive in solving these problems for the great good of the game.
Either you didn’t read my post, or I didn’t explain myself very well. I’m not saying a club shouldn’t pay their bills knowing they can’t go bust, I’m saying there could be a system which meant they were able to pay their bills in the first place. There’s loads of ways of doing that (some examples being salary caps, updated FFP, a draft system like US sports etc) Those could also be supported by more finances coming down from the PL too. So it could be done if there was a will to do it. The shopping analogy simply doesn’t work for me though, and I do think football clubs are (or rather should be) different to a theme park. Football clubs are a part of a community and if the PL and FL don’t find a way to help some protect themselves then going by your system the natural long term conclusion is a very small elite group of professional teams and everyone else falling by the wayside. I’d rather that was avoided...and it could be
Just as a reminder the PL has some sort of payment system to support the lower leagues, though these days the amounts are pitiful compared to the money in the game.
The Solidarity Payments the Premier League pass down to the other leagues currently stands at £140m (not including the parachute payments, which are way more) and most of that money goes to Championship clubs.
140 million divided by the 72 FL clubs and then there are thousands of non league teams. Not a fan of the parachute payment system either as its just widenen the gulf between the have and have nits.
Would it stop owners overspending if clubs were not allowed to be limited companies. So if the club goes broke, the owners lose everything as well. I'm sure HMRC would approve.
How many the stadium holds is not relevant if you don’t fill it. Bolton’s highest crowd is more than Liverpool’s. They aren’t a bigger club because their ground at one time held more than Anfield did. All in a town half the size of Hull. We have never averaged over 25,000 in the PL. Bolton despite being surrounded by bigger clubs averaged over 25,000 for their first 5 seasons in the PL, over 26,000 for 2 of them. I heard people say our attendance dropped in the 4th season in the PL because the novelty had warn off. They averaged more than we did that season they got relegated. And averaged 3,000 more in their relegation season than we did in ours. We didn’t average more in our five seasons in the PL than they did in the last eight either. We averaged 23,528. 4 of Bolton’s last 8 seasons beat that, including the season they got relegated. 7 of their 11 seasons beat our average crowd in the PL.
We would never average more then 25,000 in the PL simply because we cannot get anymore then that in the ground.