An interesting article on the socialist nature of the Premier League and how it affects the quality, and the British club's chances of competing in Europe. http://www.capx.co/the-premier-league-has-been-chained-by-socialism/
You're right, this is an interesting article and needs a bit of pondering rather than a knee-jerk response. However the fact it's been written by an economist immediately puts me on the defensive, those guys just have no imagination, soul, spirit, or any other redeeming characteristics.
He contributes to The Centre for Policy Studies. Right Wing Think Tank. Champions economic free market principles. Co-founded by Margaret Thatcher.
Interesting, all be it fairly superficial This part sums up the writers complete misunderstanding of what 'fans' want though "fans will always prefer to watch the best quality football, and even games are a very distant second in their wish list.
Punish the success of Real Madrid and Barcelona, or actually make La Liga a real competition? Our domestic competition is already massively skewed by Champions League participation, the regular qualifiers have a huge financial advantage over the rest of the Premier League. Allowing those teams to negotiate their own TV deals would make an already not that competitive league even less competitive, the teams outside of the most successful would purely be there to provide cannon fodder. The idea that Getafe and Gijon should celebrate being there just to be hammered by the top two and then cheer when they win the Champions League because of the inequality they go along with is ludicrous. I'd argue there should be more socialism in the Premier League, share the TV wealth absolutely equally regardless of how many times the home side is featured as a live game, paying a side 5 million more than a team they finished one place higher than doesn't aid competition, it stifles it, and makes it more likely that the same scenario is repeated again. Boring. If Premier League teams fail to win the Champions League despite having twice the wealth, is having our Champions League qualifiers able to make even more money really the answer? Unlikely. In fact a league where everyone outside of the top four is pretty crap hinders the top teams, they need stiff competition week in week out so that they're in better shape when facing continental giants, rather than routinely beating the fodder and having to go up several gears to challenge Champions League sides. Making every team in the Premier League decent is a better assistance to our European qualifiers rather than having them be hopeless fodder just making up the numbers.
The assertion that 'Redistributing revenues from successful Premier League clubs to underperforming clubs has been extraordinarily damaging to competition' isn't really true, the TV revenue is only part of the revenue a club receives, there's still a massive disparity between the income of the top clubs and the bottom ones. Obviously, for the bottom clubs the TV money is a massive part of their income, but there's still a massive difference between the top and the bottom, last year Man United's income was £433m, whole Cardiff's was £83m.
I have just had a post deleted, the reason cited as "political." As the original post was quoting an article attributed to a contributor to the Centre for Policy Studies I think it is fair to examine the credentials of the so-called "centre." If you wish to delete my post, you must delete the whole thread, OLM.
I don't have to delete the whole thread. I'm more than happy to let people discuss the respective merits(or lack of) of the football systems in England and Spain, but just because it happens to use the word 'socialist' in the title, it can't be used as an excuse to make completely non-football related political posts. Politics are not allowed and political comments will be deleted. Ta, OLM
Not only happy to delete posts, you then censor my posts so that whatever I say appears out of context. You obviously don't know the difference between politics and economics. The censorship method ... is that of handing the job over to some frail and erring mortal man, and making him omnipotent on the assumption that his official status will make him infallible and omniscient. (George Bernard Shaw).
