Sorry but that is nothing other than a typiccal negative English comment. We have countless players on the 'fringe' of the England team who play a big role in top PL sides. Look at the likes of Adam Johnson and Aaron Lennon, absolute quality players for their clubs but can't get near the England first team because of Walcott, Milner and Downing. We might not have one of the top 3 or 4 very best players, but we have a lot of strength in depth beyond that.
I'm not sure that administration should be considered a "tool for businesses". Administration is an alternative to liquidation, but it is still a form of insolvency. Granted the aim of administration is to trade out of trouble, but it very rarely works and winding up usually follows
...or too many clubs?? We have 4 professional leagues consisting of 92 clubs, plus the myriad of non-leagues. The rest of Europe (possibly) has about 2 divisions??
Milner's an OK-ish player, Johnson not bad, Lennon average... but Walcott and Downing? Definitely not.
The facts don't tell you the causes though. Simply saying, as is implied by comparing the statistics that we should adopt the German ownership model because they haven't had an administration is bollocks. Now notice the plural CAUSES, there is no single cause to explain the differences. Firstly there are several clubs in Germany scraping by who are running out of things to sell, give it a few years and they'll start going into admin as well, at that point we could well be saying that in a 5 year period we've got a better record than them. Secondly, we have a **** load more professional clubs to support in this country. It is inevitable that our lower league sides are going to be struggling for money and more likely to go into admin than the 3rd and 4th tier semi-pro/amateur sides in Germany, by not being professional clubs their costs are much lower and easier to cover. Thinking about it I wonder how England compares to Scotland in the last 20 years...
Here's a report on the German model, for anyone who's interested, only 52% of their income goes on wages and their ticket prices are half those of the Premier League. http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201011/cmselect/cmcumeds/writev/792/fg84.htm I don't think it's fair to say that the German terms are **** as a result of this model, after all, they've got two teams in the last 16 of the Champions League, the same as us. They obviously haven't been as successful as English teams in the last few years, but I think '****' is overstating it and their national team is considerably more successful. The point raised about how many league clubs we have, compared to our population, is obviously a valid one, this is always likely to give us a higher number of administrations. I haven't actually looked at the comparison between England and Scotland, but I suspect that the picture there is very similar to here, if not worse. Having done a quick bit of googling, there seem to be several teams with financial difficulties at the moment, but the numbers are tiny compared to here, they seems to think an annual shortfall of a few million is a big problem(probably because there's no flexibility at all in their rules and with any sort of deficit, you can be refused a license to play in the league). I found one club who were refused a license to join the league due to financial irregularities and the club was completely disbanded, but I can't find any club that went into administration(I don't even know if they have administration in the same way that we do, though they have something similar for limited companies, so I assume they do). I've emailed a German mate of mine, a Frankfurt fan, to ask him how many clubs in Germany have ever gone into admin or closed down.
I have received a reply from my German mate, it seems that in Germany they don't have administration in the same way that we do, which is probably the reason there's been no administrations. They have very strict financial rules, any club that doesn't meet them loses their license and is automatically relegated(or they can get away with a points deduction if it's a minor offence). Any club that goes bust loses it's league status completely and has to start at the bottom of the non-league tree and work their way back up again. There have been about a dozen clubs that have been refused licenses and were relegated from Bundesliga one and two, as a result of financial issues. One club ceased to exist and four or five of the others are still playing in regional leagues, having never made it back to the national league, the others have worked their way back. The amounts involved are generally very small, most of the clubs relegated for financial issues had exceeded the debt limits by less than £5m, the notable exception being Borussia Dortmund, who somehow managed to run up a total debt of £140m.
lol can I go back to my cynical comments about the motivation of the compilers now? They may as well said the German system has produced 48 Bundesliga champions where as the English system has produced none.
Those two aren't my favourites, but they seem to be Capello's faves which is why I said they are keeping the others out of the team. Also Walcott has been quality for Arsenal this season and Downing was very good against Sweden recently. Just sayin'. The point is we have a lot of talented players of that sort of ilk.
