Whistle stop tour of all things football this Friday.
Firstly we have the announcement from the Government that they would be setting up a “Independent regulator” following a “fan led review”.
The review seems to have been led by fans from lower clubs, and in all honesty it just feels like a money grab.
The new regulator will have powers to impose a new financial settlement, which ueffectively means it can force the Premier League to share more money across the pyramid.
Every official on the TV or radio yesterday said “we need to see more money flowing down from the Premier League”. They spoke very little about protecting the traditions of clubs, and acting on what fans want.
The Premier League already filter down more money to the lower leagues than any other top flight league across Europe. I really don’t get why they are demanding more.
Currently, the Premier League “gives away” around 15% of revenue to football across the globe.
Yes, teams such as Southend are struggling financially. And we have seen the likes of Bury go under recently. But this is due to bad ownership, not because not enough money filters down from the top league.
If you gave a club like Southend an extra £1m from the Premier League, they would simply spend an additional £1.5m and be more in debt. And then demand more.
The proposals are just footballs equivalent of “tax the rich more, increase benefits”.
For some people, it does not matter how much they are paid in benefits. They will still be jobless. Still spend money on cigarettes and alcohol, still have sky tv and £50 phone bills, and still complain that they are living in poverty. Go and give these people an extra £500 a month and their lives don’t change.
They need education and encouragement. And football is the same.
Lower league clubs that get themselves into financial trouble often do so because they spend more than they receive. And if they received more, they’d spend more. It’s as simple as that.
Do I think we need better governance over our game? Yes. But consulting fans on badges, kit colours, stadium, etc should be separated from “increasing what the PL pay to lower leagues”.
Late last night news broke that the Bukayo Saka deal was close, with a salary of £10m a year mentioned.
This certainly felt like Saka’s people leaking a story to say “if he gets £10m a year, he will sign”. I guess the ball is in Arsenal’s court now.
Would I pay him £10m a year? Probably.
Saka probably Arsenal’s best player, one of the top 3 right wingers in England, one of the top 5 in the world. £200k a week does not feel too unreasonable for what he does.
Let’s get him secured to a nice long deal and then we can get back to concentrating on the title chase. Starting tomorrow against Leicester.
UTA
Keenos
She Wore A Yellow Ribbon 
Excellent point, Keenos. This is yet another example of government scope creep. Clubs in the lower leagues aren’t there as a result io some kind of class-led historical repression by those nasty aristos at the top. They have had exactly the same opportunity to develop themselves and succeed. Many of them are every bit as old if not older than the likes of Arsenal, Liverpool and United. That they haven’t become successful is the result the compounding of poor decisions by owners over the decades, not some dastardly class-driven plot. In the same way that sone businesses go on to become Microsoft and others reach a peak and either coast or decline. For that up what football clubs are- businesses. Unfortunately we live in world where the answer is always “ tax those those that have even more”. As you point out, all that will happen is they will spend it as soon as it comes in on sparkly things and be no better off. But then they will have become dependent in their fix of free cash. And there’s the point of the regulator- state control by backdoor means.
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