[Albion] Conclusions from the ESL fiasco .......

[m@goo]

I'd like to see this become a catalyst for all that is not right in modern football. The astronomical fees for players, there must be a cap of some sort on fees, salaries and wages.

Then there's the prices clubs charge themselves. I don't have a huge problem with the ticket pricing but there is no excuse for the exorbitant pricing of products within the ground. Food and drink should be fairly and reasonably priced.

Same goes for merchandise. £42 for a child's replica shirt which they will grow out of within a few months is criminal.

If we all refused to buy any of this stuff for just one season then they would have to act.

 

[pigbite]

I know this is not a palatable thing to say, BUT, we as fans must also take some blame in this fiasco.

We as fans, and here at Brighton we are also guilty, want the best players to get us to a point where we are playing against the best players and teams possible. The only way that happens is by spending money. On here, we want a striker or two of pedigree to put the final pieces in the jigsaw..( we all know we are a very good team who struggle to convert our chances) those players , unless you are very lucky , cost money. Players in the top division are expensive from wages to transfer fees. You get a gem like lamptey every now and again, BUT we rely on Tony Bloom to keep us going. Manu rely on the Americans, city rely on the Qataris, Spurs rely on Levy. This is the game now and John Barnes is right

We need to remember. Football is played by a team, a football club is a business. However we may hark back to flat caps and goalposts for jumpers, it is NOT the working mans game anymore....it is the billionaires game and we as fans in the name of seeing our club progress have bought into it! I am not saying it is wrong, I am saying that is how it now is!

ESL was a challenge to UEFA and the PL...corrupt power mad organisations, and yet fans are saying we all won...no we didn’t. We stopped a challenge to EUFA and world football ( remember platini, blatter QATAR, Russia) but the problem still exists.

This will run and run.

There are fans on social media now twisting this saying their club were forced into it.

:MANU supporters club in China has 235million members. More than the entire population of most of Europe.

These people don’t care about us and we suck it all up. Their markets now are Africa,Asia, America..not Europe!

John Barnes was 100% right.

Rant over.

Agreed. I have made similar points on the big ESL thread.

I really hope this debacle allows some change as per Atilla's OP but my head says that we shall just revert to the status quo and what's worse is that I doubt that any owner of the any of PL clubs would have done differently to the top six given a similar set of circumstances.

 

[Pavilionaire]

I am pleased that the ESL baby was strangled at birth, but what it has highlighted is a whole hosts of systemic problems with the organisation of the game, domestically and in Europe.

The starting point is the lack of effectiveness of both the 'fit and proper' test and Financial Fair Play. There is also too many fixtures, a dysfunctional distribution of wealth, excessive player wages - the list goes on. And having a World Cup in Qatar in Christmas 2022 is not going to help either.

I am not optimistic that it will be possible to achieve meaningful change for the better; it would need a wholesale change in ownership with new owners signing up to a more restrictive regime. The UK is rubbish at sorting stuff like that.

 

[sydney]

It’s a good post although it raises the issue of how Barcelona or as an even better example - Real Madrid - are allowed to operate although they are totally financed by banks and a billion in debt to them.... maybe I need to check FFP in Europe

nearly a billion in debt between them..... yeah , somethings gotta give.

 

[Tom Hark Preston Park]

nearly a billion in debt between them..... yeah , somethings gotta give.

Football price correction coming as surely as cryptocurrency price correction

 

[sydney]

Football price correction coming as surely as cryptocurrency price correction

touche old boy , i have less invested in crypto than what i have in football .........into lithium and hydrogen stocks at the moment...

 

[Goldstone1976]

... I doubt that any owner of the any of PL clubs would have done differently to the top six given a similar set of circumstances.

Including TB?

I'm not so sure of that.

 

[Harry Wilson's tackle]

Forza Italia did a poll of fans of the 12 clubs to gauge receptivity to this league.

Interestingly, the Italian and Spanish clubs were more likely to have fans who were receptive to the idea. Amongst the English clubs, between 85-95% of the fans were against the idea, club by club.

Just one club - Juventus - showed a majority of fans in support of the idea (52%).

I'm left asking why, and the only conclusion I can reach is that fans of Real, Barca, Juve and the Milan clubs (I'll leave Atletico out of this at this stage) feel that their domestic leagues are broken. The chickens are coming home to roost. La Liga, with a few exceptions, is a two horse race every season. Perez is right - it's boring. But it is boring because they have stolen all the revenue from the other clubs.

Perez's answer is to go in search of fresh meat to feed on. He is not prepared to hand any of Real's cash back to other La Liga clubs, so the only answer is a new global league. Sadly, out teams would have just been fodder in that league. Real would have ended up buying their way to success in that league too.

It is interesting to note that the shadowy figures behind the ESL have not gone away. They have said that the project continues and they will keep probing and pushing. They will invest in a massive lobbying campaign now, influencing government ministers, pundits, media. Expect a few 'balanced' articles in The Sun, followed by a few players saying how it would have been great to play the best players in the world. Then we'll have a manager or two complaining about the quality of opposition in certain competitions. Shadowy stuff all done to undermine our leagues.

The answer when fighting money is to regulate hard and to put in place articles which no club can break. It's why the German model is so successful. No club will join, because they can't.

Our clubs - across the country - are cultural crown jewels. They need to be treated with the same reverence as listed buildings and protected for the good of their local communities and not put at risk for the sake of a global fanbase.

Very well put.

 

[father_and_son]

easy for a new company, not so for established one. for a start the value of the shares could be in their voting power, so you effect the value by any change. its possible but the existing holders would have to agree. league could set a rule for ownership change, then have balls to follow through in event a clubs current owners dont agree. then what happens if they kick them out? as the clubs are the league, unlikely they'll ever pass such a rule.

Any ruling on 50+1 could be tied to Fit & Proper.

Personally, I'm not completely sold on 50+1 as the panacea to everything, just replying to the original post. My personal view is "Fit and Proper" is the way to remove and ban for life the boards of all 12 clubs. Give them 18month to divest their entire holdings in European football, step down from all committees and leave the game for good.
This, as I see it, causes minimal impact on the club and the fans, but directly punishes the owner who pushed for this.

 

[father_and_son]

But what billionaire owner is going to give over control like that?!

And could/would voting rights be restricted to fans in England/Britain only? If fans around the world ran Man Utd, they would have approved of joining the European Super League!

As above, tie the ruling to some other hurdle.

And as for the fans. Easy enough to say the fan representive(s) on the ManU board must reside in an "M" postcode, must have held a season ticket for 10+ years and must themselves, meet some appropriate "fitness" tests to show they have clean criminal and financial records and are not being used a proxy for the Exec to vote through whatever they want. Liverpool Rep must come from an "L" postcode, etc etc

 

[father_and_son]

I am pleased that the ESL baby was strangled at birth, but what it has highlighted is a whole hosts of systemic problems with the organisation of the game, domestically and in Europe.

The starting point is the lack of effectiveness of both the 'fit and proper' test and Financial Fair Play. There is also too many fixtures, a dysfunctional distribution of wealth, excessive player wages - the list goes on. And having a World Cup in Qatar in Christmas 2022 is not going to help either.

I am not optimistic that it will be possible to achieve meaningful change for the better; it would need a wholesale change in ownership with new owners signing up to a more restrictive regime. The UK is rubbish at sorting stuff like that.

However, the Europeans are excellent at setting arbitrary rules (just not so good at following them). EUFA or FIFA could write/impose the rules and it would for EPL,EFL &/or FA to just implement (less chance of the EPL setting their own pointless rules then!).

 

[Worried Man Blues]

These owners are billionaires, they do not care what anyone, fans other managers think, they are just out to increase their wealth. They are not used to losing and they will be back with other proposals to get where they want to. Remember Archer did he give a toss what anyone thought, no. As GP said stay vigilant!

 

[Eeyore]

For as long as football clubs are willing to pay players £100k a week to warm the bench, I see little happening.

For as long as we have a government that slams greed, but is willing to slyly side with the idea of a billionaire suspected of human rights abuses and murder taking a control of a club in a politically sensitive area, I see little happening.

For as long as us fans moan about greed whilst getting irritated that our owner is reluctant to splurge £40m on a striker no-one has heard of, I see little happening.

For as long as balancing the books is regarded as being of 'no ambition', I see little happening.

For as long as fans are willing to bemoan the wealth of the Premier League, until they are part of it, I see nothing happening.

As I said in a previous thread, the English do hypocrisy very well. I should now, I am English, I am a hypocrite.

 

[Return of the Rev]

51% would be ideal but I think football is doomed hence have not put a penny into the pro game for years, it's a pig fest tbh.

 

[pigbite]

Including TB?

I'm not so sure of that.

At the moment I would 100% say he would not and I was encouraged by the candour of the club statement.

I think what's difficult to gauge is how any chairman may be if in the position of being in a club like Liverpool, Man U, Man City. If Brighton were a powerhouse like them, used to success at league and European level with a worldwide fan base then the circumstances are different. I am sure a man like TB would not be pushing for something like the ESL but if the clubs you consider peers are all moving to into a group where they can maximise their revenue streams and you perceive a risk being left behind then the parameters are very different. If a chairman ends up rationalising why a move would be good to himself then it's also much easier to also reason why doubters can be convinced and also accept as collateral damage those that simply will never agree.

If chairmen and financial directors were always aligned with the core interests of fans then they would already have wage caps, far lower ticket prices and so on. We'd already mirror the German model. TB will always be an absolute saint in the eyes of all Brighton fans but the way the club already operates shows that it functions as a business and in a world of commercial priorities. It's not to suggest decisions are taken lightly or with a cynical view of the fans but it in a battle between fan priorities and commercial necessity then it's going to be the latter that wins. Ultimately I don't know the man at all, let alone enough to know how he would react were he to be in the shoes of the men at the top of the gang of six.

 

[Wozza]

As above, tie the ruling to some other hurdle.

And as for the fans. Easy enough to say the fan representive(s) on the ManU board must reside in an "M" postcode, must have held a season ticket for 10+ years and must themselves, meet some appropriate "fitness" tests to show they have clean criminal and financial records and are not being used a proxy for the Exec to vote through whatever they want. Liverpool Rep must come from an "L" postcode, etc etc

German clubs have members (with a majority vote), not just a single fan on the board!

(As an aside, not sure a "Liverpool rep" from the L postcode would be representative of much given that fewer than 6000 of Liverpool's season ticket holders actually live in the city!)

 

[oldboyroy]

Conclusions are that irrespective of how big the so called big 6 are, nothing can take football away from the fans. Fan power won the day and even though we mock the supporters of the billions owners have used to buy titles, the fans unite as 1 when it matters.

 

[Hugo Rune]

Fan power destroyed the ESL in a day. I don’t say this often, but hats off to the Chelsea

Whilst we all like to pat fans on the back and big up fan power, let’s not forget the role of other people and organisations that contributed to the fall of the ESL including the ‘other 14’, politicians, pundits, princes, The FA, The Premier League, German clubs, French clubs, Danish clubs, Belgium clubs, Dutch clubs, Turkish clubs, Portuguese clubs, UEFA, & The Media, James Corden & Cantona.

It wasn’t the Chelsea fans that made this happen, that was the tiny straw that broke the Camel’s back after two days of uncompromising attacks from pretty much everywhere.

 

[Beach Hut]

We didn't need to, it was already over, thanks to the universal revulsion. If this had gone on for a week I reckon the call for a boycott of the 'Big Six' would have been everywhere across the country.

You advised we should boycott the game, ergo we would never have even travelled.

Chelsea pulled out around an hour before the game so you suggestion was totally misguided and ultimately very wrong as we would have no doubt been punished for boycotting the game.

Another incredible u turn attempt from the one who whelched on that bet with a Cardiff fan.

 

[clapham_gull]

Whilst we all like to pat fans on the back and big up fan power, let’s not forget the role of other people and organisations that contributed to the fall of the ESL including the ‘other 14’, politicians, pundits, princes, The FA, The Premier League, German clubs, French clubs, Danish clubs, Belgium clubs, Dutch clubs, Turkish clubs, Portuguese clubs, UEFA, & The Media, James Corden & Cantona.

It wasn’t the Chelsea fans that made this happen, that was the tiny straw that broke the Camel’s back after two days of uncompromising attacks from pretty much everywhere.

Let's be honest and highlight Sky's particular role, I know you mentioned the media. Important to note they are now under new ownership.

We can be cynical and suggest that of course they had an agenda to protect the status quo. However commercially they also have an agenda to grab the rights to any new league. More importantly right they need to keep good relationships with the clubs and authorities.

Surprisingly they turned off all sort of editorial control and let the ex-players comprehensively rip the "Legacy Six" to pieces.

It made remarkable television and undoubtedly stirred up the passion of many many fans.