Johnny Fever
New member
- Jan 11, 2010
- 212
This is Tim Rich writing in today's Independent about Karl Oyston, the chairman at Blackpool :
....he had not enjoyed the months that followed their play-off victory at Wembley. Blackpool had prepared for the Premier League by doing virtually nothing until last week when half a dozen footballers, ranging from a slightly well known to the completely obscure, arrived at Bloomfield Road, which on the afternoon the Premier Leaue kicked off was a building site.
Oyston's reluctance to sanction any salary higher than £500,000 a year, which would pay for 3 weeks of Yaya Toure, had played a major role in the logjam, although anyone watching the fire sale of players on Humberside as Hull struggle to adjust to their new realities might understand why Oyston called it "not a nightmare but a steep learning curve", with the sort of curves they have on the Avalanche ride on Blackpool's Pleasure Beach.
"I expected the landscape to be different," he said, "I expected the way people behaved to be different and I have been very disappointed in the way some agents have conducted themselves. My offer to step down is still there. I have told the board that, and I am very serious because I am not sure that I have got the right approach for this division and the more I talk to other Premier League clubs the more I realise I am a lone voice. There was some accord with the things I said in the Championship but there does not appear to be any in this division."
Now call him a bit naive if you like, but I think that to get to that level of disillusionment so quickly is telling us a lot about the absolute bear pit that the Premier League has become. Its a world of it's own, and a world gone mad.
Teams like Blackpool are a benchmark for every other lower league club and fans will say that if they can do it then so can we.
What a growing number of fans are also saying is that promotion to the top flight is a poisoned chalise and will more than likely drag your club into a money game that it's impossible to play.
The conflict is in the fact that we support our team to win, not lose, and we want success and promotion because it's exciting. Then one or two seasons later, if you're lucky, it becomes impossible to compete and it's relegation (Burnley) or relegation and financial problems(Hull) or almost complete melt-down (Portsmouth).
I'm not sure, as supporters, this is an easy one to embrace at the moment. It seems that the celebration of success is so short lived that it might hardly be worth it soon.
....he had not enjoyed the months that followed their play-off victory at Wembley. Blackpool had prepared for the Premier League by doing virtually nothing until last week when half a dozen footballers, ranging from a slightly well known to the completely obscure, arrived at Bloomfield Road, which on the afternoon the Premier Leaue kicked off was a building site.
Oyston's reluctance to sanction any salary higher than £500,000 a year, which would pay for 3 weeks of Yaya Toure, had played a major role in the logjam, although anyone watching the fire sale of players on Humberside as Hull struggle to adjust to their new realities might understand why Oyston called it "not a nightmare but a steep learning curve", with the sort of curves they have on the Avalanche ride on Blackpool's Pleasure Beach.
"I expected the landscape to be different," he said, "I expected the way people behaved to be different and I have been very disappointed in the way some agents have conducted themselves. My offer to step down is still there. I have told the board that, and I am very serious because I am not sure that I have got the right approach for this division and the more I talk to other Premier League clubs the more I realise I am a lone voice. There was some accord with the things I said in the Championship but there does not appear to be any in this division."
Now call him a bit naive if you like, but I think that to get to that level of disillusionment so quickly is telling us a lot about the absolute bear pit that the Premier League has become. Its a world of it's own, and a world gone mad.
Teams like Blackpool are a benchmark for every other lower league club and fans will say that if they can do it then so can we.
What a growing number of fans are also saying is that promotion to the top flight is a poisoned chalise and will more than likely drag your club into a money game that it's impossible to play.
The conflict is in the fact that we support our team to win, not lose, and we want success and promotion because it's exciting. Then one or two seasons later, if you're lucky, it becomes impossible to compete and it's relegation (Burnley) or relegation and financial problems(Hull) or almost complete melt-down (Portsmouth).
I'm not sure, as supporters, this is an easy one to embrace at the moment. It seems that the celebration of success is so short lived that it might hardly be worth it soon.
