Great article in today's Independent - discuss - agree or disagree?

[Eeyore]

It was a NSC throw away comment,worth a laugh to me anyway,but in all seriousness life changed when we could all shop on sundays.

Oh sorry, my mind is getting ready for the serious analytical processes of the week. Time for bed, me thinks.

 

[GoldWithFalmer]

Oh sorry, my mind is getting ready for the serious analytical processes of the week. Time for bed, me thinks.

Indirectly it probably did change football,but like you say it's too late in the day to say how..

 

[beorhthelm]

"Too many modern grounds have been transformed into Disneyland for dullards".

This is spot on and the best piece of writing in the piece and it's sad and frustrating. We're not talking about reintroducing piss stinking toilets that are just brick walls and mandatory fighting and death by crushing.

arent you? what are you suggesting be built for football that is affordable and doesnt require £100m to be built, and that cost be recouped? i found the article sad and frustrating as it seem to have started with a point to make, trapsed through a lot of old ground and failed to get to any destination. the quote you higlight did stick in my mind for similar reason, i wondered if the author ever been to "proper" lower league cowshed.

 

[seagurn]

Do you think you are maybe being hyper-sensitive?!

possibly lol

 

[brighton bluenose]

It was a NSC throw away comment,worth a laugh to me anyway,but in all seriousness life changed when we could all shop on sundays.

............but bringing in all-day Sunday drinking was the Devils work!!

 

[drew]

Just romantic clap trap. You would have to get all football fans to cancel sky sports and that isn't going to happen. Most moan about the sky high salaries of the players they are watching every Sunday afternoon without realising the irony!

 

[Seagull on the wing]

Just romantic clap trap. You would have to get all football fans to cancel sky sports and that isn't going to happen. Most moan about the sky high salaries of the players they are watching every Sunday afternoon without realising the irony!

By how much has Sky put up their prices this week?

 

[drew]

By how much has Sky put up their prices this week?

I don't subscribe so wouldn't know.

 

[teaboy]

arent you? what are you suggesting be built for football that is affordable and doesnt require £100m to be built, and that cost be recouped? i found the article sad and frustrating as it seem to have started with a point to make, trapsed through a lot of old ground and failed to get to any destination. the quote you higlight did stick in my mind for similar reason, i wondered if the author ever been to "proper" lower league cowshed.

It isn't the stadiums that cost the ridiculous money but the players, both in terms of transfer fees and wages. The £100m stadium costs will be recouped in time, the wages given to pretty average players almost certainly won't be.

The issue is one of supply and demand. With England there's clearly not the demand for high priced tickets at Wembley. The demand for tickets at club level at current prices has probably peaked too. Those supplying the goods need to adjust to their customers' demands, not the other way round.

 

[Guinness Boy]

arent you? what are you suggesting be built for football that is affordable and doesnt require £100m to be built, and that cost be recouped? i found the article sad and frustrating as it seem to have started with a point to make, trapsed through a lot of old ground and failed to get to any destination. the quote you higlight did stick in my mind for similar reason, i wondered if the author ever been to "proper" lower league cowshed.

So the below article may be four years old but it tells you exactly how modern football could be cheap, entertaining and atmosphere filled with the bonus of a decent national side. Sadly the FA and big business have taken English football so far down the wrong path that it's all but irreversible. If only there were clubs out there determined to balance the books and find their talent through academies and decent coaching. If only you could read about how well German football works in magazines, news papers, blogs and fanzines. Oh wait...

http://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2010/apr/11/bundesliga-premier-league

 

[beorhthelm]

It isn't the stadiums that cost the ridiculous money but the players, both in terms of transfer fees and wages. The £100m stadium costs will be recouped in time, the wages given to pretty average players almost certainly won't be.

wages is a well covered topic, here the point was (i think) about corporates creating a sterile environment with the FA having too many England games to pay for a staduim no one likes. i dont think the number of England games has actually changed. if we dont want "disneyland for dullards" stadiums, what do we want? modernised sheds? i sure one could build an old style ground for a fraction of the prices modern stadia cost, but people want facilities. nice grounds cost nice £.

So the below article may be four years old but it tells you exactly how modern football could be cheap, entertaining and atmosphere filled with the bonus of a decent national side.

as great as the german model seems to be, what doesnt that article tell us? not rhetorical, i dont know, this is the thing that keeps getting missed in comparisons to Germany: we aint Germany. they've less than half the professional teams and when it was suggested we follow their example of reserve teams in the third teir everyone derided Dyke as an idiot. who owns and pays for the stadiums out there, who owns and runs the clubs? how much planning hurdles do they jump through to get a stadium or transport to and from? in short they do things differently, we can just expect to read a Guardian article and think they have the answer. to follow the German example would take time, a decade, a generation. and seems to me, as much as people say otherwise, we dont wnat to wait as we see from the bedwetting over our last summer and replicated at clubs across the land.

 

[father_and_son]

The fans were royally crapped on during the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s as the Goldstone declined and fell. The replacement regime under Knight was more forthcoming and fan friendly, although I suspect that the current regime is way more corporate and customer orientated, and fan friendly only insofar as it can take your £.

The days of the club being an integral part of the community disappeared with the maximum wage.

I am assuming you are referring specifically to the Archer years so apologies I'm replying to a specific with a generalisation!


Football fans did themselves a MASSIVE disservice in the 80s & 90s by allowing a significantly sized minority to define what it meant to be a football fan.... and it wasn't a good thing to be.

I worked in/ran pubs from the late 80s to the mid 90s and saturday afternoon/evening became synonymous with all the decent folk giving the city centre pubs a wide berth. Win, Lose or Draw, the "Blades Business Club" (I lived in Sheffield at the time) would descend on what was universally acknowledged as a Blades pub, early after a home game, later if they played away. Within an hour, the floor would be awash with beer, blood and broken glass and the old bill would be there in numbers. And this was "their" pub.

A whole generation was driven away from the game and only a corporate sanitisation of the match day experience could persuade this lost generation to come back. The current match day experience, bemoaned by so many, is a direct result of damage done by the "so called" fans of the past because, like shitty areas of a city, gentrification is inevitable once the suits see something undervalued by its residents.

 

[teaboy]

wages is a well covered topic, here the point was (i think) about corporates creating a sterile environment with the FA having too many England games to pay for a staduim no one likes. i dont think the number of England games has actually changed. if we dont want "disneyland for dullards" stadiums, what do we want? modernised sheds? i sure one could build an old style ground for a fraction of the prices modern stadia cost, but people want facilities. nice grounds cost nice £.

If "people want facilities" why are people not going to Wembley for these facilities? Why are there campaigns for a return of standing (albeit modernised) at top-level grounds? I'm not suggesting that EVERYONE wants to stand, or that it's appropriate everywhere, but the attitude that 'everyone wants facilities' has brought us to where we are. People want the ability to choose the facilities. People want different grounds to be, well, different. Identikit stadiums = identikit experience = no real point in going anywhere.

Wembley should never have been rebuilt - it's in a ridiculous place that's inaccessible from pretty much everywhere. The National Stadium should've been the Olympic Stadium at Stratford, where the range of uses is bigger, transport better, and was going to be built anyway. But this country doesn't seem to do sensible very often...

as great as the german model seems to be, what doesnt that article tell us? not rhetorical, i dont know, this is the thing that keeps getting missed in comparisons to Germany: we aint Germany. they've less than half the professional teams and when it was suggested we follow their example of reserve teams in the third teir everyone derided Dyke as an idiot. who owns and pays for the stadiums out there, who owns and runs the clubs? how much planning hurdles do they jump through to get a stadium or transport to and from? in short they do things differently, we can just expect to read a Guardian article and think they have the answer. to follow the German example would take time, a decade, a generation. and seems to me, as much as people say otherwise, we dont wnat to wait as we see from the bedwetting over our last summer and replicated at clubs across the land.

Yes, it would take a decade. That would mean in 10 years time we'd be 10 years behind Germany. To continue along the failed path we're on will see us 20 years behind them in 10 years time, and in a much better position to close the gap.

 

[teaboy]

A whole generation was driven away from the game and only a corporate sanitisation of the match day experience could persuade this lost generation to come back. The current match day experience, bemoaned by so many, is a direct result of damage done by the "so called" fans of the past because, like shitty areas of a city, gentrification is inevitable once the suits see something undervalued by its residents.

While I agree to an extent, the status quo is also driving people away from the game either through unaffordability or through the sanitisation of experience. One of the odd things about football is that "brand" loyalty is held above pretty much everything else by the "customers". Quality of product is overlooked by the best customers. Those that are pushed away from one brand due to costs (or any other reason) very rarely go to a different brand. Customers that want a different experience cannot go anywhere else - it isn't the same as any other product or service.

 

[beorhthelm]

If "people want facilities" why are people not going to Wembley for these facilities?

because they dont want to pay top £ for them. i know, thats not very sensible, but thats the world, or at least the UK today. we want a strong national team but let the clubs lead on youth dvelopment; we want players in, but dont want the club to go broke; we want free wifi in evey corner; cheaper beer and pies and a 12 car train to run every 5 minutes for an hour the final whistle. for free of course. some people, maybe not you, go for a "day out". some would be content to have a cowshed as long as it has a roof, proper toilets (no one *wants* the old piss-in-a-gutter facilities) and the football is good. agree about Wembley, but it would never happen. to many conflicting or vested interest. because we arent very sensible.

 

[life on mars 73]

Not sure that people are being driven away from the game - attendances are far higher now than they were in the mid 1980's. But the make-up of the crowds are very different. Far more kids, women, families than there used to be. Far fewer thugs and scruffy old blokes. The hoolies have been driven out by cctv and high-intensity police action. The poor old fellas just can't afford it, they've been priced out, and don't feel they belong in this shiny new world.

 

[Westdene Seagull]

The best part of the page is the swipe at the Champions of Europe at the bottom

 

[father_and_son]

The fans were royally crapped on during the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s as the Goldstone declined and fell. The replacement regime under Knight was more forthcoming and fan friendly, although I suspect that the current regime is way more corporate and customer orientated, and fan friendly only insofar as it can take your £.

The days of the club being an integral part of the community disappeared with the maximum wage.

While I agree to an extent, the status quo is also driving people away from the game either through unaffordability or through the sanitisation of experience. One of the odd things about football is that "brand" loyalty is held above pretty much everything else by the "customers". Quality of product is overlooked by the best customers. Those that are pushed away from one brand due to costs (or any other reason) very rarely go to a different brand. Customers that want a different experience cannot go anywhere else - it isn't the same as any other product or service.

I agree with you also... to an extent.

I agree. Fans do not change their allegiance often and, if it does happen, it's almost always as a result of a significant move to another part of the country and takes years for the transition to occur.

The early nineties saw surges in support for various sports which, I think was down to the customers leaving the product (as well as the brand). Rugby saw a huge rise in popularity and there are many among my generation who are not "natural" egg chasers but were driven from football by the associated stigma. I recall American Football was big over here at the time and even Baseball was on mainstream telly. Many UK cities suddenly had Ice Hockey and Basketball teams which seem to have since disappeared as football has rehabilitated itself. None of these other sports were huge I admit, but I'm sure the vast majority of their supporters would have been football fans were the match day experience like it is now.

 

[teaboy]

because they dont want to pay top £ for them. i know, thats not very sensible, but thats the world, or at least the UK today. we want a strong national team but let the clubs lead on youth dvelopment; we want players in, but dont want the club to go broke; we want free wifi in evey corner; cheaper beer and pies and a 12 car train to run every 5 minutes for an hour the final whistle. for free of course. some people, maybe not you, go for a "day out". some would be content to have a cowshed as long as it has a roof, proper toilets (no one *wants* the old piss-in-a-gutter facilities) and the football is good. agree about Wembley, but it would never happen. to many conflicting or vested interest. because we arent very sensible.

I suppose it depends how you want to run the sport/club really. Is football a sport, or a tourist attraction? If it's a tourist attraction then you make it shiny with wi-fi and a 'day out' sort of event, with tourist attraction prices because if these individuals don't come back they'll be replaced by other tourists (which is great). If it's a sport you focus on that, and those that want to come will do so week-in, week-out, pretty much regardless (which is great). What you can't do is have it both ways round - you cannot charge people 'once a year' prices every week.

The FA seriously need to look at the point of their existence. If their aim is to have a strong national team capable of winning the World Cup, which World Cup are they aiming for? What is their plan to create a team that can do it? What are they putting in place to make it happen, and when? How are they going to measure the intermediate success to see whether they're on track or not? If their purpose is something else, what is it?

Why is football trying to have its cake and eat it? And why are we surprised when this fails every 4 years?!!

 

[Mo Gosfield]

It isn't the stadiums that cost the ridiculous money but the players, both in terms of transfer fees and wages. The £100m stadium costs will be recouped in time, the wages given to pretty average players almost certainly won't be.

In years to come, people will look back on this era and realise that football had the opportunity to strengthen and safeguard its future throughout the pyramid for a very long time.
That opportunity is being pissed up the wall and the game is paying its players a disproportionate amount of money for the results that they achieve. Any individual earning £5million a year irrespective of achievement, however self-motivated, will not have the same drive as an individual earning £20k per year basic with an opportunity to double their salary through results.
25-30 years ago BHA players were on approx £400 per week with the opportunity to double their money with win bonus. Where has that gone in football now? There just seems to be the ethos that they pay whatever the agent and player asks. Is Wayne Rooney producing anything better than when he was on £80k per week. He successfully held his club to ransom twice and saw his money treble in about four years. Nice work if you can get it.
In all other business environments, an industry paying out more than two-thirds of its income in wages would be doomed to very quick failure. Football is being kept afloat artificially, through the largesse of incredibly wealthy owners and broadcasters who want subscribers. If either or both those things change, football will come crashing down like a pack of cards.