By Tony Attwood
Before Manchester City started to win the League more often than they didn’t (seven times starting in 2011/12) we had had runs of certain clubs winning a lot. Ironically (from a geographic point of view) one of these runs was Manchester United (13 times between 1992/3 and 2012/13). Another was Liverpool (ten times between 73 and 88) Even Arsenal had a run (five titles between 1931 and 1938 – which could have gone on longer had it not been something cropping up in Germany.)
But the ManC dominance seems different. And indeed the normally staid Telegraph seems to find that a possibility as they present the headline “This is a civil war that could tear English football apart.”
And I noticed that because although there have been a lot of “experts” trying to unravel what the vast number of pages of legal documentation in the recent case actually means there are one or two publications, like the Telegraph, which are suggesting that this it is not just this ManC dominance, but rather that ManC’s determination to take anything they don’t fancy to court, could have major implications for football. as we know it.
For it is clear that part of the ManC defensive tactic is to run up legal costs – costs which, until someone stops them, they can readily afford but which are a drain on any and every club that has to fund a fight against them.
But attached to this is a curiously misleading view, summarised by a sentence from that Telegraphian report to the effect that “What was once a competition fraught with jeopardy risks becoming an entrenched duopoly.”
Now one might think at this point – where is the duopoly here? OK for the last two seasons Arsenal have come second, but does that make this a duopoly?
Not really. There is Manchester United who seem utterly convinced that if they keep spending money on players then in the end by pure chance if nothing else they might well win something some day. And there is Chelsea where they had the jolly idea of paying anything that was asked for the best players they could see, and then getting around FFP regulations by putting those players on eight-year contracts. Those contracts still exist, but the League quickly changed the rules, so that the cost of a player is written down only to a maximum of five years.
But underlying all this is the growing notion in the media that actually the destruction of competition in the French league such that Paris St Germain can win the league nine times since 2012/13 is a jolly good idea.
Yet watching PSG play at Arsenal stadium recently gave those of us there an extra reason to think why this was not so good, for surely never has there been an away support contingent less interested in a match than their supporters. They were there to be a show, as they went through their ceaseless choreographed routines led by the cheerleaders at the front. It had nothing to do with the match, and didn’t even stop when Arsenal scored. As far as I could see from my seat, which by chance offered a fine view of them, the routines never varied and had nothing to do with the game.
And the point is that if concealed payments were made by Sheikh Mansour but disguised as sponsorship revenue, what is anyone ever going to be able to do about it if all that is left is supporters making their own show?
For it isn’t that ManC have got away with things so far by working their way around the rules, and finding a possible double meaning here, or a contradictory sub-clause there, it is that the fact that they challenge the whole principle of making sponsorship payments of the market rate, rather than any amount of money that the club wants.
Now as the Telegraph says as it looks over the wreckage of the notion of some sort of balance in the league with income just coming from football itself, “The fear is that they [the Premier League] have lost not just the battle, but the war as well.”
And the interesting point is that this is where the discussion stops. No one but no one (except I think Untold) is debating “so if that is right – what happens next?”
In one sense the answer is obvious. If ManC win with a set of appeals, and/or they have the majority of the 115 charges against them set aside, they then have control of the Premier League and can do pretty much as they wish, just as PSG can do in France. Meanwhile the Premier League has already started to look like the German and French leagues with one team winning most of the time, and is actually on the edge of making the Spanish league look competitive by comparison (which of course it isn’t).
So the last bastion of true competition among the big league falls. But it doesn’t have to, because the rest of the clubs could do what others in Europe have been too afraid to do: start a new League without the clubs that always win.
It’s a radical idea, but they could do it. That could leave PSG,, ManC, and the other serial winners to have their own little battle. Maybe six clubs, maybe eight. The rest of us could then once again watch really competitive football.
Hopefully the Premier League minus any club that supports the manky115 philosophy is being worked on right now . I can’t come soon enough and if the
ProGerryManderingOrg aka Manky115 match fixers get the heave ho , then bring it on.
Firkin good idea. a league without Citeh and the chavs, with Newcastle to follow?
“I” in my botched comment needs to be ammended to “it” . On second thoughts let’s leave the unintended humour in there.
In economic terms – chiefly broadcast income – the Premier League stands above all other leagues and for that reason alone any football owner whose club is in the Premier League should think long and hard before choosing to set up a new league.
Football has moved on since the Premier League was establilshed and the then big players maybe aren’t as big as they once were. Any new league started by those owners who have invested most in crying foul about the actions of MCFC’s owners might not get the result they are hoping for.
If the UAE and Saudi Arabia jointly invested in funding the Premier League, I think the new league would ultimately fail or become the new Championship.
Imagine a Premier League with funding far in excess of anything the new league could offer; further imagine a set of robust rules that are procedurally applied fairly to all. And what if they decided to fund the current lower league more fairly, where would that leave the new league and the teams within it?
I guess, in summary, I’d say, “Be careful what you wish for!”.
We wouldn’t even be talking about this if Man City and their ilk accepted that unlimited funding wasn’t acceptable, or even conducive with a competitive competition, but they wont. And they wont because their model is to win at all cost, no mater what the consequences are.
This doesn’t mean no external funding, loans, sponsorship, just levels of .
But Man City simply will not accept any restrictions. If anyone appears to threaten their domination they want the latitude to spend absolutely anything they want. They don’t want competition, they want submission.
They not only want to have all that, they want to have it without absolutely any risk.
Their fans bang on about red cartels and the like, but it’s nonsense.
Arsenal have gone 20 years without a title. Liverpool went similar. Man Utd also. They even got relegated. Some cartel that.
Man Utd are a very rich club for a reason. They won a lot of trophy’s and marketed their club brilliantly across the World.
Liverpool similar.
Arsenal are a well ran club but we have had poor runs. We are certainly not protected by a cartel.
We get it wrong, we go down.
Yes those three clubs are wealthy, but they became wealthy on the back of success created by being well ran.
Man City were as big as the three of us back in the late 60’s early 70’s but messed up. They went through 20 managers in 40 years, that’s hardly anyone else’s fault.
But labelling anyone else who ran their clubs better as members of some cartel is just some twisted way of justifying what they are doing..
Over the last 20 years, as we first built the stadium, which resulted in 10 years of zero nett spend on players, then 10 years of trying to re-establish ourselves at the top, I never noticed any cartel coming to our rescue. What I did notice was every man and his dog laughing at us.
Off topic
Saka has come off injured early in the second half of the England match. He was feeling the back of his thigh so could be a hamstring issue.
F***ing internationals.
If the claim that MCFC and their ilk do not accept constraints on unlimited funding is accurate, I still fail to understand how it benefits Arsenal, Liverpool, Tottenham and Man Utd, or their owners, to leave the Premier League and set up a new league that could be at a huge financial disadvantage to the league MCFC and its ilk are in.
Any chance of attempting to control MCFC’s unlimited funding, and those of its ilk would be completely lost. I don’t know about you but, for those of you of a certain age with political leanings, I can’t help thinking of parallels between this new league and the creation of the SDP – for Arsenal, Liverpool, Tottenham and Man Utd. read David Owen, Roy Jenkins, Bill Rodgers and Shirley Williams.
Maybe I’m missing something, and hopefully someone can explain it to me, but setting up a new league seems like economic suicide and that’s surely not what the club owners want.
Tim
I said:
“We wouldn’t even be talking about this if Man City and their ilk accepted that unlimited funding wasn’t acceptable”
To which you alluded with:
“If the claim that MCFC and their ilk do not accept constraints on unlimited funding is accurate,”
At want point did I suggest leaving the Premier League would be a good thing? I didn’t. I don’t know if it would or wouldn’t. I don’t know the answer. Well I do, and it’s for Man City’s owners to accept that ultimately external funding is going to destroy the PL.
There is nothing wrong with some external investment, it has happened many times before. But there has to be limits and those limits have to be aligned to something. Whether it be club turnover, value, income, I don’t know.
What I do know, and I have been saying this for years, allowing unlimited external investment will ruin the game, and so it is turning out.