I'm playing Devil's Advocate to an extent and my tin hat is at the ready but here goes...!
How many people posting on this thread have moaned on other threads on here about Roland's refusal to pay more than £5k a week in wages? (A quarter of a million pounds a year lest we forget). How many people have said Roland should just give Taylor the £20k a week Brentford supposedly offered? This at a time when we are what, £40/£50 million pounds in debt?
You can blame Sky, the Premier League, the unfair distribution of TV money whatever for the mess many clubs, including our own, are in. But the fact is players' wages are in most cases totally out of kilter to a club's income. (Indeed, wasn't this what Bury were supposed to have been doing, paying ludicrous wages?) Until those wages are reduced, clubs will not be sustainable to run unless they have a billionaire (not millionaire) or Sovereign state behind them.
Players' wages in the Championship are crazy. Look at the figures for Fulham that were published on here recently. The only possible outcome for clubs like Fulham who don't get back up to the Premier League is severe financial problems in the future.
And that's the unpalatable truth that clubs have to face and deal with.
Roland would have needed to cut wages almost 80% in 2017-18 to break even and be "sustainable." Doubt that would have went over well.
I'm playing Devil's Advocate to an extent and my tin hat is at the ready but here goes...!
How many people posting on this thread have moaned on other threads on here about Roland's refusal to pay more than £5k a week in wages? (A quarter of a million pounds a year lest we forget). How many people have said Roland should just give Taylor the £20k a week Brentford supposedly offered? This at a time when we are what, £40/£50 million pounds in debt?
You can blame Sky, the Premier League, the unfair distribution of TV money whatever for the mess many clubs, including our own, are in. But the fact is players' wages are in most cases totally out of kilter to a club's income. (Indeed, wasn't this what Bury were supposed to have been doing, paying ludicrous wages?) Until those wages are reduced, clubs will not be sustainable to run unless they have a billionaire (not millionaire) or Sovereign state behind them.
Players' wages in the Championship are crazy. Look at the figures for Fulham that were published on here recently. The only possible outcome for clubs like Fulham who don't get back up to the Premier League is severe financial problems in the future.
And that's the unpalatable truth that clubs have to face and deal with.
Roland would have needed to cut wages almost 80% in 2017-18 to break even and be "sustainable." Doubt that would have went over well.
But that's my point. If your figures are correct, what on earth were Charlton doing paying wages 80% over their income? It's madness.
Sure, as a supporter I would have hated it if our whole squad was sold off and replaced with cheaper players but at least we wouldn't be sitting £40/50 million pounds in debt now.
1. Force all owners of all English clubs (by law) to immediately capitalize all debt into owner equity. Many have done this in all but name anyway. ManU is never paying off it's debt. Nor is Newcastle or even Charlton. Let's force everyone to stop pretending.
2. Clubs cannot carry any debt. Only owner equity injections.
3. Combine SCMT and FFP aspects.... cap all clubs in England at 70% total club wages as a percent of turnover AND cap losses at 10% of turnover (which is far less than now.) All leagues and divisions.
4. Force all players to pay all agent fees from their own pocket like we do in the USA. Agent fees are killing clubs.
5. Force all transfers to be paid up front and all of the fee counts as a wage cost in the year of the transer. This essentially kills the transfer market but that's the price of stability.
6. Force all clubs to prove they are within these limits BEFORE the first match of the season or they forfeit matches until they do.
7. Have only one transfer period.... the summer. End of story.
8. End all parachute payments and make a rule forced on all player contracts that clubs can terminate contracts if relegated.
9. All owners must place in escrow money equal to the two previous years turnover and it stays with the club until it is sold. If the owners don;'t fund the club, the funds come from it. Two years would allow time to find a new owner and pay wages while they do.
10. No financial penalties for breaches, only a progressive scale of point deductions. After 2-3 years all clubs would play by the rules.
11. Disallow any country from owning a club. Period.
12. Disallow any owner from any rogue country that lacks freedom of the press or basic human rights. Bye bye Saudi Arabia and Russian owners. Won't miss them.
Just heard Jeavons interviewed on Radio 4. Said it was a sad day for Bury, but despite another bid on the table....discussing transferring £6 million in funds to keep club going for at least 1 year, as time was running out they pulled the plug. She also said EFL need to look at potential salary caps (how would that work?), and that Dale had bought the club before they could do 'fit and proper test'. I might suggest here that perhaps the 'fit and proper' test is mandatory before a club can change hands....it seems the EFL didn't apply this test in this case. Jeavons forgot to say the deadline last night was the deadline set by her and her team.....IF there was this other bid to save the club, could they not have extended the deadline (yet again) for just 24/48 hours?
No.4 - Would only work if there was a Salary cap... If its the players who have to pay their Agents whats to stop the player demanding the same amount of money their Agent receives now which'll go straight to them anyway
No.8 - Dont know if I agree that clubs should just be able to terminate contracts... Think all Contracts should have a clause in them which means that player wages all drop by X% so that the club automatically falls in line with the Salary Cap of the Division below
Dont agree with No.7 either Napa - Why have just the one transfer window - If clubs are ran properly then there shouldnt be an issue with having more than one window for transfers
It does seem though as if Stewart Day is getting off scott free a bit... He's the one who put debt on Bury for his property business - Straight away loading any personal debt on to your Football club for any other business should be an instant no no!!
1. Force all owners of all English clubs (by law) to immediately capitalize all debt into owner equity. Many have done this in all but name anyway. ManU is never paying off it's debt. Nor is Newcastle or even Charlton. Let's force everyone to stop pretending.
2. Clubs cannot carry any debt. Only owner equity injections.
3. Combine SCMT and FFP aspects.... cap all clubs in England at 70% total club wages as a percent of turnover AND cap losses at 10% of turnover (which is far less than now.) All leagues and divisions.
4. Force all players to pay all agent fees from their own pocket like we do in the USA. Agent fees are killing clubs.
5. Force all transfers to be paid up front and all of the fee counts as a wage cost in the year of the transer. This essentially kills the transfer market but that's the price of stability.
6. Force all clubs to prove they are within these limits BEFORE the first match of the season or they forfeit matches until they do.
7. Have only one transfer period.... the summer. End of story.
8. End all parachute payments and make a rule forced on all player contracts that clubs can terminate contracts if relegated.
9. All owners must place in escrow money equal to the two previous years turnover and it stays with the club until it is sold. If the owners don;'t fund the club, the funds come from it. Two years would allow time to find a new owner and pay wages while they do.
10. No financial penalties for breaches, only a progressive scale of point deductions. After 2-3 years all clubs would play by the rules.
Bloody colonials telling us how to run our game.
Just for you, here are the laws of Cricket. Work your stats and financial premises on this;
1. You have two sides, one out in the field and one in.
2. Each man
that's in the side that's in goes out, and when he's out he comes
in and the next man goes in until he's out.
3. When they are all
out, the side that's out comes in and the side that's been in goes
out and tries to get those coming in, out.
4. Sometimes you get men
still in and not out.
5. When a man goes out to go in, the men who are out try to get him
out, and when he is out he goes in and the next man in goes out
and goes in.
6. There are two men called umpires who stay all out
all the time and they decide when the men who are in are out.
7. When both sides have been in and all the men have been out, and
both sides have been out twice after all the men have been
in, including those who are not out, that is the end of the game.
'Dale, however, never satisfied the league that he had the necessary
money to sustain the club, a requirement of EFL rules for new owners
before a takeover or, at the latest, 10 days later. Throughout nine
months in charge Dale has never provided the EFL with the evidence of
funding it has required.'
That is just outrageous. How the hell are the EFL getting away with that?!
The roots of this are the FA's appalling decision in 1991 to buckle to a few gobby, venal club owners like Dein, Bates and Sugar and let the FAPL be formed as a separate entity and let it negotiate with Sky and keep all the money. While Sky certainly fostered its relationship with those arseholes, at the end of the day all they wanted was the right to show live first division football. If the FA had stuck to their remit and negotiated those rights, and decided how to distribute those rights down through football, Sky would not have been concerned. And where would we be now? A football country like Germany IMO, where maybe we wouldn't have quite so many foreign superstars in our League, or certainly quite so many crap players in the Second Division earning £40k per week, but also without the dreadful fate awaiting Bury and Bolton.
That's where it started, folks, and anyone who wants to argue that point with me better make sure they at least read Tom Bower's "Broken Dreams" first; where in passing you will also read an interesting couple of references to Richard Murray...
I just bought that book, looks like a good read.
It's jaw dropping, not least the complete chapter devoted to Harry Redknapp. I'm not sure how much he has updated it.
To further answer @Covered End very reasonable point about the clubs that were lost pre -Sky, that's where another noted author in the early 90s had some very good answers. His name is Alex Fynn, I am not sure if he is still with us. He was an advertising executive working for Saatchi & Saatchi, and a devoted Spurs fan. He wrote several books about the business of football which made enough sense for the FA to at least give him some consultancy work, but they never implemented anything he recommended, far too radical to them.
He pointed to one unique fact about the English League. It was by far the biggest fully professional league in the world (and I think that is still true now). He argued that this structure was no longer sustainable. You could see the relationship with wider history, so many of the lost clubs such as Barrow, Workington and Bradford PA were from the industrial North, towns which had lost their self sustaining economy (which btw has not happened in western Germany, you have small towns dominated by an old- established family company which still thrives and employs the population). Fynn argued that perennial lower league clubs (such as Bury) might still have a future if the League were regionalised and adopted part-time status. He illustrated his argument in a way which caused me to fling the book down in disgust, until I realised he was right. He talked about the "event- like nature" of games which capture local imagination and attract bigger crowds. For example, he wrote, Peterborough v Cambridge Utd is an event up there (local derby) whereas Liverpool vs Charlton Athletic is not.
Don't forget he wrote this in the early 90s. While I think this point is still valid, TV has made it a bit less so. If you take Bury, his valid argument was that a regional league would give them more local derbies, with bigger attendances and less debilitating trips to Plymouth on a Tuesday night. But the revenue boost would be relatively less important because so much revenue now in the game is external, from the TV money.
I'm playing Devil's Advocate to an extent and my tin hat is at the ready but here goes...!
How many people posting on this thread have moaned on other threads on here about Roland's refusal to pay more than £5k a week in wages? (A quarter of a million pounds a year lest we forget). How many people have said Roland should just give Taylor the £20k a week Brentford supposedly offered? This at a time when we are what, £40/£50 million pounds in debt?
You can blame Sky, the Premier League, the unfair distribution of TV money whatever for the mess many clubs, including our own, are in. But the fact is players' wages are in most cases totally out of kilter to a club's income. (Indeed, wasn't this what Bury were supposed to have been doing, paying ludicrous wages?) Until those wages are reduced, clubs will not be sustainable to run unless they have a billionaire (not millionaire) or Sovereign state behind them.
Players' wages in the Championship are crazy. Look at the figures for Fulham that were published on here recently. The only possible outcome for clubs like Fulham who don't get back up to the Premier League is severe financial problems in the future.
And that's the unpalatable truth that clubs have to face and deal with.
Roland would have needed to cut wages almost 80% in 2017-18 to break even and be "sustainable." Doubt that would have went over well.
If every club had to break even we'd see a drop in these ridiculous wages.
Ultimately the problem is the fact that the EFL is nothing more than a Membership of 72 clubs...
We can make all the suggestions that we want but at the end of the day; Leeds or Derby wont agree to being under the same restrictions as the likes of Stevenage or Leyton Orient so the changes wont happen!!
Basically before anything gets done, a regulator needs to be appointed who lays it out in simple terms... These are the rules for all of you, dont like it then you can get out of the Football League!!
The EFL seems to pick and choose what it is or what it's responsibilities are. It can fine Wimbledon for not printing 'MK Dons' in their programme, but can't do anything about owners like Dale? Or let Dale just walk in and take a club over without proving he has any cash?
There's a lot to like about the German model, but clubs have still had financial problems, and the Bundersliga is dominated by 1 club, because the ownership model is now a block to anyone being able to compete with Bayern Munich
I don't disagree, Germany is not a panacea. But I am not aware that clubs there have had the same kind of financial problems as in England where they often crash out of the FAPL with huge contracts and a 90% drop in revenue. I'm aware of issues like at Dortmund one of the biggest, which were down to gross mis-management, hubris, it seems. The ownership model protects Jena from the worst of Duchatelet.
But yes, what to do about Bayern? The trouble is that if you abandon the 50+1 ownership model as the solution, as argued by certain other club investors, you set off down the slippery slope we have been on for many years. The German fans know this very well. As I recall, one of the main proponents of this was the 49% owner of Hannover 96, well he should have focused a bit more on his own club, which is now in Bundesliga 2, while Paderborn, population 150,000, stadium capacity 15,000, has made it into the top tier after successive promotions, Charlton 30s style. There they have joined the very wonderful Union Berlin. There's a problem at the very top in Germany, but just below that level there are a lot of fans living the sort of dreams we used to have.
The EFL could make a start on getting clubs to sort their finances out by making relegation the penalty for going into administration; and an automatic 10 point deduction for any team that makes a loss over a rolling 3 year period. Both those measures could be monitored and enforced.
'Dale, however, never satisfied the league that he had the necessary
money to sustain the club, a requirement of EFL rules for new owners
before a takeover or, at the latest, 10 days later. Throughout nine
months in charge Dale has never provided the EFL with the evidence of
funding it has required.'
That is just outrageous. How the hell are the EFL getting away with that?!
Remarkable how he got away with this.
Why didn't the ELF impose their 10 day thing and say if you can't prove to us by then you have the money then the takeover isn't ratified and the club is back up for sale.
There's a lot to like about the German model, but clubs have still had financial problems, and the Bundersliga is dominated by 1 club, because the ownership model is now a block to anyone being able to compete with Bayern Munich
How did Red bull get round the issue with Leipzig as the 50+1 thing doesn't seem to have affected them?
The EFL could make a start on getting clubs to sort their finances out by making relegation the penalty for going into administration; and an automatic 10 point deduction for any team that makes a loss over a rolling 3 year period. Both those measures could be monitored and enforced.
But you have clubs like Derby “selling” the stadium to the owner to cover the cost of players and their wages. Rich owners will find other ways of getting around the rules. Cheating.
Wage caps would make it even easier for clubs from the Premiership, Scottish clubs etc to pick off players with lower transfer fees as players will want to leave.
Roland was right only once. FFP was the way forward, but they bottled it. Derby should even now be told that money raised from selling the stadium doesn’t count. But for anything like that to happen now or in the future the governing body would have to be independent.
'Dale, however, never satisfied the league that he had the necessary
money to sustain the club, a requirement of EFL rules for new owners
before a takeover or, at the latest, 10 days later. Throughout nine
months in charge Dale has never provided the EFL with the evidence of
funding it has required.'
That is just outrageous. How the hell are the EFL getting away with that?!
The EFL got away with it because they make things up as they go along and they're not fit for purpose.
The EFL could make a start on getting clubs to sort their finances out by making relegation the penalty for going into administration; and an automatic 10 point deduction for any team that makes a loss over a rolling 3 year period. Both those measures could be monitored and enforced.
But you have clubs like Derby “selling” the stadium to the owner to cover the cost of players and their wages. Rich owners will find other ways of getting around the rules. Cheating.
Wage caps would make it even easier for clubs from the Premiership, Scottish clubs etc to pick off players with lower transfer fees as players will want to leave.
Roland was right only once. FFP was the way forward, but they bottled it. Derby should even now be told that money raised from selling the stadium doesn’t count. But for anything like that to happen now or in the future the governing body would have to be independent.
Wage Caps shouldnt be the only rule to come into place... To stop clubs from cherry picking there should already be FIFA / UEFA rules that limit the amount of players a club can loan out in one season
Of course it wont stop Scottish clubs from cherry picking as its not a practice they overly do but the Premier League are certainly guilty of it
But ultimately whats the bigger concern here... Clubs surviving in the first place or losing players to other clubs?
Fans constantly say that the club is bigger than the player but when you put the latter on stupid wages your risking the existance of the forner - At the moment there is too much concern over clubs losing even the slimmest advantage over everyone else which is why no action is has been taken so far to try and control whats going on
Focus should be on being here in the long term future, if all clubs were forced into that practice then there would be a more level playing field
Let's all remember what makes up the EFL - the clubs themselves! They are meant to be there to administer the competition on behalf of member clubs. So of course they are not fit for purpose as a regulator. And imo, neither is the FA, though somehow that seems to be the policy of the FSA (Football Supporters' Association).
There are many, many changes that English football need to make but the rewards for poorly performing players/teams need to be right at the top of the list. All player contracts should have relegation clauses that reflect the clubs loss of revenue. If the players don't like it then their creditor status should be brought in line with everyone else and they can live with the consequences.
Bury fans need to regroup and rebuild their team as others have done, and football fans around the country need to help them in any small way they can. Maybe it will be symbolic, but we identify what they plan to do and we could all do collections before games over the next couple of weeks. It might shame the Man Utds, Man Citys and Arsenals of this world if it does nothing else.
Think I'm correct in saying the EFL are essentially just the administrative arm of all the football League clubs. So when we lay blame at the door of the EFL it's actually each individual club. The majority of them choose to compete within the current skewed finances of football. Solutions exist but they all create as many if not more casualties than the current set up.
Personally I'd be moving in the direction of a league that can exist without the premier League money.
A gradual move towards a franchise structure. A fairer distribution of monies between not only divisions but also players and owners.
The total amount of money available would be much lower. Player salaries would be based on proposed income from the league as a whole. A mass exodus of players would occur. EFL are not just competing against wage inflation from the Premier but also around the world.
I'd let that happen.
If it meant leagues 1 and 2 went part time with North and South divisions, then to me that is acceptable.
If it meant no automatic promotion to the Premier League. So be it.
Teams would not be tied into selling their players on the cheap to Premier League sides.
Of course it can't happen. So many clubs are loaded with debt they have no choice but to chase Premier money. In for a penny in for a million.
For every Bury that goes under another club turns up willing to give it a go.
Comments
Bury have debts of around £10m in total, madness!!
https://twitter.com/DanielHewittITV/status/1166493057556107265
Sure, as a supporter I would have hated it if our whole squad was sold off and replaced with cheaper players but at least we wouldn't be sitting £40/50 million pounds in debt now.
But he knows best.
No.8 - Dont know if I agree that clubs should just be able to terminate contracts... Think all Contracts should have a clause in them which means that player wages all drop by X% so that the club automatically falls in line with the Salary Cap of the Division below
Dont agree with No.7 either Napa - Why have just the one transfer window - If clubs are ran properly then there shouldnt be an issue with having more than one window for transfers
It does seem though as if Stewart Day is getting off scott free a bit... He's the one who put debt on Bury for his property business - Straight away loading any personal debt on to your Football club for any other business should be an instant no no!!
Just for you, here are the laws of Cricket. Work your stats and financial premises on this;
1. You have two sides, one out in the field and one in.
2. Each man that's in the side that's in goes out, and when he's out he comes in and the next man goes in until he's out.
3. When they are all out, the side that's out comes in and the side that's been in goes out and tries to get those coming in, out.
4. Sometimes you get men still in and not out.
5. When a man goes out to go in, the men who are out try to get him out, and when he is out he goes in and the next man in goes out and goes in.
6. There are two men called umpires who stay all out all the time and they decide when the men who are in are out.
7. When both sides have been in and all the men have been out, and both sides have been out twice after all the men have been in, including those who are not out, that is the end of the game.
Simple really.To further answer @Covered End very reasonable point about the clubs that were lost pre -Sky, that's where another noted author in the early 90s had some very good answers. His name is Alex Fynn, I am not sure if he is still with us. He was an advertising executive working for Saatchi & Saatchi, and a devoted Spurs fan. He wrote several books about the business of football which made enough sense for the FA to at least give him some consultancy work, but they never implemented anything he recommended, far too radical to them.
He pointed to one unique fact about the English League. It was by far the biggest fully professional league in the world (and I think that is still true now). He argued that this structure was no longer sustainable. You could see the relationship with wider history, so many of the lost clubs such as Barrow, Workington and Bradford PA were from the industrial North, towns which had lost their self sustaining economy (which btw has not happened in western Germany, you have small towns dominated by an old- established family company which still thrives and employs the population). Fynn argued that perennial lower league clubs (such as Bury) might still have a future if the League were regionalised and adopted part-time status. He illustrated his argument in a way which caused me to fling the book down in disgust, until I realised he was right. He talked about the "event- like nature" of games which capture local imagination and attract bigger crowds. For example, he wrote, Peterborough v Cambridge Utd is an event up there (local derby) whereas Liverpool vs Charlton Athletic is not.
Don't forget he wrote this in the early 90s. While I think this point is still valid, TV has made it a bit less so. If you take Bury, his valid argument was that a regional league would give them more local derbies, with bigger attendances and less debilitating trips to Plymouth on a Tuesday night. But the revenue boost would be relatively less important because so much revenue now in the game is external, from the TV money.
We can make all the suggestions that we want but at the end of the day; Leeds or Derby wont agree to being under the same restrictions as the likes of Stevenage or Leyton Orient so the changes wont happen!!
Basically before anything gets done, a regulator needs to be appointed who lays it out in simple terms... These are the rules for all of you, dont like it then you can get out of the Football League!!
It seems Jevons isn't and has drawn a line in the sand. The EFL gave Dale chance after chance but he dodged them all.
In the end Harvey, the old EFL CEO, had painted his successor into a corner with his incompetence.
The EFL could and should have done more a lot earlier but at some point they had to say "enough is enough" and that point was yesterday.
Very harsh and very unfair on Bury fans and staff but the EFL had to do something, they couldn't let more games be postponed.
Will see how the Bolton owner reacts. I think he may take the offers on the table now he knows the EFL will act.
So wrong that it has come to this.
But yes, what to do about Bayern? The trouble is that if you abandon the 50+1 ownership model as the solution, as argued by certain other club investors, you set off down the slippery slope we have been on for many years. The German fans know this very well. As I recall, one of the main proponents of this was the 49% owner of Hannover 96, well he should have focused a bit more on his own club, which is now in Bundesliga 2, while Paderborn, population 150,000, stadium capacity 15,000, has made it into the top tier after successive promotions, Charlton 30s style. There they have joined the very wonderful Union Berlin. There's a problem at the very top in Germany, but just below that level there are a lot of fans living the sort of dreams we used to have.
Why didn't the ELF impose their 10 day thing and say if you can't prove to us by then you have the money then the takeover isn't ratified and the club is back up for sale.
Especially Napa's posts
Wage caps would make it even easier for clubs from the Premiership, Scottish clubs etc to pick off players with lower transfer fees as players will want to leave.
Roland was right only once. FFP was the way forward, but they bottled it. Derby should even now be told that money raised from selling the stadium doesn’t count. But for anything like that to happen now or in the future the governing body would have to be independent.
Of course it wont stop Scottish clubs from cherry picking as its not a practice they overly do but the Premier League are certainly guilty of it
But ultimately whats the bigger concern here... Clubs surviving in the first place or losing players to other clubs?
Fans constantly say that the club is bigger than the player but when you put the latter on stupid wages your risking the existance of the forner - At the moment there is too much concern over clubs losing even the slimmest advantage over everyone else which is why no action is has been taken so far to try and control whats going on
Focus should be on being here in the long term future, if all clubs were forced into that practice then there would be a more level playing field
I feel for Bolton and Bury fans, and would be gutted if it happened to us.
You couldn't go and support another team. That would definitely be it.
Personally I'd be moving in the direction of a league that can exist without the premier League money.
A gradual move towards a franchise structure. A fairer distribution of monies between not only divisions but also players and owners.
The total amount of money available would be much lower. Player salaries would be based on proposed income from the league as a whole.
A mass exodus of players would occur. EFL are not just competing against wage inflation from the Premier but also around the world.
I'd let that happen.
If it meant leagues 1 and 2 went part time with North and South divisions, then to me that is acceptable.
If it meant no automatic promotion to the Premier League. So be it.
Teams would not be tied into selling their players on the cheap to Premier League sides.
Of course it can't happen. So many clubs are loaded with debt they have no choice but to chase Premier money. In for a penny in for a million.
For every Bury that goes under another club turns up willing to give it a go.