Promotion to Premier League: a Step to Financial Ruin?

It may not have escaped your notice that RTG doesn’t appear to talk much about the lower leagues and, indeed, you would be right. For clarity’s sake, RTG decided to rectify this today.

It is not a lack of interest in the other three tiers of professional football – and even lower leagues too – it’s just that, well, as the saying goes ‘you have to strike at the head of a snake to kill it’. So our focus has been on the Premier League, where RTG believes the vast majority of football’s problems lay.

Since the inception of the premiership in the ’92-’93 season, the financial gap between the top level of football and the rest has grown inexorably. So much so, that the Championship play-off for the final Premiership spot is now viewed as the most valuable match in the world. In purely financial terms it is. Not through the gate receipts for the match itself, of course, but for the TV money and increased ticket prices that membership of the Premier League affords.

However, if you delve a little deeper than the obvious (as RTG always tries to do), promotion to, and subsequent relegation from, the Premier League has proven to be a millstone around some clubs’ necks. Barnsley, Sheffield Wednesday, Bradford City, Coventry City, Leicester City and many others have struggled to come to terms financially with life outside the top flight. Taking Leeds as another example – all be it that their financial ruin began in the Premier League – it is now difficult for their supporters to ever imagine how they will get back there again, without the support of a rich owner, foreign or otherwise, as seems to be the requirement these days. This paradox is still being perpetuated by the media and pundits whose business it is to talk up the Premier League and make out it is the answer to every football club’s supporters’ aspirations. The reality is that in many cases, it has been the start of their demise and been a crushing of those aspirations.

If, like RTG, you are sick to the back teeth of pundits talking about the Premier League as ‘The Best League in the World’, as if it is something English football should be held up as a shining example to the rest of the sport, you will also be wondering how it is that English football is not developing at grass roots level as a result. Like all foreign commentators, RTG realises that the current strength of English teams in the Champions League is purely based on their financial might rather than the superior technique of English players. The difficulty Championship teams find in staying in the Premier league, and the subsequent problems many face, just highlights the gulf in class that has resulted since its inception. The bigger sums of money, and the undoubted improvement in the standard of football played, are not trickling down to help improve football at the lower levels. Quite the opposite in fact.

If you take the Division 2 Southampton team of 1976 that beat Manchester United in the FA Cup final, or the West Ham team, then in football’s second tier also, that beat Arsenal in 1980, they were still full of top class professional players that were at the beginning or tail end of their careers. The standard was not that different between Division 1 and Division 2. Contrast that with the Millwall side that was comprehensively outclassed by Manchester United in 2004, and the difference is clear. If you get the chance, check out ESPN Classic’s occasional broadcasts of old Match of the Days where you will see that the Second Division matches were not far below the First in terms of quality. If anything, teams in the Championship have to be more aggressive and direct to claw their way out of the division. But, in terms of a competition, it is far more interesting than the Premier League, with the lead changing hands, throughout the season, on a regular basis. Realistically it is still possible for half the Championship teams to gain promotion whereas the Premier League is a done deal within the big four, and has been for years.

Worryingly, as another side effect, the lower leagues do not appear to be acting as feeders of talent to the Premier League and, therefore, the England national team.

The next time you hear a pundit, or commentator, on TV extolling the virtues of ‘The Best League in the World’ you might wish to stop and think for a while of the price we are paying for the development of this elite league.

Reclaim the Game – The Week’s Events

• For those other clubs dependent on a ‘sugar daddy’ for survival, the plight of Gretna in SPL should serve as a warning to what could happen in the future. Owner, Brooks Mileson, has contracted a life threatening brain infection resulting in Gretna not being able to maintain his funding and will likely go bankrupt today.
• RTG felt the need to draw your attention to this letter from a Simon Charterton in The Guardian yesterday. "If England are to play the USA, allowing David Beckham to gain his 100th cap, why not name Gary Lineker as a substitute to come on and take a penalty so he can equal Bobby Charlton’s goalscoring record as well?" RTG’s sentiments also but, why not keep naming him on the bench until he breaks the record? In fact, why not name Sir Bobby Charlton on the bench also, so the two can go head to head? After all, this appears to be the main objective behind England’s friendly matches these days if the media are to be believed.

Does the Premier League Need Loyal Supporters?

RTG comes to you today fresh off the back of a business trip to Washington DC in the USA. This afforded us the unique opportunity of being able to experience watching Premier League football in one of the countries favoured by the Premier League for hosting one of the 39th games. Unlike New York and Boston (other Eastern Seaboard cities visited by RTG), Premier League football is much harder to come by in Washington DC. But after a little research and asking a few questions of the locals, we were able to find a bar in the Arlington area of the city that showed a number of Premier League matches simultaneously, at 3pm GMT, while serving up a respectable brunch….perfect.

Most of the clientele in the bar were not expats, missing their weekly football fix, but appeared to be genuine US football (soccer) supporters. Leaving aside the unavoidably irritating aspect of hearing Americans talking about football, there was something reassuring about this gathering – supporters in different colours watching different teams playing simultaneously in a non-threatening atmosphere. And surely, if the US is to get into football, that’s exactly how it should be. In fact, in an ideal world, they would all troop off to watch DC United afterwards and support the MLS too. What they definitely should not have is an enforced 39th fixture from a foreign league superimposed upon the MLS that has enough of its own problems attracting big crowds.

The main games on offer were, predictably, the Chelsea, Manchester United and Arsenal games, though there was also a hardcore watching Rangers v Aberdeen from the SPL. Interestingly enough, Chelsea replica shirts were by far the most prevalent, something that would definitely not have been the case five years ago. Invariably, when people start to follow a sport that is taking place in another country, they tend to pick up on the successful teams. Fair enough and RTG has always said we support anybody who is a football supporter no matter how short a time they have loved the game and no matter where they choose to watch it. But is the Premier League’s determination to court these fans, for financial reasons, at the risk of upsetting the loyal, England-based supporter, wise business or short-sighted folly?

Real caution needs to be observed here and RTG suspects that, once again, the Premier League is taking the short-term financial view rather than the well-considered route that looks after the interests of the English game. Football today is not like it was when RTG first started following the game. The prevalence of matches on TV, the celebrity profiles of the modern footballers and the absence of the kind of loyalty we used to see, breeds a different kind of supporter. RTG wonders if the ‘one team through thick and thin’ attitude, that has shaped the game to date, is disappearing in modern times.

When Frank Lampard (or any footballer for that matter) runs to the crowd kissing his badge, is he doing it for his own self-promotion or in recognition of his respect for Chelsea and its supporters? RTG suspects he’s basically saying, “I love you right now but please still like me when I suddenly decide to join Barcelona for more money”. Perhaps it suits the money makers of the modern game to have supporters who are equally as flexible in regard to who they follow. When RTG was in Thailand watching an Arsenal v Liverpool game some years ago, spectators changed allegiances at half time simply because Arsenal were winning and looking the more likely to get the points.

As the game over here continues to distance itself from its supporters, will we begin to see the same kind of attitude in our newer supporters? They may represent a huge financial opportunity to the Premier League, both here and abroad, but is this what we want for our national game? If we want to make as much money for the Premier League, in as short a time as possible, then it probably is. But what happens when the good days are over? When the sport of football needs those supporters who would turn up day in and day out to support their team, they may just find that they’ve gone elsewhere.

Reclaim the Game – The Weekend’s Events

• The self-appointed ‘Best League in the World’ looks set to contribute four teams to the Champions League quarter finals, assuming Liverpool do not commit football suicide in the San Siro this week. Interesting then that, the ‘Best League in the World’, could not produce one win in the UEFA Cup on Thursday night, now that there are some half decent teams in the competition. Perhaps, ‘Best Top Four in the World’ might be a more accurate and, perhaps, more worrying description.
• Avram Grant, in the eyes of the media and many Chelsea supporters, has reverted back from “surprising a few people” to being “out of his depth” again after a 1-0 defeat to Barnsley in the FA Cup quarter final. How indicative of the modern game. If Chelsea were to win their games in hand, they will be two points behind Arsenal, with the game at Stamford Bridge against the Gunners still to play, and they are in the last eight of the Champions League. Despite this, and overcoming the turmoil they were in when Grant took over, this is still not deemed good enough for the media or the modern Chelsea supporter.
• Experiments with two new officials behind the goals at a FIFA or UEFA event will happen in the next 12 months as FIFA appeared to turn its back on goal line technology. Some see this as the game moving back in the wrong direction but RTG welcomes this, assuming the officials have more power than simply goal line observation. ‘Hawkeye’ at Wimbledon has been shown to be fallible and, this blind faith in technology, rather than being the answer to all woes as most pundits seem to think it is, could actually make life worse. However, assuming there are enough people out there willing to do the job, extra officials makes more sense. If they can help on penalty decisions, as well as on the goal line, RTG believes fallible humans are far preferable to fallible technology.
• It is refreshing to see the FA Cup semi-finals contested by only one Premier League team and none of the ‘Big Four’. However, for the FA, this is a bit of a double-edged sword. The one year they could probably have done with filling Wembley, twice over, for the semis, they may have to cut ticket prices to do so.
• Rumours abound in Leeds that they may soon be given back some of the points they were deducted at the beginning of the season. Stand by for more potential law suits should they end up replacing another team in the play-off places. Yet another reason for more clarity and transparency in the way the game is administered.
  
  Hat’s Off, Take a Bow (Or Not)
  
  Player of the Week – Fernando Torres. Outstanding again in Liverpool’s demolition of struggling Newcastle. Some players take time to adapt to life in England. Liverpool must be thankful that Torres seemed to hit the ground running this season for where would they be otherwise?
  
  Villain of the Week – Sepp Blatter (once again). He has over stepped the mark again by calling for lifetime bans on players for malicious tackles such as that of Birmingham’s Martin Taylor on Eduardo of Arsenal. He has asked to review the reports to see if Taylor’s ban should be increased from three matches. This is none of his business and completely out of context. He should butt out of what does not concern him.
  
  Hero of the Week – Kayode Odejayi. Ensured that the FA Cup would be won by someone outside of the big four for the first time since 1995.
  
  Shock of the Week – None of the big four appearing in the FA Cup Semi final draw today.
  
  Cliché of the Week – “Is Portsmouth’s name written on the cup?”