A Phoney Phase to a Phoney Competition – Part One

It’s 17 days since the World Cup final and 31 since England’s exit. The post mortems have been held – and how. RTG was rather miffed that it wasn’t solicited amongst the multitude of vox pop interviews that even had contributions from family pets. This was on top of the interviews of just about every professional player of the last 30-40 years. Admittedly, it was enjoyable trying to put names to faces in Sky Sports News’ endless procession of fat, balding blokes being wheeled out for their jaundiced views of England’s failures.

Now the media’s attention is firmly focused on filling column inches and airtime minutes with news from the “eagerly awaited” transfer window. The dramatic days-‘til-end counter, the claims and counter denials, the will-they, won’t-they speculation and above all – the inaction! Currently, much wind, but no sail (sale?).


“If you offered me 15th place now, I'd take it!”

Wolves' Manager, Mick McCarthy 27th July 2010

Whilst it is not unreasonable that Sky, in particular, should attempt to sex-up the speculation, in support of their huge investment in the sport, this close season, rather like the last one, is proving to be ‘phoney’. There really isn’t that much going on compared to pre 2008 levels.

The credit crunch continues to impact the financial resources available to virtually every club. Only Manchester City, Real Madrid and, probably, Chelsea have or will spend big in this window. The rest of the Premiership, at least for the moment, is merely re-arranging resources with minor net spend. Liverpool, for instance, have taken a couple of out of contract players and single figure million pound players and, reportedly, will have to fund any further transfer activity out of sales. Equally, Manchester United’s two new recruits have been partly funded by sales for a net spend of around £3 million. United have also reduced their headcount by releasing players and loaners.

Manchester City on the other hand has so far spent £75 million – with plenty more in the pipeline. Indeed, it is widely anticipated that they will rack up spending to over £200 million in just two summer transfer windows. One of City’s new boys, the very ordinary Barca reserve, Yaya Toure, is on a contract that pays him around £1 million a month. Let’s put that into perspective. If recent reports are correct, Wayne Rooney has earned himself a rise in his wages that will pay him about 60% of what Mr Toure earns. Or another way, premiership new boys, Blackpool, have just announced their record transfer purchase: for the princely sum of £1 million.

This is a gross distortion of the football playing field and results in a gross distortion of the Premiership as a competition. What chance do promoted Premiership clubs have in this environment? What chance for that matter do other clubs have when one or two fortunate clubs have no financial boundaries? With the ever increasing disparity between what Premiership teams earn and what the rest do, the financial penalties that follow relegation are increasingly scary. Wages are up because one or two clubs are unencumbered in their spending to lure players on over-inflated contracts. Ditto transfer fees. To stay in the Premiership is the prime objective of all but a handful of clubs. Just ask the supporters of Charlton, Leeds, Southampton, Barnsley, Bradford City, Nottingham Forest, Crystal Palace and several others to see what awaits a relegated club who don’t bounce back immediately. Financial implosion and further relegation is the norm.

Is it any wonder then that the amount of defensively minded and over physical games has been increasingly boring football supporters throughout the Premiership over the last few years? Is it any wonder then that English players, in general, develop to be so uncomfortable in possession and the need to distribute that ball at break-neck speed, leads to a less than intelligent approach to the game. With so much at stake it can’t be a surprise to us that teams are going to be negative in their approach and this is a direct result of this phoney distortion of the football market.

In a previous article, RTG had already posed the question about ‘what is the difference between Portsmouth’s overspending – to their financial ruin and relegation – and Manchester City (or Chelsea), who consistently overspend – but just so happen to have an open ended cheque book’? The answer: a 10 point deduction. RTG continues this discussion next week….

The Keeper

…he’s a’puffin and a’pantin in pre-season!

The Keeper wishes to extend his own personal thank you to Tottenham for being the first club to make a stand and ban the vuvuzela from White Hart Lane for next season. Official club sources stated that they were concerned the noise might drown out important safety or security announcements. The Keeper wonders could they mean such statements as, “Put your hands up Harry, you’re under arrest” or “You are not obliged to say anything…” Neighbours Arsenal also followed their rivals soon afterwards in banning the vuvuzela for totally different reasons it seems. Rumour has it they were more concerned they might wake up some of the older patrons from their afternoon slumber in the ‘library’.

South Africa’s Zulu war trumpet was not a problem for Spain and The Keeper heartily congratulates them for their first ever World Cup success and for introducing us to their concept of ‘tiki taka’ football. The new world champions are well worthy of having named their own individual style of the game. In contrast, English players are more normally associated with ‘tacky tacky’, more on account of their terrible dress sense and their appalling taste in tattoos and jewellery. However, not to be outdone, they did come back from South Africa having stamped their own unique brand on the beautiful game, known as ‘humpa lumpa’ football!

Still, at least England did at least make it to the knockout stages unlike France who didn’t even make it past the group stage. It was only after the tournament, however, that the Keeper learned that phrases such as “inept”; “below par”; “too few scoring opportunities”; “over too early”; “lack of belief in the man on top”. were nothing to do with French football but actually describing Franck Ribery’s and Karim Benzema’s performance with the underage prostitute they allegedly procured in 2009 and for which they are now facing charges. It seems Franck Ribery’s own brother-in-law is also facing charges for his part in the procurement of said underage prostitute. Now that really is ‘tacky tacky’.

Post World Cup issues have come to the fore for England too, not least in the withdrawal of sponsorship from long-standing Team England partner, Nationwide. Ever the shrewd business operator, the FA felt compelled to rely on England’s outstanding World Cup performance to hold out on Nationwide for a bit more cash after the event. Little surprise then that the building society chose, not only to pay less money, but actually withdraw from the deal altogether after England’s demise in South Africa. Hope rests on rumours that one of the big internet search engines is waiting in the wings to add their support to Team England. Given the utter shambles exhibited once again in business negotiations by the FA, the Keeper feels the phrase ‘Ho-Hum’ might be more appropriate than Yahoo!