Off Topic Look after the lower leagues

An article in todays press is suggesting that smaller clubs face a perilous future,this is serious. The reason that football is so popular with spectators is because a club can rise through the leagues from the bottom to the top. If a team folded in the Premiership they would be replaced from below. If enough teams vanished from the lower leagues it would eventually kill the competition.Interest would soon fade if we only had one league with the same teams competing

 

1st and second divisions, need to go amateur, think clubs should be able to borrow money, which they pay back over the next 10 years like any other business.

 

Let teams from lower leagues loan more players and make it a rule that the parent club has to pay all the wages. Make the parent club pay a set fee to that lower club for taking on their player and developing them.

Scrap the U18 and U23 league and combine them into a single u21s make it a strict rule the player has to actually be U21 then teams would have to either stop carrying so many players who stagnate and never become anything or loan them out.

Lower teams need transfer money to filter through to them, they never have a chance of finding a top quality youngster as they all get snapped up by the top teams at schoolboy level.

 

Probably best to make the 3rd tier and below amateur and then the people from Hull could support proper teams without fear of intimidation?

Seriously though football teams, like lots of other businesses, are going to fail due to these restrictions. They can't all be saved and the only hope for them is to quickly get a vaccine. Alternatively somehow keep going for 2 years until it is over. Why 2 years that's about how long the last pandemic was around for, so it's a guess/ hope.

 

How many on here go to the theatre? I have been a couple of times years ago. I dont visit museums or art galleries. Yet tax payers money is handed to these places every year as subsidies to “The Arts”.during the pandemic theatres have been given more cash to keep them viable whilst all their staff have been furloughed. The government are going to give them more aid next week, yet is it fair that we bail out this industry continually which at best is a minority participation. Most of the cash will go to London as usual, but in Leeds we have a couple of theatres and they seat a couple of hundred, and open 7 days normally, so at best a theatre if it sells out will get 1,400 on average through the doors every week.

Football is the National Sport and pastime. It has mass employment for non playing staff. There are 92 clubs at the top of the pyramid but hundreds underneath those. Our football is a massive export and the taxes it pays to the exchequer yields more than any Amazon, Microsoft or any other superstar high tech company. Football is a mass participation and mass following industry and deserves support more than the luvvie industry that benefits a select few and some for the odd special occasion.

 

Simon Jordan was on about it on Talk Sport, he blamed the reluctance of PL clubs to introduce a salary cap. If you took the entire country and said do you like Football yes or no there would be a huge difference and favour towards those saying no. Then you look at the average person who hears footballers are on over £200k a week and they assume most are and it leaves zero sympathy from the average person.

 

All those clubs that voted against us when we were struggling and held our club back for years are now begging for our help.

I'm not saying that they shouldn't be helped but I can't deny that finally lady luck has shone on us as our promotion has been great timing. Puts our club in a strong position. We probably should help out collectively but there should certainly be a reminder to some clubs about their past decisions.

In other words, **** em.

 

Totally agree mate. Not only that, it’s far less embarrassing being knocked out of the FA Cup by Arsenal than it was by Sutton, Histon or Colchester

 

You want promotion so you spend, you miss out and have problems. If you do get promoted you spend more money, including paying the players more. If you don't spend enough you might go straight back down then you have more problems.
The only sustainable model for smaller clubs is to trade in players, not loan them from other clubs. You either find future stars and make a profit, like Brentford do, or you have a great academy like we are famous for.
A club needs to survive on it's own talent. There's plenty of money available from clubs in the Prem for talented young players but UK clubs seem to want too much for them. The value seems to be abroad.

 

Good post. Ask yourself who goes to the Opera. Ask yourself how many binmen are in there wearing penguin suits or tiaras & frocks. Answer almost certainly is none. It's only the very affluent that go. And yet the Opera seems to get as much, if not more, funding than most, when the attendees can afford to pay for its upkeep themselves.

As for museums etc., why not just shut them down for the foreseeable future. They're far from critical 'services', and the government subsidies could be better directed elsewhere. I'm sure there are a lot of subsidised 'services' that could be shut down temporarily, & few would notice.

 

The clubs outside the PL need to stop pussyfooting around and vote in the rule change that they all know needs to happen...namely that all football related debts have still to be settled after a club has gone throught the process of administration in order to retain membership of the league. It's the only way clubs can save themselves from the financial implications of player contracts.

I'm pretty sure these discussions have been taking place since March as to how owners can somehow circumvent the contractual obligations they signed pre-covid and still retain ownership of their clubs. As I understand it the only way a player doesn't get his contract paid is if a club is liquidated and therefore goes out of business and out of the league. That surely has to change with no income from fans attending matches to pay those contracts as the future of the clubs must come before individual players unfortunately.

 

You've just made me re-think about these clubs. You're right. Fcuk 'em. If we're going to help anyone, let's make it the local clubs like Harrogate Town, York City, Taddy etc.

 

I’m sure I heard on the news the other day that Spurs fans have been buying merchandise from the Leyton Orient shop to help boost their income

 

Problem is it’s perceived that football is awash with money so why bail them out which a first glance is fair comment as specialty when you had prem clubs with plenty of brass putting their ordinary workers on furlough
As you sow so shall you reap as it were

 

Cant be beyond the wits of someone to find out the lowest paid pro footballer and then Bale at £600k per week, find out the total number of paid players in the UK and do an average. It’ll probably come in at £400 per week and get that fact some airtime and media coverage

 

And it’s the Bales of this world that creates the problem, not his fault but the clubs who pay it