Manchester: We Stand Together
Month: May 2017
Accrington Stanley, Who Are They?
A catchphrase made famous from a milk advert before the Premier League existed, and best sums up attitudes displayed by that organisation this week. Accrington Stanley’s chairman, Andy Holt, attempted to highlight how life in the lower leagues was a struggle while those in the top flight lived in luxury. The response: a veiled threat to remove all financial support for Stanley and the other members of the EFL.
Mr Holt also suggested in this tweet, that the Premier League was a destructive force:
To begin with, let’s deal with an insinuation the Premier League levelled at Andy Holt. Since the new TV deal (with oversea rights, this now exceeds £8bn) the Premier League upped its contribution to the EFL and grassroots football by 40% to £1bn. Okay, that sounds a very large figure but it needs be placed into context.
The increase in TV revenue was 70%, so already there is a disproportionate redistribution of money. On the bottom line, the Premier League donates a smaller – albeit larger final sum – percentage of its revenue to those below them in the nation’s football pyramid.
Of that £1bn “donation,” the majority of it actually goes to teams relegated from the Premier League in the form of parachute payments. Suddenly that large cake on the table has a big chunk missing.
Before the deal, 3% went to grassroots, now the twenty clubs in the top flight agree to invest £112m a year into this programme. Again, context is required here. Grassroots is a place the top clubs circle like predatory sharks without fronting the sizeable bill. Between them they can just about muster £112m when Manchester United alone are willing to give an agent £41m for a single transfer.
This is where Andy Holt’s fears about the state of football hold the most water. Top clubs are able – and have no qualms – to allow money to leak from the game. Just as boxing promoters act as vampires on the sport, financially benefiting from the skill of others as the grassroots decay, football agents walk away with money that could prop-up entire divisions.
With the best fiscal management in the world, the harsh reality for lower league clubs is a yearly battle with rising costs and increasing debts.
The Premier League has gone past the tipping point when it comes to moral obligations. The desire to be the NFL of soccer has made it lose sight of certain facts. The NFL model works because there is nothing beneath it other than college football.
By the time the Premier League is finished, there won’t even be suitable football training in our schools. They have allowed a cancer to enter the revenue stream of the beautiful game and failure to ignore the final cries for help from people like Andy Holt, is like refusing lifesaving treatment.
Such is the arrogance and disconnect with the real world, the Premier League thought ensuring all staff members at top flight clubs were on the minimum living wage was a show of grace. It was the absolute least expected.
It has made no efforts to control ticketing prices for fans, meaning the working-class man in the terraces hasn’t seen the benefit of increased revenue passed down to him.
Too many clubs in the EFL, like Leeds, Blackburn, Nottingham Forest, cripple under their own weight as they take massive infrastructure into a landscape that can’t provide. It’s a wonder teams haven’t already started dropping out of existence. But that day will come, and it will affect the big and the small in the EFL, because they all have one thing in common: they have been made to sit on the poor table.
The tone of the Premier League’s reply gives the impression they enjoy teams coming to them like Oliver, bowl in hand, begging for more.
The Premier League has forgotten that the football pyramid in this country used to be a symbiotic relationship. That’s what the FA Cup used to symbolise: all ninety-six professional teams and all the non-league ones below that enter, on a level playing field of equal importance.
Nowadays the notion is played with by the Premier League in the same way a cat toys with a dead mouse. The idea of a shared national game is just a novelty to those at Lancaster Gate. They’re not bothered about Andy Holt’s opinions on the matter because they’re not bothered about the EFL, grassroots, or Accrington Stanley.
Who are they?
Exactly.
Lady Macbeth – Review
Since its release at the Toronto International Film Festival, Lady Macbeth has been teased to the general public via trailers that hint of lust and suffering. Now that it’s finally released to the wider public – receiving critical acclaim as early reports trickle in – it seems the peeks of the picture weren’t lying.
However, the scene they set isn’t the exact one we are given. And this diversion isn’t aided by those early critics and their misleading reviews. Lady Macbeth, so early into its life, faces the potential hazard of being a victim of presumed success and acclaim.
The story is a reworking of the 1865 novella Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District by Nikolai Leskov. The title was a nod to Shakespeare’s Lady Macbeth. Of course, she was a woman happy to commit murder to further her gains.
In Lady Macbeth, the female lead becomes Katherine, a young woman “purchased” by Christopher Fairbank’s Boris for his distant and cold son, Alexander, played by Paul Hilton. The setting is now Victorian North East England (complete with accents). The early scenes set the tone of the marriage and the house where Katherine resides. Boris has expectations of how his son should be satisfied.
In turn, Katherine is subservient to Alexander’s demands. But her husband would rather humiliate and degrade than allow actual closeness. The reason he favours belittling over making the marriage work, and why his abuse never escalates to the physical, is a theme left to fester without direct explanation.
It moves along in the early stages where, without much appearing to happen, a lot is going on. This trick is performed in no small part to Florence Pugh’s portrayal of Katherine. Her enforced reserve, and reluctant obedience, doesn’t mask the effervescent character bubbling below the surface.
When the men of the house leave on business for a number of weeks, it gives her free reign to attempt an escape from its claustrophobic confines. She is a girl that likes the outdoors but is treated like a caged bird. Free to walk the moors an unlocking of her mind begins. With it, her inhibitions fall away, desires are allowed to be explored.
Hearing a raucous commotion in the barns, she goes to investigate. There she discovers her servant, Naomi Ackie’s Anna, has been stripped and hung in a bag. The male workers are rowdy and behaving improperly. She commands they face the wall – treatment she is personally familiar with – sends Anna away, before chastising the men.
Rather than being the end of trouble, it opens Pandora’s box. It is here she meets Cosmo Jarvis as Sebastian. A love affair ensues that appears to be based purely on lust and forbidden sins. But that would be overly simplistic and deny Pugh the credit she deserves for leading Sebastian – and the viewer – on a journey of tainted love.
We saw in The Falling she can use sexuality as a tool for captivation, here the technique is far more subtle, much more explosive. She grows before our eyes, at times appears pained with potential outcomes, reveals humanity, acts as ruthless as a heartless animal, while remaining tempered throughout.
The overwhelming positive response to this film is really an accolade for Florence Pugh.
She is the medium the claustrophobic atmosphere uses to increase throughout. By breathing life into her character, it masks other failings. There wasn’t enough screen time – presumably due to budget constraints – for the descent to madness to be fully explored.
Shakespeare’s Macbeth sees its protagonists make cold decisions as they seek power, only to endure haunting demises. Pugh is barely allowed to tap into this facet before the viewer is served up a conclusion to the story (one that differs from the novella).
It means the gravitas of each choice is lost as we move to signposted events. For all Pugh’s excellent work, it means there comes a point empathy turns to dismay to disgust without the chance to consider the human side of her drives.
If love can be illogical, Lady Macbeth is a great advert for the emotion.
In time, expectations of the film will level and the great shining light – Florence Pugh – will be the only element worthy of note. When the contents of the story are taken into account, it means the film can’t be considered a complete success.
The Reflective Page 