Tag: Football Finance

EFL Short-sighted

EFL Short-sighted

The English Football League (EFL) demonstrated ignorance and a lack of understanding with wider issues this week, in doing so it deepens a rift between its member clubs and the administration of the EFL. The much derided EFL Trophy, now renamed Checkatrade Trophy, was always a bone of contention. Now the fears of lower league clubs have been manifested in the form of ridiculous fines.

The concept of the revised EFL Trophy was after the lower tiered Football League clubs spoke out against the proposed League Three option, fearing the inclusion of Premier League B Teams would be a further example of looking after the big clubs at the expense of those without. Also, it would have damaged the accessibility of the current loan system.

The Football Reflective was a fan of the idea (Fair and Three) as it took a holistic view. The current loan system hasn’t proven to be beneficial for the donor clubs. Aside from Manchester City, who appear to frequently send their coaches to assess and assist those loaned out, once a player has left the nest they are under the guidance of lower grade coaches using lesser facilities.

The FA, after years of mounting evidence that suggests the national team has a bleak future, is desperate for a solution. When League Three was written off, they needed a halfway house. A trial to see if there would be the appetite for B Teams to mix in competitive ties with lower league clubs.

They took the essence of a good idea and managed to turn it against itself.

The EFL Trophy in its former guise was a good opportunity for the teams from the bottom two tiers to have a day out at Wembley. Not many cared for the competition until that chance was on the horizon, but when it appeared a play-off final vibe arose.

Adding select upper league clubs’ under-21s to the mix destroyed that slight fantasy. The idea of Stoke U21s v Wolverhampton U21s at Wembley doesn’t have any of the romance. All it would do is confirm to the smaller clubs that football in this country only cares about those higher up the league pyramid.

But the clubs that bemoaned the idea of League Three do need to take some responsibility. Their fears have turned into a self-fulfilling prophecy, acted out during the EFL Trophy.

Most blame has to go to the EFL itself. This week they fined twelve clubs, ranging from £3,000 to £15,000 each, for fielding weaker sides(five players must have appeared in the previous game, or contain the five most used players from the season as a whole). A format they didn’t trust has now hit their pockets.

Luton chairman Gary Sweet summed up the disparity best when he remarked he shouldn’t be paying fees to give his youth players experience. To make matters worse, his club’s youth defeated a side from the higher tier. So, is the Checkatrade Trophy only about developing youth players from big clubs?

The fear of the voiceless now realised with the opening of a cheque book.

The EFL Trophy fines come at the same time as talks to restructure the EFL to four leagues of twenty teams collapsed. Here the clubs and league are equally short-sighted. Chief Executive of Shrewsbury, Brian Caldwell, has been one of the most outspoken against. His concern, one mirrored up and down the country, was a reduction in fixtures would mean less money.

The EFL countered this by promising more Saturday fixtures, seen as a way to avoid the lesser attended midweek matches, claiming this would actually increase overall revenues. That plan was supposedly scuppered by the FA’s latest oversees TV deal for the FA Cup. The weekends they’d planned to use are now locked in for FA Cup ties.

By removing themselves from the negotiating table too soon, the EFL has failed to see its strong hand. Without the EFL clubs there is no FA Cup. The football league could have driven the demands for better distribution of wealth and proceeded with the reformation of its structure.

Not compromising for a few FA Cup weekends means its platform stays stuck in the past.

The Championship may be the fifth most watched league in the world but it has the weight of the entire lower tiers on its shoulders. It can’t thrive unabated like the Premier League, there is a glass ceiling imposed due to the EFL’s overall structure. It may carry the load but it is the EFL that should shoulder the burden.

Doing nothing will only see the gap between the haves and the have-nots grow.

By being overly defensive of the FA and Premier League’s intentions, the EFL and its members have only spited themselves. If the road to Hell is paved with good intentions, the road to obscurity and obsoletion is paved with paranoia.

What £100m means in Manchester

What £100m means in Manchester

The two clubs baring Manchester in their name have both spent big this summer. But that is where the similarity ends. In the centre of Manchester, Pep Guardiola has spread his cash as he rebuilds and reimagines The Citizens style of play. Over in Trafford, their new man at the helm José Mourinho, also faces a reshaping job. But he has decided to take a big, singular gamble. There is a reason for these two differing approaches.

The irony of United being the club to break the world transfer record, when it was “City ruining football” with their accelerated growth period, won’t go unnoticed with football fans around the country. But the protracted Paul Pogba transfer is the peak of a continued period of United high-spending.

Moyes, Van Gaal, and now Mourinho, have all been supported by the Glazers in the transfer market.

The ethics of a £100m move have been widely discussed. Regardless of opinion, the truth is football’s finance has been heading this way for a long time. The new TV money should have found its way back to the pockets of fans but this was always going to be difficult when chairman saw it as a way to increase the ransoms on their top players.

Juventus have only done what Everton have been trying for the last two summers, and this despite the Goodson Park outfit benefitting from the increased TV revenue and a new, presumably richer, owner. The Italian club have a tighter budget, if they hadn’t broken the world record fee with United’s money, Real Madrid would have stepped in and come close.

What makes the move murkier for United, are the reports the Frenchman preferred a move to the Spanish giants. A few eyebrows must have been raised from Sir Alex Ferguson to Sir Bobby Charlton, when the realisation hit home that a player who left for a tribunal fee, looked to be returning, somewhat underwhelmed, for a world record fee.

The debate about whether he is worth the fee is null and void. The moment a club are willing to pay a price, that is the market value.

What the Pogba debacle does, is detract attention from United’s net summer spend. The positive press campaign focuses on four acquisitions, one of them Zlatan Ibrahimovic for absolutely nothing. A player of such quality on a free transfer is more than a bargain, the only doubts surround his ability to step up from the tamer French league to the tough English season at the age of 34.

The other half of Mourinho’s summer quartet are Henrikh Mkhitaryan and Eric Bailly. At a combined fee of £68m they are hardly cheap supplements to the lofty pursuit of Pogba.

This is where the Manchester divide became a chasm over the summer.

As it stands City, who admittedly are still seeking reinforcements, have spent £114m and recouped £10m. Both of those figures are set to rise, with the imbalance increasing on the expenditure side of the equation.

For the price of one Pogba, City have brought in six new faces and still have over £60m to go before equalling United’s outgoings. This is without acknowledging the offloading process City are going through which is trickling some cash back into the coffers.

The reason the alternative approaches are so glaring is because both clubs had the same problem: they need complete overhauls.

José Mourinho even commented lately that he needed twenty players to undo the damage inflicted from the Louis Van Gaal era, and that his approach differed so wildly, it would take many new faces to adjust the style.

So why place all his faith in one big summer signing?

Because he lacks a luxury only Pep Guardiola can boast in the modern world of football: time.

The Spaniard holds a major advantage over José and it isn’t a bigger cheque book or even a better youth system. It’s the lack of urgency for immediate results. The Etihad board didn’t allow the Pellegrini era end with a canter to then make a kneejerk reaction with their long-term managerial target.

Guardiola knows he can take his time developing new signings like Marlos Moreno without fearing the need for instant success. That’s not to say he can fail to achieve minimum targets. Champions League qualification is a must to the big clubs. But even failure to meet that wouldn’t necessarily cost Pep his job.

Mourinho is breathing the air of a different planet. He is a proven manager that suddenly has everything to prove. After the Chelsea sacking, he can’t afford a slow start, let alone a disappointing season. He didn’t have the support of the entire United board but he was seen as a necessary evil.

That conjoined dilemma of club and man brought them together. Now they face a future where development gives way to desperation in the transfer market.

Mourinho is in the casino, play for high stakes risks, and Pogba is one big throw of the dice.

His inner-city rival can smile and take cab journeys with fans instead. He has the time to send players like Zinchenko and Gabriel Jesus on loan, not worry about Ilkay Gündogan’s lengthy injury, or bend to transfer fee demands he feels excessive. And all the time he works the current crop – whom many now seek redemption – into his mould.

Leicester proved last year that money doesn’t guarantee success, this season Manchester will see if patience pays dividends.

Brexit and the Premier League

Brexit and the Premier League

Britain has been gripped with post-EU Referendum fall-out. Markets have panicked, the pound has fallen, and the Prime Minister has resigned. All this seems secondary when you consider the real burning issue: How will Brexit affect the Premier League.

One certainty surrounding Brexit is everything is uncertain. There’s no clear front-runner for the Tory leadership, when the fragmented state of British politics is taken into account. While many mention Boris Johnson as a likely candidate, there are those that seem to think he has too many agents working against him. Theresa May is emerging as a front-runner and she was a member of the Remain campaign.

Depending on who takes the hot-seat will shape the nature of EU negotiations. A hard line Brexiter will be less likely to concede allowances, like continued freedom of movement for access to the common market (albeit with higher tariffs and penalties). But that option is still, at this moment in time, on the table. If that was to be the outcome, all the potential scenarios about to be mentioned, are null and void.

The alternative is a phased exit from the single market, in tandem with workers’ rights from EU countries. This is where the Premier League braces itself for a paradigm shift.

The most obvious change, and one that would be immediately recognisable, is how EU players would no longer be allowed to ply their trade in the Premier League without obtaining a work permit, like players, say, from South American countries currently apply for.

Players with a work permit are viewed as exceptional and are able to enhance the league based on their international experience. The better the ranking of the nation, the less games the player needs to have featured in for the national side. For example, countries ranked in the top ten, require the player to have featured in 30% of matches or more in the last two years. Moving in blocks of ten, the appearances required rise from 45% to 60% and finally 75% respectively.

If a player is refused, they can appeal. The Home Office then take into account the size of the transfer fee. An outstanding player may come from a country blessed with world class talent, so has rarely featured on the international stage, while still being of the highest calibre. This point is backed up with the size of his contract and the weekly wage.

Also, if the player has featured in many Champions League games, it sheds favourable light on his case.

However, the Premier League cannot gain special treatment compared to other industries, inevitably the number of European-based imports would decrease if EU players became no different from nationalities based outside of this continent. Maybe there’d be several years of easing in new rules but eventually the law would be the same across the board.

At this point the star foreign players would be more expensive to acquire. That strikes fear into club owners and fans will feel their team is being ripped off. But perhaps it will be better to avoid the current Average Player Tax the league endures, bringing in filler to gain access to the rare outstanding performer. Instead clubs will pay a premium for a premium player, minus the non-descript faces.

When the Premier League was new, it managed to pull in star names. Back then they felt special as they were, to start with, one-offs. Since then it has been easier to lure the best in the world over en masse. In doing so, the league’s reputation has risen to such a degree that nothing will prevent players feeling its lure.

It isn’t about to turn into the Scottish Premier League from yesteryear, with a few massive names in a field of averageness. The money alone that the Premier League generates means it can endure any rule change to the eligibility of its workers.

The FA will see it as a blessing in disguise. The lazy scouting of top clubs, that see them take a risk on an average foreign player with an EU passport rather than look in the domestic lower leagues, will slowly draw to a halt. And current champions Leicester have demonstrated, there is talent to be found further down the leagues.

Any extra premium clubs pay for the stand-out performers will also be offset by an unexpected easing of financial burdens. Currently too many top teams are reluctant to use their youth academies. Part of this problem comes from the condition that too much choice is a bad thing. When pruned to a more manageable number, the human mind finds it easier to make correct choices.

The pruning that will take place in the academies will be the process of no longer filling them with youngsters from around the globe that either have EU citizenship or want to attain it. Instead, British players will fill the ranks. Those that are clearly the best won’t have to fight with high numbers of imports or pointless loan moves across the continent. They will be used or released.

Eventually the domestic youth talent will become good enough, and trusted, for the first team. This will save clubs millions each year on players that act as squad players.

The English national team will have greater choice of top flight players. The figure is currently less than 30% in Premier League first teams. This advantage means the FA won’t fight the Premier League’s case for special treatment.

Like much of the Brexit debate, there has been a lot of scaremongering.

Just like Britain won’t return to the dark ages following exit from the EU, the Premier League won’t lose its place as one of the top destinations in Europe for players to perform. The best in the world will still come here, and any increase in price needs to be placed into context.

The finances in the Premier League are currently grotesque, a recalibration and reconsideration of where every pound goes isn’t a bad thing. In fact, it’s long overdue. Instead of being flippant with cash, maybe owners will be mindful of bringing in only the best, remembering it’s the working man in the stands that make it possible.

The Premier League will still thrive after Brexit, don’t let big business and the establishment tell you otherwise.