Portsmouth going into administration shows how dire football finances are at the moment and how much people will strive to “buy” success. I think this is the root of a lot of football’s problems.
Portsmouth bought success and have now been found out – FA Cup winners two years ago and now struggling. They should be demoted to League 2 and should start again. AFC Wimbledon have shown that it can be done as have Accrington Stanley. A lot of clubs are going to be caught out and it will be interesting to see how much of a clear-out of expensive players there will be in the summer.
I think that your local players should play for your local team as much as possible and maybe this indicates that the days of big transfers may be over – for a while.
I agree the football wages and general profiteering on merchandise eg MU away strip and home strip requiring a second mortgage are spoiling football.
I rarely bring myself to watch a game now because of this and the ‘helium filled balloon’ they call a ball these days enabling a goal kick to put the ball in the oponents penalty area.
The hype of the international stars costing millions with the results of a not to distant Chelsea team looking like a United Nations conference has taken the sport out of the game and made it big business. Players don’t talk about a contract now; their manager/negotiator talks to the clubs manager/negotiator, how much longer before somebody sits down on the field as strike action against failed salary negotiations?
I do think teams should be limited to the number of outsiders included in the squad and that would mean not just stopping French/Brazilian players signing up for top clubs but, also limiting the number of Scousers/Welsh that decide the money is better at Tottenham.
Local teams for local people
A strike has already happened this season – at Chester City where players refused to play after continually not receiving their wages. Didn’t lead to an actual picket line though which is what I suspect Major Orton wishes to see
There are many things wrong with football at the moment and a list of them all would be vast but in short – the Premier League is an agreement to make money by selling “product” and has no interest in husbandry of the game at all. Limiting expenditure is not on their agenda, they would rather smaller clubs went to the wall than reduce the perceived “value” of the big clubs (which is boosted by glamorous foreign imports, not by development of Britis youth), that value being in export TV markets. The Champions League is essentially the same but pan-European.
It needs a much, much bigger collapse than this before the game in England will change dramatically.
A good point about the premier league – I had forgot about that.
Didn’t UEFA state that they will only allow 6 foreign players per team in the near future or am I dreaming?
Yes, but the whole rule is so watered-down as to be useless. It simply allows for a player to be “home-grown” if associated with the club for long enough. So sign up a promising African 9 year old as a youth asset and watch as he counts as an Englishman for the “home-grown rule”. In truth I would suspect that like a salary cap, forcing English teams to play English players would fall foul of European free labour transfer laws.