This Government thinks it knows what is best for football. Here’s what is best for football. For all sport, in fact. Competition.
A healthy, open competition is what makes football in this country so vital. We do not know who will win the league every season. We do not know who will make the top four or who will go down.
More than half the professional clubs in this country have experienced the Premier League since its formation. Now one of its founding members, Oldham Athletic, are in serious danger of dropping into the fifth tier.
And that is a terrible shame but it is also competition. Bournemouth, Wimbledon and Wigan went the other way for a time. The movement of clubs up and down a pyramid system is the vibrant core of the English game.
Some will tell you it is all about community and, yes, that is important, too. Yet Leeds has a population of 1.89million and the average gate at Elland Road is 36,405.
So, undeniably, any true focus on community for the majority would improve hospitals, schools, transport infrastructure and local facilities such as parks and libraries. Football cannot cure cancer. It cannot take your kids out of a minimum wage job, or provide the rail link to cities where better opportunities exist.
Tracey Crouch seemed to have made her mind up even before the fan-led review
Yet it does have sexy footballers and charismatic managers and politicians love stuff like that. You have only got to look at the lists of gifts and hospitality for members of parliament.
And it is an MP, Tracey Crouch, who has chaired the Government’s fan-led review, which will now foist an independent regulator on the sport. Crouch was in favour of the idea before the review began, so has unsurprisingly come to precisely the conclusion she desired. And nobody would argue football has shown itself in the best light of late.
Yet Crouch somehow ties the proposed breakaway Super League with the ruination of Bury and the sale of Newcastle United to the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia, so it is a report that is not afraid to take the intellectual leap. Much like Shaun the Sheep, in fact.
Want to take those topics in turn? Let’s start with Newcastle. Asked if the independent regulator would have blocked the sale to the Saudis, Crouch intimated it might. She talked about a new integrity test, taking character into account.
‘I think the test would have stressed the takeover more than the current test does,’ she concluded. This is utterly fanciful. It is well known that the Premier League were placed under significant Government pressure to appease the Saudis, who are valued trading partners.
Yet such was the League’s reluctance to approve the sale it was held up for close on 18 months. Only when every last issue regarding ownership and broadcast piracy had been settled was it decided the League could resist no more.
The European Super League debacle has been nonsensically linked to other issues
Now, given that entreaties to step in and help conclude the deal went all the way up to Boris Johnson, would a Government-appointed regulator truly have addressed the integrity and character of those involved in the takeover? That sounds unlikely considering the back-channelling taking place.
And what is character anyway? It is such a vague, loose term. There are laws to protect football clubs from criminals but any regulator will have his or her work cut out halting a sale over the cut of the owner’s jib.
Newcastle supporters can argue that they did not like Mike Ashley’s character but nothing that he did during his time there was legally wrong. Some owners will be better than others. That is football, too. It is the reason Huddersfield won three league titles in succession and nothing since.
Bury’s owners were ruinous. Yet in Crouch’s report, the miserable fate of one club is seen as symptomatic of the whole system. Why is a handout the proposed answer to the problems of Bury and others further down the pyramid?
A 10 per cent levy on Premier League transfers is said to deliver £160m for redistribution below.
‘One year’s money could provide a grant to ensure League One and League two clubs could break even,’ the report concludes. Alternatively, Leagues One and Two could live within their means.
Bury FC's Gigg Lane gates were locked for the last time following expulsion in August 2019
If Bury cannot meet their wage bill, they have to buy cheaper players. If those players are not as good it will impact on performance. And if performance drops they could fall into the National League. And that’s the way it goes. No club has the right to exist in any league. If Bury could only afford National League standard players then they would have become a National League club. Like Torquay, Yeovil, Grimsby, Wrexham, Aldershot, Chesterfield, Dagenham and Redbridge, Notts County, Halifax, Barnet or Southend, who all once enjoyed Football League status.
Why the handout? And who decides how much? The report says 10 per cent but what if Rick Parry gets his begging bowl out again and the Government regulator decides it isn’t enough? Who stops this levy becoming 20 per cent, or 30?
And who exactly is being helped? The owner of Bristol Rovers is Wael Abdulkader Al-Qadi. His family founded the Arab Jordan Investment Bank. And he needs a financial lift from Delia Smith, at Norwich?
Smith’s club are a good example because they go up and down. Their plan is to be in the top 26 in the country: either in the Premier League, or in the play-offs to return. Yet the transfer tax would see Norwich indirectly donating to a club such as Stoke, who are in direct competition to replace them. Stoke are owned by the Bet365 Group where, in 2020, founder and joint chief executive Denise Coates earned a salary of £422m and dividends of £48m.
But again, Stoke need a hand-out from Delia Smith to help usurp her club. Coates’ salary is more than 15 times Smith’s total worth.
It makes no sense whatsoever for Norwich owner Delia Smith to effectively fund rivals
One of the panel members, Baron Finkelstein, said he was greatly stirred talking to Gary Neville, and his mother Jill, about Bury.
‘The story of how Bury foundered was a scandal but just as much, it was a tragedy,’ he wrote. ‘It
