Thing is I dont think a superleague would work. In Spain you dont really get away fans, all the clubs are too dispersed. Here away fans, rivalry, arguments in the pub, monday morning banter etc are all ingranined into the culture, without that carrying on I think fans in the UK at least would get bored of a superleague very quickly and attendances would dwindle
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?ú930,000,000 to be Champions...
- Thread starter Mulletperm
- Start date
United's revenue is almost ?ú350m; ours is a little over ?ú150m. How is that not stopping us from competing with them?!
The whole thing is a vicious circle - yes, United's revenue is huge because of its fanbase. But at the same time, its fanbase is huge because of its revenue (and the success that this revenue has helped them to maintain). They were 'lucky' in that their recent period of success began just as the money in football exploded...
I think it's 'right' or 'fair' that teams like Villa, Everton and Saudi Sportswashing Machine have more resources than teams like Wigan and Bolton, because they have better histories and bigger fanbases. But the resources of the 'CL teams' is completely disproportionate because of how extreme the financial rewards of playing in the Champions League are, and how self-perpetuating they are. Honestly, whilst I understand the points you are making, I don't know how you can think this model is "acceptable to a great extent".
Spur of the moment
Frederic Kanoute
Not for one moment, but since when was ANY league ever really fair? Even if you go back to the early part of the last century, it was often the richer teams with the bigger fan bases that could afford to buy success. That's precisely how Arse got big between the wars and, if we're honest, Spurs used their cheque book to build a team good enough to win the League twice in '51 and '61. In the late '40s we paid what was then a record fee for a full-back, Alf Ramsey. Then during the fifties and sixties we were one of, if not THE biggest spenders, regularly shelling out record or near record fees for the likes of Danny Blanchflower, Dave Mackay, Cliff Jones, Jimmy Greaves and Martin Peters
The difference is nowadays teams can buy success from money they cannot themselves generate but through billionaire sugar-daddies. I'm all in favour of attempts to level the playing field but not to the extent of penalising the wealthiest so that minions can oust them.
No way Jose.
Harry_Perkins
Ben Thatcher
Not convinced with this argument. Up until the early/mid 90s, players in England, in the top flight, were 95%+ British. All through this period, up until the mid 80s anyway, we had a very equal distribution of income. TV money was shared 92 ways, matchday gate receipts shared between the two clubs, a 4% levy on all gate receipts shared 92 ways. We even had a maximum wage up until around 1964. There were very tough regulations on directors, on potential asset stripping, on director pay etc etc. Those regulations strongly discouraged major bankroller types because they couldn't just treat clubs like their own play thing. That is why we had never had them before.
Yet from the inception of European competition up until the ban in 1985, English clubs were the most successful in Europe. Players could earn more abroad, usually in Italy, but only a handful left. So I don't think this follows at all. If we went back to the old rules (with new ones to distribute CL money more evenly), the game in this country would still generate vast sums, the players would still get very high wages, a lot of the foreign players might head home... the only difference is, is that the income would be spread more evenly and we would have a more competitive league. Arguably that might actually help English clubs in Europe. It certainly didn't use to do us any harm, anyway.
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Harry_Perkins
Ben Thatcher
Yes but we still had to work within the framework I described above. If we got 60,000 in the ground then half the gate receipts would go to the other club. Whereas today, Man Utd, for example, keep everything except the away allocation. Naturally, if we got more fans through the gate over the course of a season than other clubs, we'd still end up with more gate receipt money (minus the levy) and that allowed us to spend more on wages and fees but it was a good check and balance. Any gaps in wealth would be very slow in developing and there was plenty of potential to make up the ground. When these rules were all basically ignored and trashed, the richest clubs could keep all their income and this is part of where the problem stems from. It isn't just the Champions League that is the problem OR bankroller owners. You take those factors away and we're still left with a very unequal and more importantly a *unsustainable* distribution of wealth. This would no problem if this was any other business. In that respect, it considered a good thing for weaker businesses to go the wall because all the customers are coming to you. In football, your business is BASED on there being other clubs to compete with. If all the customers keep on coming over to you, you actually start to undermine your own future. This is why it remains in the interest of the likes of Man Utd to share out the income. In the long term, clubs are just cutting their own throats. That said, do the owners care? Most will be long gone by the way the time the brick starts to hit the fan!
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a) I don't have figures available, but I'm pretty sure that the disparity between clubs (in relative terms) was significantly smaller in the days that you describe than it is now. I would imagine that the distribution was more like that of Wigan to Aston Villa in the graph that I linked to before.
b) Following on from that, I'm also sure that success wasn't as self-perpetuating as it is now, because finishing in the top 4 (or even finishing top) was nowhere near as lucrative as it is now (again, in relative terms).
c) I wouldn't call it penalising the wealthiest - just reducing their reward so that it isn't so disproportionate in comparison to the 'non-big-6' teams. In any case, given that you want to level the playing field, why are you against doing something about United's excessive wealth?
For the record, the average cost of their first XI in the PL so far this season has been ?ú130m; ours has been ?ú52m. Their wage bill last season was ?ú153m; ours was ?ú91m - a difference of ?ú62m. In comparison, Chelsea's was ?ú168m and ?ú174m - a difference of only ?ú15m and ?ú21 respectively. I don't agree with what Chelsea and City have been allowed to do - indeed, they're the two teams that I hate the most - but the difference between them and United is smaller than the difference between United and everyone else. (Of course, I understand that Chelsea and City haven't earned that money whilst United have - I think virtually everyone agrees that what City and Chelsea have done shoudln't be allowed, so there's not much debate to be had there).
For the sake of clarity and emphasis, I'm not talking about bringing the top teams down to the level of all the other PL teams. I'm just talking about bringing them down so that the difference between them and the next-best teams isn't so extreme.
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Never said it would work, do think someone will try it however, eventually
Yes, but Italian/Spanish/French leagues weren't full of foreign players either? so most leagues competed based on the pool of "local" developed resources. England in that model would actually do well simply via the size of the pool of professional players.
Today, European clubs pick the best players from South/Central America, Africa, Eastern Europe, etc to build the bigger sides, to compete against that with only local/home grown players (and the best of those would probably be outside as well) due to wage/cap restrictions would be highly uncompetitive.
As with a lot of ideas, I try to be a realist, i.e. what actually has a chance of being implemented, vs. some ideal of what it used to be like, or what's really a fair and level field. For me 130M income, competing against 350M isn't the problem, it's 130M competing against unlimited (1.3B and counting), thats a problem. Players that cost 16M vs players that cost 35M isn't the problem, it's 16M vs. 50/80M that's the issue.
Gate/tv rights = income, player spend & wages as a % of that income, and yes CL will cause an issue.
I think it's misleading to compare one team's revenue to 'unlimited' or '1.3B and counting'.
City's average PL first XI this year cost ?ú179m ... United's cost ?ú130m ... Spurs' cost ?ú52m
City's wages last year were ?ú174m ... United's were ?ú153m ... Spurs' were ?ú91m
So the gap between United and Spurs is much bigger than that between United and City.
Again, let me stress that I recognise that City haven't earned that money, and that I hate them passionately. But in terms of sporting competitiveness and equality, City aren't that much worse than United, but United are much worse than Spurs.
Still, I appreciate your point that you're trying to be more realistic. Hypothetically I think that redistributing the top teams' excessive revenues could be realistic and pretty straightforward, as well as fair and good for the sport and the league, but I can't see it happening any time in the near future.
its a shame we dont copy the same system they have in the german bundesliga, the fans own 51 % of their team and no non german nationals are allowed to own a football club ( think this is right )
their league is doing really well now ( look at bayern) they have massive crowds , cheap tickets , standing in areas.
most of the big money sloshing around in the pemier league is going to waste ! to much greed etc
their league is doing really well now ( look at bayern) they have massive crowds , cheap tickets , standing in areas.
most of the big money sloshing around in the pemier league is going to waste ! to much greed etc
Bullet
Andy Thompson
If you were to do an XY plot of Wages+Fees vs Points tally for the season you would see a huge correlation
We need to bring the Wages+Fees closer together throughout the league
Luckily there is a natural cap of "25 senior pros" so that one team can't buy the whole league - otherwise Emirates Marketing Project could conceivably buy every senior player in top leagues just to prevent others... but they can't own all 40 of the top attackers in Europe, so competition still does exist
We need to bring the Wages+Fees closer together throughout the league
Luckily there is a natural cap of "25 senior pros" so that one team can't buy the whole league - otherwise Emirates Marketing Project could conceivably buy every senior player in top leagues just to prevent others... but they can't own all 40 of the top attackers in Europe, so competition still does exist
Harry_Perkins
Ben Thatcher
I think certainly agree there are more now but I wouldn't say the percentages were very comparable with England in terms of foriegn players. There were a fair number of Latin Americans who piled their trade in France, Portugal or Spain in that era. And plenty of Africans playing in France. This was always the favoured route, presumably for historically reasons. Look at the Gooner team that won the Cup Winners Cup in 1994. Arsenal from 1-11 and the 5 subs were English with a Scottish manager. Parma though had the likes of Faustino Asprilla, Roberto Sensini and Tomas Brolin. All very considerable players in their day. And most Italian teams were the same. They'd have a good 4 or 5 foreign players among the first XI. That was a much higher percentage than England, even in 1994.
I think the example you give is just about bearable right now but the problem remains that it is unsustainable in the long run if income isn't redistributed rather than just essentially capped. Which just slows down the same processes that would be happening if it wasn't capped. See the SPL example where 25 years back Rangers and Celtic were the biggest and best supported clubs, and always had been, but they were limited in how far in front they could get by the fact that they had to share some of their income with the other clubs in the Scottish league. This resulted in some barren years for them where the likes of Aberdeen or Hearts would come to the fore instead. Then they were allowed to keep more and more of their income, before this process had even started in England, and look what happened. This, in the long run, will happen to the premier league too unless something is done. We all see the process at work and it will just continue. More and more youngsters will end up supporting the top clubs because there is little hope for their local clubs ever doing much. Even if they're in the top flight! This means more supporters for the already richer clubs, which means more income for them, which in turn further allows them to extend advantage over of everyone else. And so the process goes on.
Quite frankly, I think the two ideas are about as realistic as each other right now. The people who run the show are essentially the richest clubs and they're not going to want to have to either limit their spending or share out their income. Like how this happened in the first place, I think it will take a sea change in society at large for anything to be seriously done about this. And nothing on the horizon suggests this is likely. That said, the FPP rules are at least evidence that Uefa understands their is a big issue with uncompetitiveness. But they are limited because they well realise the limited scope of what they can do.
It already has happened! In the last 14 seasons the title has been won by United 8 times, Arsenal 3, and Chelsea 3 (only because of Abramovich).
In that time, 88% of the available CL spots have been taken up by United, Arsenal, Chelsea and Liverpool. In the last 9 seasons - when English teams started to have 4 teams qualify - only 4 of the 36 CL places have been taken by another team (Saudi Sportswashing Machine in 02-03 and 03-04, Everton in 05-06, and Spurs in 2010-2011).
markysimmo
Johnny nice-tits
MCFC's team 5 years ago, not much difference
Isaksson; Onuoha, Dunne, Distin, Jordan; Beasley, Johnson, Jihai, Ireland; Mpenza, Vassell.
Isaksson; Onuoha, Dunne, Distin, Jordan; Beasley, Johnson, Jihai, Ireland; Mpenza, Vassell.
Leeds Spur
Banned
Stick your forum
NaijaSpurs
Les Ferdinand
Oh you mean like when a player comes to the end of his contract and the club holding their registration can stop you from joining the club of your and can bully you into signing a new contract or stop you from playing football
Crab.C.Nesbitt
Bobby Mimms
:lol:no pal you stick your forum!
Leeds Spur
Banned
Lol. Just thought I'd post it again! Funny.
Spaceman
Ruel Fox
this