Tag Archives: Premier

Elite Selection

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The 72 clubs of the Football League today voted in favour to set course for Oblivion Central, having departed Common Sense (East) some time ago, after a stopover at Blackmail Town forced chairmen to repeatedly smash the panic button.

It’s the arrival of the Elite Player Performace Plan, a plan devised by the Premier League (originally titled Let’s F**k Football – Together) to ensure they can get the best players off lower division clubs for next to no money. If the Football League had rejected the proposals, the Premier League would have withdrawn the current £5m it donates to lower leagues – that’s £250,000 per club, or an eye-watering 0.5% of the money they receive for TV rights alone. It’s little wonder they’re trying to ensure they get better value for money with such a huge outlay whilst receiving so little in return.

“There is always the danger under the new scheme that larger clubs will become more predatory but we hope we don’t see that,” were the pie-in-the-sky words intoned by football league chairman Greg Clarke after the motion was passed. The EPPP removes what little protection smaller clubs had against getting their best players stolen by larger ones. The only possible outcome of all this is that big clubs will become more predatory. Hope doesn’t even factor into the equation, the whole thing is designed so that big clubs put less effort into getting the better players for less money. Why in God’s name have the clubs agreed to this? In what realm of warped fantasy are you living, Mr. Clarke? And whatever you’re taking, please can I bloody have some?

The youth development of a club will be categorised into one of four sections. Category one, the highest level, will cost up to £2.5m. 46 clubs voted in favour. Statistically, most of these clubs can’t afford to put 50p in the electricity meter; what chance then, of multi-million pound investment in youth development when the maximum fee that can be recouped for a player under 17 is £100,000? Category three and four clubs will no longer be allowed to sign players under 12. The more you look at the figures, the more it becomes incomprehensible that the people in charge of their clubs would make such a decision.

I’m loathe to bring partisanship into the argument, but my club, Crystal Palace, have been stung before, and there is still a lot of resentment about the way the authorities handled the whole affair. The transfer fee for 16-year-old John Bostock was set by a tribunal at £700k, with the fee rising to £2m – when the moon loses her child in a week when two Mondays come together, or something equally as likely (Bostock starting 40 league games for Spurs and playing for England – I think I’ve got as much chance of doing that as he does).

Palace were looking for a fee of at least £2.5m, having rejected a £900k bid from Chelsea when he was fourteen. “It’s beyond me and it makes me question why I bother with football,” said then-chairman Simon Jordan. “One of the reasons the Premier League is the best in the world is because it’s made up of 50 per cent foreigners. So when big clubs buy our young and don’t use them, how the hell does that benefit the national game?” Unusually prescient and wise words from SJ at the time. Bostock has since played just 3 times for Spurs. Jordan gave up bothering not long after.

And that’s exactly what’s going to happen when these rules come in. Chairmen, coaches, young players – they’re all going to give up bothering because it simply isn’t worth it. Clubs have no reason to develop their youngsters for fear of being pillaged by the big boys, shedloads of kids are going to miss out on the chance of becoming a professional, and our national game will suffer as a result.

Of course, some clubs make a hell of a lot better use of their academies than others. But leaving youth development in the hands of each club is by far a much more natural, organic way of producing players. Forcing these categories on teams creates is just arbitrarily restricting their ability to be remunerated for nurturing young players. How can league 2 clubs like Torquay or Morecambe, with average gates of 2,500, be expected to fund a £2.5m spree, just so they can have under 12’s on their books? It is absolute madness.

The last thing clubs in the Football League need is more of a talent drain than there already is. The clubs who voted in favour of this have been banjaxed by some incredible financial short-termism. It is stupidity, denial and ignorance of monolithic proportions. We’ve seen many clubs on tip-toes at the brink over the last 10 years; soon I fear there’s going to be a lot more going over than before.

EDIT 21/10/11: James Daly’s song about the whole saga:

The Changing Face of English Football

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As those of you with a Sky Sports subscription will be aware (or anyone who has watched a game down the pub recently for that matter), this season marks the 20th anniversary of Premiership football on Sky and 20 years of the Premiership full stop. Now seems as good a time as any to take a look back at how things have changed over those 20 years, for better or worse.

The biggest impact has to be the impression Sky themselves have made. No longer is the armchair fan limited to a single game a week as they were in the final years of the Football League’s hegemony; instead the average fan can remain committed to their armchair for a good proportion of the weekend, soaking up the finest that English football has to offer. Enforced shopping trips with the Mrs. aside, that is. Of course, in addition to the Premiership, there are a plethora of other offerings on the table over the average weekend, varying from the Championship to Spanish to Blue Square Premier football – if you know where to find it. Some may argue that we are now over-saturated with football; for me, it’s just great to have the option to dip in as and when.

The biggest argument against this TV inspired change is the loss of what was once a sacrosanct time on the weekly calendar: 3 o’clock on a Saturday. For fans of some teams, the bigger clubs especially, it can be weeks on end between a traditional Saturday afternoon kick off and the next. The full ins and outs are perhaps an argument for another time, but I I don’t think it’s been overwhelmingly detrimental to the game’s lifeblood, the fans. Those separated from their clubs by geography or perhaps a financial barrier can be more connected to their clubs than ever before. The neutral has also been benefited by the ability to soak up game after game, which would be much more of a challenge if all games kicked off simultaneously. At least, I find it a challenge to be in two or more places at once, notwithstanding the fact that my terrible memory makes me promise to do just that with annoying regularity. Though rarely with football matches, it must be said.

Tied into the increased influence of television on the English game is influx of foreign players. The money pumped into the game through television rights contracts, both home and abroad has allowed the Premiership to attract some of the world’s best players. With this has come an overall increased technical level of the game in this country as a whole, as well as bringing the associated and hugely predictable cries of “they’re ruining the game for our lads” and things of that ilk. The increase in foreign talent on these shores, coinciding with an improvement in most top level playing surfaces has, many would argue, improved the quality of football on offer to the viewing public. For instance, the last 20 years have seen the rise of Arsenal’s brand of passing football, which, arguments about their current form aside, I doubt would have been possible with the quality of English players and pitches 20 years ago. Sure, the increase in foreign players on our shores has reduced opportunities for some of our younger players leaving some calling for limits on foreign player numbers (something which has mostly disappeared and then reared its head again in the past 20 years), but these foreign players must leave gaps in European & world football elsewhere. Football, like much else (and fittingly so I would suggest), is about the survival of the fittest and I, for one, would prefer to see English players adapt, improve and look for new opportunities in order to carve out their careers, rather than being given a relatively easy ride by some arbitrary limit on foreigners.

The past 20 years have also seen a significant change in the match day experience. Terraces are now a thing of the past, with most stadiums also doing away with the view-obstructing concrete posts that permeated most clubs’ grounds during the bulk of the 20th century. With this mostly positive investment in infrastructure has come price rises to go with it, not only in ticket prices but in the cost of refreshment. This all adds up to a more expensive match day experience and together with the earlier point regarding the increased influence of television, has led to many more fans taking to the sofa or the pub, to soak up their weekly football fix. These things add up to what on the one hand is a more consumer friendly experience but which also negatively affects the atmosphere at a lot of grounds, especially amongst home fans. I, for one, would be interested to see figures charting the increase in the number of times the chant “shall we sing a song for you?” is heard from away fans these days.

So that concludes a rather brief look at how the face of English football has changed over the last 20 years, and then only really at the top level. I’ll be exploring some of these ideas in more detail over the coming weeks as we continue look at how the Premier League has changed the footballing landscape over its maiden 20 years.