So, buckle up for another polemic against the Premier League. I would argue that it's entirely justified and timely - the pernicious effect of having a body dedicated to governing the interests of the 'elite' is evident in the current debate about salary caps.
Read my thoughts on the positive effects of salary caps here.
I'll grudgingly admit I was sceptical about Rick Parry's ability to offer anything to the EFL other than being good at filing things and saying 'Alan, I don't want problems, I want solutions' or whatever else it is a CEO does but I was encouraged by his frank statement about the need to curb club spending on wages and the impact of parachute payments on the lower tiers
What is obvious to everyone watching this saga unfold, is that any actions by the EFL should be mirrored by the Premier League. We've got to see the game act unilaterally if we want the game to prosper and be all it can be (and what football fan wouldn't?)
The response of the Premier League (to essentially do one of those professionally sympathic listening face that bosses do whilst Parry was talking, then to explain carefully that it can't help because of some research or statistics it had made up on the spot) amounts to little more than an expression of its own power. It has a situation that suits it and it doesn't care. It is shrugging its shoulders and saying 'yeah, but what you gonna do about it? Make me?:
A partial salary cap is madness in terms of competition. The last 30 years of football have seen the formation of what is essentially an elite cartel, dominating trophies and qualification places on the back of a recurring cycle of 'win - increase turnover - raise wage bill - win again - repeat'
If you doubt my insistence that football is less competitive read my compelling* stats filled 2 part analysis of the decline of excitement and unpredictability here
*Long winded
If we (football as a whole) accept that it's fine to allow the top teams to continue as they are but force everyone below 20th to limit wages we're only going to see more of the runaway titles and dominant performances of recent years. The sort of gaps that Liverpool and Man City have opened over the rest of the league in recent years are testament not simply to the brilliance of their managers and players but to their financial superiority. Pay twice as much as everyone else for long enough and you'll win the league sooner or later.
A partial salary cap will limit the ability of championship sides to build squads capable of competing against 'the elite' and leave them even more vulnerable to having their talent poached by the top clubs.
It will also make relegation from the Premier League a disaster for any side hoping to keep its squad relatively intact and make it very hard for any side in the top flight who fears relegation (most teams from Everton down) to plan long term, knowing that they're almost certain to suffer a total exodus of players in the event of finishing in the bottom 3. This in turn is likely to doom them to a period of struggle wherein returning to the top flight is made much harder.
Effectively, the stakes of relegation are raised and the response is likely to be increased spending to try and protect against it which really, goes against everything the cap should be achieving.
None of this will be the fault of the EFL. The blame lies firmly at the door of the Premier League whose main interest is protecting the glamour of its brand. It cares not one but for the wellbeing of football as a whole, because it isn't football. It's raw and pure greed disguised as sport. It's the same self interest as bankers and disaster capitalism just with a (sweatshop produced) club scarf draped around its neck as cover.
Football is the national game and as such, should have national governance. It should be overseen by one body who have its interests at heart. It shouldn't have an arbitrary divide between the top twenty and the rest. There is no spectacular drop off in attendance or interest in the game to justify the imbalance in funding received by clubs. There's no excuse for the fact the most important group leisure pursuit in the country can't organise itself into a sustainable system because it's divided up into different bodies.
It's also not a case of trying to protect the dying old fashioned traditions of lower league football. Attendances outside the top flight have grown at a faster pace than Premier League attendances since 2003 (Championship up 8% compared to the the Premier League's 16% growth) - League 1 and 2 are no stranger to 5 figure attendances and the likes of Bradford and Sunderland sometimes post bigger attendances than Premier League teams like Bournemouth.
Interest in the football league is high.
More people watched games outside the Premier League than within it in 2018/19. Football that isn't the Premier League is technically more popular with fans than football that is.
The fact that the five year (2013-18) average attendance for leagues 2 and 3 is respectively around 7.5k and 4.5k per match makes a compelling case for the sustainability of a professional football pyramid. With figures like that, it's frankly astonishing that the game is allowed to be in the mess that it is. The crisis is not one of income for most teams, but of outgoings. The outgoings are driven up by the excess of the top sides and the need to compete. What trickles down isn't wealth, but debt.
The duty of the football authorities should be to ensure the health of the game overall. Lower league football isn't opera or some quaint local tradition that requires government subsidy and legal protection. It simply needs to operate within a system of regulation that is fair and allows for achievement without the need to mortgage the future of the club against success. The attendances alone should provide a strong foundation for a broad based pyramid.
A salary cap is huge step towards that and stirring the pot thus could reinvigorate competition and see a new era of excitement and unpredictability but with depressing predictability the Premier League aren't interested and we 'lower league fans' face a future where the Premier League is even more detached from us and we're even more powerless to protect our assets from poaching.
While we're on the point, 'lower league fans' is a phrase that reeks of the arrogant complacency of those who support the sides who are now financially immune to relegation and see themselves as a different species, as if many of the 'lower league clubs' have never been anything but. My own 'lower league club' provided the UK's first Ballon d'Or winner, won the most famous game of domestic football ever and provided the only Englishman to win a MoM in a world cup final and but for ill timed injury, would probably have also provided the captain of the team.
Unfortunately for us, no one thought of the Premier League in the mid 1950s otherwise we might be now, looking down on the likes of Liverpool (relegated in 1954 and therefore locked out of the money party) and clinking glasses with other top sides like Huddersfield and West Brom - it's all a matter of timing.
Luckily for all the Liverpool fans in Taunton, Tulsa and Tokyo, the league in the 1950s didn't financially penalise sides outside of the top flight (or top four) and they were able to build again and become a force by the mid 60s which in turn laid foundations for their European exploits and global appeal. Wouldn't it be nice for everyone to have this luxury? Who is to say that a in a alternative 1950s Premier League, it wouldn't have been the seaside glamour of Blackpool, packed full of England stars renowned the world over, who'd have gone on to be part of the self sustaining elite? It's all a question of timing.
Let's return to the popularity of football outside the 'elite.'
Significantly more than half the active football supporters in the UK (i.e, those who watched a game at a stadium) watch football outside the top flight.
With that context in mind - here's a sobering stat to finish with.
If the Championship does end up with (as reported) a wage cap of 7k per week then assuming all its sides paid this wage, to all their players (and used a full allowance of 23 players) then the total wage bill for the division would be as follows:
£192556000
((7000*52)*23)*23)
Manchester United, Liverpool, Manchester City, Chelsea and Arsenal all individually paid their squads more money than that 2 years ago.
Essentially, an entire division (watched by nearly 12 million people last year) would be worth significantly less than a single club. Less than two thirds of Manchester United's wage bill would pay for the entire championship. With proposed numbers in league one and two obviously being proportionally lower, we could have a situation where one or two Premier League squads earn more money than the entire Football league put together. How does that help challenge the mediocre stasis of the top echelons?
Can there be any more stark an illustration of the complete distortion of any sporting values in the game? Could it be any more plain, that those who govern our game at the top level care more about the international brand value than any sort of meaningful competition? That this global reach matters far more than the spectator in the UK and their own experience?
I'm all in favour of the EFL proposal. We just need the Premier League to do its part.
If it's not willing to do so, then we need to pursuade our clubs to take aggressive measures. To refuse to fulfil fixtures against the Premier League, to refuse admission of the u23 teams to the FL trophy, to refuse to take loans from them and for us to, at every turn and using every media outlet available to us, to work to devalue and tarnish the brand by painting it as exactly what it is.
An enemy of football and a destroyer of the spirit of competition and excitement. Football is the greatest game. Watching behomoths grown fat on their own luck pushing over everyone else is not the greatest version of the greatest game.
We need rid of it. By fair means or foul. It's like we're trying to get our body fit but accepting our mouths (on the grounds that the head is i 'distinct from the torso and limbs' gorging its mouth on cream cakes then wondering why we've still got weight issues.
UTMP
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