The Premier League must pay for crimes and bail out EFL

Matt Stead
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“There is an armageddon that is about to happen down here which is going to destabilise a lot of clubs. It really, really scares me. People are getting discarded and made redundant and clubs are being closed and that is just wrong. Absolutely wrong.”

That was the clear as day warning from Joey Barton, manager of League One club Fleetwood Town. The English Football League continues to feel the handless strangulation on a sport of crowds, gate-less since March for most clubs due to Covid-19.

More than ten lower-league and non-league outfits are at risk of going bust according to reports, after Boris Johnson announced that plans to allow fans back into stadia on October 1 were to be scrapped because of a coronavirus spike.

That figure may well be a conservative one with internet streaming income an inadequate replacement for fans thronging grounds and making tills ring in stadium bars, restaurants and club shops.

Of course, the thought of ten teams going to the wall is too horrible to comprehend. Clubs will be talked about as “institutions” in the dry analysis, failing to do justice to their significance as employers, providers of sporting participation and a place to escape for a pint to the mental-health benefit of millions each weekend. It won’t be the worst-run clubs that are swept away either – more likely, the minnows who swim efficiently but just aren’t prepared for the tidal wave that is coming.

In the background sits the Premier League, the most Teflon institution in English sport with its soft-power executives at Gloucester Place, its 20 member clubs and its impenetrable decision-making process.

It’s their time, obviously, to share the wealth they have corralled since the top-tier breakaway in 1992. This is the league that could have spread more of its coin in times of good to insulate the football pyramid to such crises as we see now. But they chose not to. They gave just enough to keep the whole thing ticking over but not enough to stop it tipping over when crowds were kept away.

Now’s the time to make amends for the misdemeanours of the past: the inception of the Premier League itself by the “Big 5” of Arsenal, Everton, Liverpool, Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur in 1991 demanding more TV cash, the single most greedy act in English sporting history. Since then, even more grabs for screen dosh by the now “Big 6” and the utterly short-sighted Elite Player Performance Plan which gives the richest access to the cream of EFL youth talent for peanuts.

It is not the time for “ultimatums” over returns of fans or to finesse support for opposition to FA homegrown player quotas. Demanding caveats for support to people on their knees is the work of an arse; just help them, no questions asked. There’s no time to be mucking about here.

Of course, the whole of English football needs a salary cap and has done for some time. Leagues One and Two have agreed to one and if Premier League clubs want Championship outfits to implement budgetary limits in exchange for bailout dosh then the Premier League should agree to one too. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.

What happens now will reflect on the sporting and corporate image of the Premier League for the next 50 years. If it has to be squeezed for cash like Ma’ Fratelli prizing jewels out of the Goonies’ mouths then the pinnacle of the English football pyramid will lose its point and they will never be forgiven.

Tom Reed is on Twitter

 

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