What Do You Guys Think?

I've just saw that Paddy Power have paid out on Chelsea to win the league. And after only 11 games.

Not good for the rest of the league or spectators when it is acknowledged that the league is won already.

I should know. Living here a its accepted that Celtic will win the league.

Money has most certainly ruined the game I love. I'll still go but can see why thousands don't bother. Little or no competition is no fun.

What is you guys opinions on the money cartel which runs and ruins our game. My opinion is, let those "big" clubs have their league of riches and allow us to play the game as it should be played. For me competition is more important than millionaire fannies masquerading as footballers on a Saturday.

United v Kilmarnock, Chesterfield v Barnsley tomorrow bring it on. Arsenal v Man Utd I really couldn't care less.

 

Chelsea made a strong profit in the last financial year and out of all the big clubs we've got are probably doing things the best way.

 

I've never understood why bookies do this. It happened a few years ago when they paid out early on someone winning the league, only for another team to pip them on the last day. I can't remember which teams they were, but the smart punter would have taken out his early winnings and then lumped it all on the other team and got paid twice at ridiculous odds!

Does anybody know why bookies pay out early when the team winning is far from guaranteed?

 

Love Barnsley, Hate Football sums it up Ian

 

Seems obvious why. To spend it on other football matches than sit on it until paid out in bthe summer and maybe take out of your account as no games to bet on

 

The teams were Arsenal and Man U. Can't remember which way round it was though.

As to the op, football has ruined the game in this country. Yes it has brought over some fine players who do grace the game. It has also brought over dross foreigners that just seem to want a payday.

 

He's done it a few times but 1998 was the first time. He did it when we were in the prem.......

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betfred

 

Unfortunately, I hold lots of minority views about the game. This is partly because of my age and partly that I was born awkward. I can remember a time when it was more generally realised that without a measure of equality there is no competition because without competition there is no sport. There was much less revenue in the game, but what there was, was shared out more evenly. The better supported teams always dominated competitions, but at least there was the possibility that with good management, a team could over-achieve. That seems impossible in England at the moment.

The Championship is the league where there is the greatest divide between the haves and the have nots. I have always supported one of the have nots, who have been able to over-achieve for year after year. Barnsley FC has always had to sell players and invested the proceeds wisely, and today is no different in that respect from any time in our history. But the money in the game, that chases the vast riches of the Premier League has made this almost impossible in the modern era in England. A good proportion of the teams is rewarded for failure in the Premiership with a 4 year endowment allowing them to retain and pay their better players. Another proportion has a rich owner who's only way of getting back the money already invested is to invest more in the hope that promotion to the Premier League will save his bacon. The final proportion is made up of clubs such as Barnsley who are caught between second and third tiers, and who do not have the funds that will allow them to be competitive in the second tier. Financial Fair Play should have ironed out some of the inequities, but its teeth have been removed and it is now useless.

The only way to have competitive leagues for every team to operate on the same wages budget, but to continue to allow them to spend on player transfer fees, so that money is allowed to circulate between the rich and poor. Unfortunately, self-interest will always prevent such a radical initiative being agreed to, so the leagues will continue as they are. Football, even at the top level used to be a contest that was decided on the field, between two football teams. Unfortunately, matches are now decided in boardrooms by guys with big pockets and the "on the field" activities has become a sideshow. As many have said before me, "Love Barnsley, Hate Football".

 

They paid out on Man Utd and Arsenal pipped them but they have paid out on other seasons and said team has won it.

I think the reason they do it is that they feel they hope that a big % will be reinvested by the lucky punter plus not all will claim in one go as would be likely if they didn't pay out until it was won mathematically.

Seems reasonable in March but bloody mental in November.

 

A quick way to make the entire football league competitive and to get more people interested in the game outside the Premiership is simply to distribute the TV and sponsorship money better. And I mean strip it right back, so that no club gets any more than £2-3m, even if they win the Premiership. The money would rescue so many clubs that are struggling to make ends meet and would simultaneously stop the spiralling wages and reduce the ticket prices below the Premiership. The reason teams below the Premiership have to charge so much is because they have little money coming in from elsewhere, unless they have a sugar daddy, and the stupid Premiership wages have filtered down. If O'Grady really was on £10k a week it is just ruddy ridiculous. And then, two or three places above Barnsley, there was Birmingham paying Zigic £70k per week.

Then the Premiership clubs are left with two options. Continue to feed the spiralling wages and transfer fees, in which case they would need to hile their ticket prices up to a level whereby nobody would go, or stop paying their players such stupid amounts. I've said it before, but I'm pretty sure that Wayne Rooney could live pretty comfortably for £280k per week less than he is earning now. It would still make him one of the highest earners in the country.

This would then make clubs want to win for footballing reasons, rather than financial. You know, like it used to be.

And even giving all the Premiership clubs £2-3m each and filtering down from there would leave tens, if not hundreds, of millions each year to filter into non-league and local clubs. You know, take football back into the community. And even then there would be plenty left to fund youth football and to put into schools. I used to love playing for the school football team, but there's just no funding for it any more. And yet the kids all roll up with their Wayne Rooney replica kits. You know, a chap whose annual earnings could keep thousands of local and community clubs running for years.

But we can all dream can't we. Instead, all the young kids nowadays, instead of getting healthy playing for the school team and then going along to watch their local team, are playing on their Xbox because there is no school team and either no local team or it is too expensive to watch their local team, because their local team no longer gets a fair share of the TV and sponsor money and they have to raise funds to pay their players the stupid wages filtering down from the Premiership, and so on, and so on. And these overpaid players become overpaid pundits and sit there 'on the panel' scratching their heads why more kids are not going to the matches and why Wembley is empty and why people like you and I are not bothering watching England matches on the telly any more and why England aren't producing the players any more. It makes you want to cry doesn't it, when the answer to all these problems is being put into the game year after year, it's just that nowadays a few dozen people are taking the money straight back out again.

Football is well on the way to eating itself and in thirty years time Wayne Rooney will laugh about how he was born just at the right time, so he was playing when the wages were astronomical, just before the entire thing collapsed on itself.

Edit: I'm using Wayne Rooney as the most high profile example and as probably the league's highest earner, just in case anyone thinks its just another Rooney hating diatribe. Let me assure you, I have little time for any 'top' footballer or club nowadays, so his name could easily be swapped with countless others!

 

completely scrapping loans would make a huge difference instantly

 

Unfortunately, your first paragraph describes exactly why the Premier League split from the Football League. So they could hold onto all the vast amounts of cash that were coming from Sky. The Premier League decided that they needed all that money, not only because that wanted to hold on to their Golden Goose, but also because they decided that they needed the cash to compete with the European Leagues for players and trophies. Their fear was that any English player worth his salt was headed for Europe to leave the English Leagues as the unattractive wallflower at the EUFA dance.

Money dominates the game just as significantly in Europe as it does in England, and the grip on the game that FIFA exerts ensures it is totally corrupt from top to bottom. In my view, the game can only be rescued by it cutting off the elite as unattractive a proposition as that sounds, differentiating the British game from that played both at the elite level and in the rest of the world, and starting again from scratch. This could be done because the game that is played today has been separated from its Anglo Saxton roots through the FIFA approved, Latinised interpretation of the laws of the game. Of course, everything was better when we were young, but as a result of the changes that have been made to the game, especially in the last 20 years, the game is different from that I remember from my youth, and in my opinion we now have a less entertaining variety of the game.

Why do we need to invent a new game "British Style Football". Well, there are too many interests wishing to maintain the status quo for any other solution to work. Would FIFA, EUFA, the FA, the Football League or the Premiership be willing to give up its share of revenue in order to strengthen the game at the grass roots. Not a chance. Could the "British" solution incorporate the elite of the British game. Not a hope because they would not want to give up on the revenue stream from European competition controlled by EUFA or their share of the Sky gold. Could the change be made via the existing FA structure when they know that the English game would be cast adrift from national competition.

Basically, we can have a new structure or we can stop complaining. Both solutions involve giving up a hell of a lot