Breakaway League

[OutByEaster?]

2 minutes ago, bannedfromHandV said:

It’s farcical, the big clubs are losing money because their spending is out of control.

No, no, no, no, no - they're losing money because our spending is out of control. It's our fault. If we were spending less, they wouldn't need to be spending so much in order to stay ahead of us. We're forcing them into debt in order to maintain their natural position, and that's wrong, it can't be allowed to continue - we must be forced to spend less so that they can return to profitability - and therefore we must be cut out of the income.

The problem here is that the idea of them falling even a couple of rungs down the ladder of competition is so utterly absurdly alien to them that they can't understand why we don't want to change the game to prevent it happening.

Perez needs to go and I'm happy for UEFA, Real Madrid or God to take care of that.

[mikeyp102]

Perez apparently saying that this isn’t over and it will happen in the next few years. That is exactly why a severe punishment needs to be enforced now. At the absolute minimum next season all 6 clubs in the prem must start on minus 40 points (meaning they’d have to win at least 75 points to stay up in a normal season). They should also be fined a lot of money, with fines going down the football league, starting with the bottom getting the bigger cut. 

[rjw63]

3 minutes ago, mikeyp102 said:

Perez apparently saying that this isn’t over and it will happen in the next few years. That is exactly why a severe punishment needs to be enforced now. At the absolute minimum next season all 6 clubs in the prem must start on minus 40 points (meaning they’d have to win at least 75 points to stay up in a normal season). They should also be fined a lot of money, with fines going down the football league, starting with the bottom getting the bigger cut. 

Except small heath. **** them.

[Mic09]

I just read that Real are due to pay Alaba a 20m signing on bonus, along with paying him 12m Euros for the next 5 seasons.

What did you say the problem was Mr Perez?

[OutByEaster?]

I think the 14 should also think about adding some strength to the rulebook around arranging rival competitions - perhaps something that says any team involved should forfiet their merit payment.

[a m ole]

We need to get Tonev a transfer to Spain so hopefully one of his wayward shots lands on the soft spot of Perez’ skull.

[Zatman]

Just now, a m ole said:

We need to get Tonev a transfer to Spain so hopefully one of his wayward shots lands on the soft spot of Perez’ skull.

I dont think he needs to actually be in Spain for that  

[Silent_Bob]

52 minutes ago, Zatman said:

yes he lives on a different planet, how dare the other clubs not overspend and lose money 

Well, he is himself the very reason why football isn't sustainable. Spending money you don't have over a long period of time isn't sustainable. But we should probably take some responsibility as well. After all, Aston Villa started this by paying what must have been a massive amount (£100) for making Willie Groves the most expensive player in the world back in 1893. 

Transfer fees have changed througout Europe over the last couple of decades. But not so much. If you look at each league's Top 10 most expensive transfers of all times, many were done a long time ago. The inflation in transfer prices is something that only has happened at the very top. It is expensive to go all the way to the very top of the pyramid of football. But it's probably even more expensive to remain there. Real Madrid broke the transfer record in 2000 by signing Figo. And then it wasn't until Man United bought Pogba that Real didn't have the most expensive player in the world. 

They are not a victim here, this is something they have brought on themselves. If they want to be a sustainable business, then buying Galacticos isn't the way to do it.

They were among the first clubs to start spending money they didn't have. And by doing that they pushed everyone else into doing the same. The inflated transfer prices is a direct result of not only Real as a club, but a result of Pèrez own personal choice of strategy. And he doesn't even go after the real scavengers. Go after the agent who take all the money out of football. Go after the players salaries. After all, they are the ones that actually take money out of football. Transfer fees are just money floating between clubs. It doesn't disappear from football, it just change ownership. But do the best players really need to earn £200k per week, or could they survive on just £100k? 

Ultimatly it is so simple. Sustainablity is decided by the relationship between money coming in and money going out. If income can't go up, expenses must go down. If you can't have more money, you need to spend less money. And that's probably what they should be discussing in their cartel meetings, instead of how they can grab money that belong to other.

[Rino8]

58 minutes ago, OutByEaster? said:

No, no, no, no, no - they're losing money because our spending is out of control. It's our fault. If we were spending less, they wouldn't need to be spending so much in order to stay ahead of us. We're forcing them into debt in order to maintain their natural position, and that's wrong, it can't be allowed to continue - we must be forced to spend less so that they can return to profitability - and therefore we must be cut out of the income.

The problem here is that the idea of them falling even a couple of rungs down the ladder of competition is so utterly absurdly alien to them that they can't understand why we don't want to change the game to prevent it happening.

Perez needs to go and I'm happy for UEFA, Real Madrid or God to take care of that.

I know you're taking the piss but there is some truth in this too, a mixture of foreign ownership and the big PL money had alienated large chunks of football.

Italian football can't compete anymore, really on any level. Neither can the majority of Spanish, what we can offer a 7/10 player compared to what AC Milan, Lazio, Valencia etc etc can offer players isn't particularly fair and if we want to talk about football being for the fans, something needs to be done throughout the continent.

I'm all for the PL being the dominant league, obviously. But I think if we really want to talk about everybody having a chance things need to change. And things should start with players and agents reevaluating what they're asking for. It has turned into madness and is partly why things like a Super League will keep coming back.

[Stevo985]

2 hours ago, Teale's 'tache said:

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2021/apr/22/on-standby-defiant-florentino-perez-insists-super-league-is-far-from-dead

This is the line from Perez that shows exactly what this whole thing has really been about.

They can't stay ahead of those below them unless they spend more and more money,  doesn't occur to them that they could just run their clubs better and they'd stay ahead.

Destroying the rest of football is obviously a much better idea.

What planet are these people on?

 

That is insane!

[OutByEaster?]

29 minutes ago, Rino8 said:

I know you're taking the piss but there is some truth in this too, a mixture of foreign ownership and the big PL money had alienated large chunks of football.

Italian football can't compete anymore, really on any level. Neither can the majority of Spanish, what we can offer a 7/10 player compared to what AC Milan, Lazio, Valencia etc etc can offer players isn't particularly fair and if we want to talk about football being for the fans, something needs to be done throughout the continent.

I'm all for the PL being the dominant league, obviously. But I think if we really want to talk about everybody having a chance things need to change. And things should start with players and agents reevaluating what they're asking for. It has turned into madness and is partly why things like a Super League will keep coming back.

I'm in complete agreement, and indeed the tools to do this are already in existence - the people that are stopping this happening and preventing those tools being used are the twelve clubs that want to start the Super League.

We could impose a European wide salary cap, easy, simple, done. The problem is that would then level the playing field, It's levelling the playing field that is the danger for these teams - if every team can compete for players financially, then there's no guarantee that the SL12 can remain in place at the top, and commercially, they need to do that to survive - taking a step back is just a million miles from the thinking of these teams.

I've long talked about how we won the title in 1982 and then finished twelfth the next season, we were relegated a couple of year later - that should be normal. Football was better then, we were replaced by someone else's dream and still knew there was a chance that our dream would come around again soon - change is the thing, change - change in who is at the top, change in who is supported in China and the US, change in who sells TV subscriptions - change brings dreams. As a Leeds fan you should be able to dream about winning the title, as a Villa fan so should I, an Everton fan should, a Palace fan should, that's how sport works, that's what the game is - it's anathema to Perez and co. change is their enemy.

In their minds this is like a movie and they are Tom Cruise - no one wants to watch the scenes with us in them, they came to see Tom, so Tom should get the biggest trailer and we should get less money to pay for him - but that's not how sport works and this isn't a movie, this isn't about celebrity. Perez believes that because Leeds and Villa aren't as 'famous' as Madrid, then we shouldn't have the opportunity to have the best players play for us, and when one of us accidentally gets enough money to do that, he's appalled that he has to spend more to compete with us.

Super League is about the denial of change, it's about the end of history. I'd love for us to get to a situation where the club that builds a team, that works smartest, that has the best organisation and motivation is the team that wins games across a level financial playing field. We're miles away from that and indeed we were miles away from it before Super League was mentioned. In a perfect world, that's where we'd be headed.

In an imperfect world, at least the changes in money would give us some change on the pitch; PSG, Man City, Chelsea, a Saudi Newcastle for all their obvious faults could at least shake things up, and the more teams there are that are capable of competing, the more cracks there are for others - if you have ten big teams in the Premier taking points off each other then the eleventh team can sneak through because the peak is smaller, the curve is flattened; eighty points wins the league, not a hundred.

This though, this project; this is the opposite of a perfect world, this is the absence of change, it's the removal of change so that only a handful of clubs can be successful, forever, and that all other clubs have to get poorer so that those teams can finance that success at a lower cost. It's a vicious attack on sporting integrity carried out by snake eyed smiling CEO's and Owners who think we'll forget it ever happened because they've told their own fans they did it in the best interests of football.

In the long term, I'm with you, lets start putting in rules that level the playing field and increase the levels of change within our leagues, lets cap wages, lets make relegation less of a disaster because you could still end up champions in four years time, let's get to the point where Valencia or Anderlecht can compete for the European Cup, lets bring some parity to the sport and some sanity to its finances - but to do that, step one, the most important key to moving forward is to make an example of some of these CEO's and Owners, to trounce not just this project, but the idea of it - the very concept that some sort of protectionist, closed off racket is anywhere near how the future of the sport should be being thought of. 

Perez wants to sacrifice the game for the benefit of Real Madrid because he thinks that Real Madrid are football; he needs to be made very, very aware that football is quite willing to sacrifice him for its benefit, and ultimately prepared to sacrifice Real Madrid for it's survival.

(Sorry, I'm on a bit of a hair trigger for a rant at the moment.)

[OutByEaster?]

1 hour ago, Silent_Bob said:

And he doesn't even go after the real scavengers. Go after the agent who take all the money out of football. Go after the players salaries. After all, they are the ones that actually take money out of football. Transfer fees are just money floating between clubs. It doesn't disappear from football, it just change ownership. But do the best players really need to earn £200k per week, or could they survive on just £100k? 

But this is exactly Perez's plan - Real and the others recognise they need to cut costs, they desperately want to cut salaries and fees to agents, but they can't do it because other clubs insist on trying to compete with them.

That's what the plan is - separate the money from other clubs so that no one else can afford to pay high salaries, then reduce the salaries within the bubble with a team salary cap. 

If this plan had gone through, there's no way that Haaland would get his million pounds a week (after tax) or that Raiola would get his £30m cut - the salary capping rules within the Super League would prevent any of the twelve teams being able to accommodate that and the collapsed TV deals outside of the Super League would mean no one else would be able to afford to get near it - with the rest of us removed, they can control spending within an elite group. It'd be "Sorry Erling, rules is rules, there are three offers on the table, all at £300k a week, pick one".

 

[YouUnastanFren]

1 hour ago, OutByEaster? said:

I think the 14 should also think about adding some strength to the rulebook around arranging rival competitions - perhaps something that says any team involved should forfiet their merit payment.

I think it should be stronger than that. They tried to do this the dirty way, new legislation needs to specify that any attempt like this again is a points deduction at minimum, if not relegation.

[villalad21]

Can't believe a professional club tweeted out this. Class.

 

[Genie]

34 minutes ago, villalad21 said:

Can't believe a professional club tweeted out this. Class.

 

Strange use of emojis 

[S-Platt]

Agents are a massive issue and its the players that should pay them not the clubs.

In any other business its a big brown envelope.   So why not football?

 

[Chindie]

Mooted Premier League punishment is funny.

Removal from working groups within the organisation.

Now now we can't be slapping wrists willy nilly.

[Genie]

If agents are to be paid by clubs then it should not run into the millions of pounds.

It should be a few grand maximum.

[sne]

49 minutes ago, villalad21 said:

Can't believe a professional club tweeted out this. Class.

 

[sidcow]

2 hours ago, OutByEaster? said:

I think the 14 should also think about adding some strength to the rulebook around arranging rival competitions - perhaps something that says any team involved should forfiet their merit payment.

I was just looking again at the rulebook and I think I am right in saying that most changes to the rules require a 2/3 majority so in that case the 14 should b able to outmanoeuvre  the 6.   They can't expel anyone without a 75% majority but 2/3 should do it for changing rules.

I imagine the current rulebook was drawn up on the basis of them all being a chummy together club all with similar aims and purpose.  I would say that's not fit for purpose any more, the members are clearly drifting apart and have differing aims.