A solution to spiralling debt in English Football

As the crisis at English Premier League club Portsmouth lurches on and the ownership of a good old fashioned English club passes from one disinterested overseas owner to yet another, the simple cause of their problems and those which will all clubs must face is blatantly obvious......the money all goes on players.

Acquiring,paying, motivating players, and paying their agents to get them in, and sometimes to move them out.....that,reader,is the cause of the problem....The Premier League will soon be announcing the millions of pounds they have generated centrally from overseas television rights. The destination of the money, after it has been divided and allocated...players.

Why? Simple a vicious, nasty and self destructive circle that get a club to the promised land of the Premier League, then suck the life out of it...buy better players, pay big fees to acquire them, pay them top dollar, we must stay up/we must make Europe/we must make the Top 4/we must get to the group stages of the Champions League....All to feed the all consuming monster that is the wage bill.

Here is an alternative plan; The PL collectively say enough is enough. We need to draw a line in the sand that says at the end of season 2013/2014 we will have standard contracts for all our member clubs that offer four tiers of player salaries. (The numbers used are to illustrate the concept)

Tier One Big Star, base salary £2.5m per year.
Tier Two,established player base £1.5m per year
Tier Three younger player base £ 1.0 per year
Tier Four; entry level potential star,base £750k per year.

The club then allocates an agreed and transparent percentage of revenues to a huge incentive scheme in which all tiers are incentivised to deliver on and of the pitch, with each category getting an agreed slice of the money. Everybody knows where they stand, everybody knows what is expected of them.

Challenges: The players won't come to England.....so what, get back to growing home grown players let them try and make the big money in failing Euro economies like Spain.....good luck

This will give the businesses, the clubs, control of their industry, not their employees and the headhunters they use to acquire talent.

All it needs is a collective view and the vision to see it through

A short essay on sports stars as role models

The new rules on sports stars as role models:


They are famous for being good at sport, it doesn't make them role models.
They are people, just like us,enjoy them for what they excel at but don't expect them to provide you or your kids with moral guidance. We have no right to judge them for human failings.