What has gone wrong with English football

Picture courtesy of Reddit.comReddit.com

In any other country in Europe, a match between two teams that have won the European Cup/Champions League would be one of the games of the season. In the 1982-3 season, the match between Aston Villa and Nottingham Forest would have been between the current European Cup holders and the team the team that had won it twice in the previous three tournaments. Last night, the two teams played in a game to try and secure a Championship play off place.

I was watching Liverpool thrash Bayern Munich at the time. This ensured that there would be four teams in the quarter finals. One may think that this would indicate that English football is in rude good health. Apparently Manchester City (my team) are the favourites. The departure of PSG, Bayern and Real Madrid have certainly opened a few possibilities. I thought I'd have a look at the list of English winners.

1950's
None

1960's
Manchester Utd - 1967

1970's
Liverpool - 1977
Liverpool - 1978
Nottingham Forest - 1979

1980's
Nottingham Forest - 1980
Liverpool - 1981
Aston Villa - 1982
Liverpool - 1984

1990's
Manchester Utd - 1999

2000's
Liverpool - 2005
Manchester Utd - 2008

2010's
2011 - Chelsea
 
What this means is that even if one of the four English teams win, the haul for the 2010's will not exceed the 1970's or 80's.  The poor performance in the 1990's is partly explained by the hangover from the five year ban from 1984 following the Heysel tragedy. But that expired nearly 30 years ago. The amount of money sloshing around in the Premiership dwarfs every other league. The interest in football in the Uk is still phenominal. The Championship, where Forest and Villa play has the fifth largest fan base of any league in Europe. On Saturday, I went to watch Leyton Orient play Wrexham in the Vanarama League. There were 6,500 fans. The week before Wrexham had 7,500 for a visit from Chesterfield. There is huge interest in football at all levels, huge amounts of money in the Premiership, the best players in the world in our top teams. But it seems we can't buy the Champions League and the National team have been serial underperformers for the best part of 50 years.

You don't need to be a genius to work out that something is seriously wrong. The paltry haul in the new millenia is indicative of a failing system of administration. Our top teams have been fighting with one hand (or foot ) tied behind their backs for decades. The number of times that teams in the CL have had to play derbies and other CL teams the weekend before/after a key fixture is quite ridiculous. Whilst it is true that there are no easy PL fixtures, no one can claim that playing the likes of Huddersfield and Cardiff poses quite the same level of stress on a team as a Liverpool v United fixture or and Arsenal v Spurs. To schedule such fixtures away from key CL games is a complete no brainer. If logistics mean that this cannot always be done, then give the Champions and runners up priority in the scheduling. If City and Utd are to meet in the league, neither will want it the weekend before or after a CL fixture. It will cut the number of injuries and give players proper recovery time. The Premiership schedules are purely organised around making money for TV companies, in turn, they make their money from betting companies. Whilst we all understand the realities of this, simply asking that the PL schedules take some account of the stresses on the teams we want to see do well is not too much to ask. The conspiracy theorist in me says that when something doesn't make sense, follow the money. By stacking match schedules in the way they do, we tend to get perverse results. As anyone knows, when the favourite slips, the bookies cheer. Worth a thought.

And then lets look at The Championship. Home of two European Cup winners. Does the Championship do what it should? Does it really provide a decent environment for teams such as Forest and Villa to recuperate for a return to the Premiership. It seems to me that a totally different skill set is required, for both managers and players. That is why so few championship managers succeed  in the Premiership. I believe fans are also short changed. Fixture schedules around TV times give away fans some truly horrible journeys at unreasonable times of day. Scheduling local derbies for a lunchtime kick off makes huge sense. Pitting teams from opposite ends of the country at times when the fans simply cant attend is, to me, simply a ploy to bump up TV audiences.

And at the Vanarama League. I stood with the Wrexham fans on Saturday. It was a lunchtime kick off. This meant fans left from Wrexham at around 4.30am to get there for 12.30. That so many went is a credit to them. Both Wrexham, a team that have played in Europe and Orient. a club with a hugely rich history,  have had major financial problems, Wrexham have languished in the non league arena for a decade.

Leyton Orient v Wrexham pic.twitter.com/YMyek674kt

— Roger Tichborne/RogT #CTID (@Barneteye) March 9, 2019

All of this whilst PL players are earning over £200,000 a week. It is beyond comprehension that such clubs can be allowed to flounder. It is a disgrace, the fans are the lifeblood. How can the FA possibly think that allowing Wrexham to go bust would serve anyone. The club is now run by a supporters trust, the fans are on year contracts and there is no real prospects of improvement to the finances, unless a promotion can be secured. They are always competing with teams like the O's who have recently come down and are relatiely more well off. I don't think Wrexham should be given preferential treatment over the O's, but I think with all the money in football, no club should ever go into administration. The FA should be given the power to take over and put an action plan in place to keep them afloat. The 15 point deduction is not a fair way of dealing with financial problems. Any directors of a failed club should be suspended from all football for life and lose all their money invested. Tighter financial control so that the situation cannot happen again. There is the argument that financial doping is unfair to other teams. Proper regulation and rules about seat prices, loans and investments would sort that out. If spivs and chancers knew they'd lose the lot if they were caught doping the finances, it would stop.

I would also put a 5% levy on all players in the premiership to be used for grassroots and youth football. The reason is that every player in the English Premiership has benefitted from the kids who play football every weeek in the parks. The English players who came through the system, learned playing on parks, against other players who didn't make it. The expensive foreign stars earn a fortune from kids who buy shirts with their names on. So put some back. When my son played for Watling Youth FC, we had collections to buy boots and kit for boys who's parents wouldn't or couldn't pay for kit. Surely it is not unreasonable to ask that the players help such kids out and also pay towards making sure the pitches they use are playable.