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Everton was the first to mention the T word. Trust. There wasn’t much in the room, as the Big Carve-up Project authors took on their fellow Premier League shareholders.
In the afternoon, a letter had been drawn up suggesting a united front, with all 20 clubs as signatories. The project was dead, replaced by a review in which the entire Premier League would contribute, not just its more entitled members. But let’s not pretend. It will not be the same.
The Big Six have been secretly meeting for some time and every club knew about it. They had gotten used to the threats and the resulting power games, always about more money and more power, but this was too much of a requisition. There was genuine anger in the room, a very real feeling of betrayal.
Martin Semmens, chief executive of Southampton, said he hadn’t even seen the document that lower division presidents were going to vote. Several participants took home the message that no respect had been shown to the clubs, the shareholders as they are known, the league or the fans. They were right. The Big Six hadn’t even had the courtesy to walk through the front door with their ultimatums.
One trade saw Christian Purslow, a former Liverpool managing director but now with Aston Villa, directly challenge Tom Werner, the current Liverpool president. He noted that this week was the 10th anniversary of the Fenway Sports Group takeover and that, one way or another, it had gone quite well. The push from the rest of the management can be summed up in a concise sentence: and this is how you pay us?
Something ridiculous has circulated this week, not least the idea that Liverpool’s John Henry has been sitting across the Atlantic deeply concerned about the fate of the English football pyramid. That’s Rick Parry’s recap and by all accounts he even kept a straight face when expressing it, so on the bright side, he may be able to retrain for the stage if his long career damaging English football has. finished.
It was this concern for the little ones apparently that led Henry toward a proposal that would divert more money to the EFL, though not necessarily more money from him, once all the conditions were in place, and all he wanted in return was to take the control of all the elements of English football, in four divisions, in perpetuity. If he did not achieve this, Henry was so anxious for the well-being of the pyramid, that he was going to take his club, and several others, away from him to form a European Super League, making large swaths of income with them. Because they care.
So unsurprisingly, some in the room were skeptical about the motivation. Werner insisted that Project Big Swag Bag was not a firm set of proposals but a long list of ideas. It was then pointed out that if this was the case, why did he take it to the president of another league and not his own? And why was that president putting him before his clubs to vote for him, as if he were finite? It seemed quite presumptuous if Liverpool and Manchester United had only been spitting; Or was there something they weren’t telling everyone? After all, it wouldn’t be the first time.
Returning to the issue of trust, Greg Clarke, president of the Football Association, admitted to being a part of the discussions from an early stage, but backed away when it became clear that a getaway was being entertained. I should have blown the whistle, then, of course. Clarke blamed the worst of recent events on Parry, whom she clearly saw as the shaker in all of this. Yes, he had willing accomplices, but he is certainly guilty. Instead of structured club-by-club proposals, Parry took a random figure of £ 250 million off the air.
Instead of bringing together the disparate elements of soccer, clubs that have little in common other than the dimensions of the field and a ball, has spread disharmony and mistrust. There was even talk of whether it was possible to bypass the EFL president in future talks about rescue packages for lower-league clubs. Manchester United’s Ed Woodward counseled against that, arguably with the biggest collective flick of the eye since the Egremont Crab Fair Gurning World Championship.
Where this leaves Parry is another matter. This was nothing short of a coup attempt and it failed. The big six became two greats very early in the meeting when four read the room and tiptoed away from the main conspirators.
Liverpool and Manchester United don’t seem too keen on Plan B, which would send them off to the EFL for a reverse takeover; or as it is known in business circles, engaging in a senseless act of commercial suicide.
The good news? There will be a review, hopefully the proper examination of the football finances that the game needs. And if you end up with more money redirected to the lower leagues in a way that makes the pyramid sustainable, that’s for the best too.
The old streaming revenue split, before the Premier League (50% for tier one, 25% for tier two, 12.5% for tiers three and four) is gone forever, sadly. Project What’s in it for me? he was proposing 25 percent broadcast, and that would be healthy.
However, so would a club rate, perhaps divided by national earnings. Ten percent of Liverpool’s jackpot last season would equal £ 17.46 million; Manchester United’s £ 14.25 million; from Aston Villa £ 10.61m. Then we would see how dedicated these American venture capitalists are to the beautiful pyramid of soccer.
Source: m.allfootballapp.com
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