Saint Or Sinner

If you ask any football fan in England what is the one thing that upsets you, or you feel is ruining the game. The answer will usually be footballers wages. Yes footballers are paid ridiculous amounts of money especially in the top tier and even clubs like Portsmouth who are forever on the brink of collapse have huge wage problems. A championship player on £5k per week is on a salary of over a quarter of a million quid, so it stands to reason that Pompy who were recently in the prem will still have players on at least 3 times that, making it impossible for them to get out of their fix. So obviously the answer is to reign in spiralling wages, but not many clubs are actually trying, especially as prem clubs try and go for gold and that means staying in the prem where the huge cash is generated from TV. The parachute payments also skews the championship as poor relegated clubs get £40m, which allows them to be on a different level to the other clubs in the league. So it needs resolving, but the only way to do it, is for all clubs to make a stand.

The next round of TV contracts is expected to see reduced money from SKY as the bubble has burst. This will also reduce the pot for all clubs and make money tighter. The Murdoch empire is on retreat due to their UK press and we’ve seen his takeover of SKY collapse due to the present problems he has. The US arm of his empire is where he makes his bread and butter, and that has started to falter, so its very likely that he is going to pull the plug on the UK and sell his titles, which could also see him sell his 38% stake in SKY. The USA market is where he will put all his eggs and to do that he needs to get away from all the bad press his company is involved with in the UK.

I hate Bates with a vengeance, and its obvious that he’s using this as an excuse for not bringing in decent players, but rather than come out and tell us the truth, he lies. Maybe its time Bates tried a different tack and actually came out and did a proper in depth interview and say; ‘look football is going to implode and if we try and compete against clubs who are willing to pay silly wages, we could get ourselves in trouble again. So we have taken a stand and although we may not see much progress until some sanity creeps back into football, we’ll still be around and in a position to compete on a level playing field when it happens. Our pricing policy is now going to change, because we thought that by carrying on charging prem prices, we would make it back to the premiership, but its been slower than we anticipated. So we will now reduce prices to bring the fans back and be open with them. Increased gates with everyone on board with our new plan, has got to be the way ahead. So far we’ve raised a war chest of £xm and we will be topping up whenever we can, and so will be in a great position to bring in the best available players, who will get us promoted as soon as sanity creeps back into the game. I’m sorry our initial plan didn’t work out, but we gave it a shot and only just failed last season’

If he came out and explained what we’re trying to do and give something back to the fans, then at least many of the ‘morons’ like me would come back onboard. But when he lies and tells us rubbish like we can get whatever player we want, players will walk over broken glass …… It doesn’t wash anymore. He tried it his way and it failed, and now its time for him to hold his hand up and tell the truth for a change. It’s the lies and intrigue that get up our noses, because we can see that we have no chance of attracting the players we want, and know that any decent offer sees our best players leave. Truth not rhetoric Bates please, and if the plan is to actually wait for sanity at least we can watch clubs go to the wall knowing that there will be a time when they come back to us, instead of us trying to get up to them.

OR does he not give a toss and just carry on ripping us off and feeding us c rap, knowing we’re gullible. I'm trying to give the bearded bandit the benefit of the doubt