January 2010 - Front Page Articles

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  • Are the governing bodies destroying football as a competition?

     

    Football by its very nature is a competitive sport

    Indeed the Football League was formed to offer teams of this young sport a recognised competition, with every team having an equal chance of glory.Was the F.A. Cup not introduced so teams of let's say, lesser infrastructure, were given a chance of sporting fame ?

    But from this small beginning, the gentlemanly sportsmen who controlled these competitions have all but disappeared. Football is now a global industry, with more cut throat pirates than the Spanish Main ever saw.

    There are so many governing bodies, more than could be listed here, all trying to get a larger share of the financial market. Every country and continent has at least one governing body, in England alone there are three, the F.A. , the P.L. and the Football League.

    And sitting at the very top of this multi-national conglomerate is FIFA.  It's so busy arguing internally and trying to invent more ways of capitalizing financially on its own piece de resistance, the World Cup, that it doesn't have the time or inclination to lower itself to help lesser bodies resolve the real problems within the game.

    So each organizing body, measures its success by its yearly bank balance, they seem more concerned with how much capital is invested within its own sphere or control, than with any problems suffered by the clubs they claim to represent.

    If a club get's into financial problems trying to compete with those that have more financial clout, do they really care? If a club goes out of business do they mourn it? The answer seems to be a resounding no!

    Just as long as they slip away quietly and do not upset the trough that these bodies are feeding from. I can just imagine the cigar smoke and aroma of fine wines filling the room, as these powerful men congratulate themselves on another fine season and saying 

    "Oh Rovers went bankrupt did they....?"

    "Well it's their own fault for spending above their means....pass me another glass of that excellent port will you"

    With not one shred of concern that they have unwittingly (or perhaps, not so unwittingly) caused the demise of said Rovers.

    By allowing these outrageous transfer fees and obscene wages and demands of players to rise uncontrollably, more and more clubs are finding themselves living above their means, now it could be argued, that it is the clubs own fault, but why enter a sporting event if you have no intention of trying to win it?

    And like all sporting events you have to have some outlay if you want to have some success. Each new season clubs are faced with a choice, borrow more capital to be competitive, with the risk of bankruptcy if they fail to achieve, or just make up the numbers and play out the season hoping to not face relegation.

    The latter choice, whilst probably economically more viable, is not likely to attract a large audience or help with merchandise sales, so their income will drop accordingly. Making it harder to raise capital next season, should they wish to become competitive.

    The governing bodies from FIFA downwards, need to put their foot on the ball, slow the game down a bit, allow smaller, slower clubs to catch up. Otherwise the marathon that is the football season will become a sprint with only half a dozen or so teams left to play each other.

    The one fear that grips me, with so many clubs owing each other money from transfer fees, to the point it seems to be one large circle of debt,  is not just one club folding, but what  the outcome would be if three or four clubs spaced within the circle folds?

    They would surely pull a lot more clubs down with them; the ripple effect would spread much further than the small pond each club swims in. It is such a frightening concept to theses cigar smoking men behind closed doors, they just lock it away  in their cupboards and pray it never escapes. If they do not surface from their private utopias and help to erase the problems that exist in the game today, then one day it will escape, maybe in ten years time, maybe in fifty, but it will happen nonetheless unless they act now.

    I firmly believe, for our game to have a realistic chance of remaining a competitive sport past the next two or three decades, it needs strong leadership and a sense of direction emanating from the very top. After all, an army is only as good as the general who commands it

    So......."Excuse me Mr Blatter, our ball has gone in your garden, can we have it back please"

     

     

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  • Pompey on the Never Never

    Don't forget the small print.

    It struck me whilst pinching myself this week that Pompey never did buy any players after Mandaric left, we just rented them.

    Despite all the PR bull coming out of the Park, it would seem that nobody actually signed for us over the past few years. Each and every player no more than an HP agreement with more sauce than substance and all of them  'gracing' the team only because funny money had effectively bribed them to come to Pompey to strut their stuff.  Condiments in Redknapp's bad for our health fry-up.

    And at the end of the dream we sold them all, and didn't even clear the outstanding payments. HP, hire purchase, call it what you will, but I prefer to think of it as a bottle full of the brown stuff.

    Despite the weekly revelations that Peter never paid Paul, or John, or Sid, or Carlo or..., Fratton Park would still have you believe we spent tens of millions on players. But we now know that all those headline figures were just notional values with a deposit paid and promises of more payments in the future.

    That's not to say of course that we didn't fork out £5m a month in cash on wages. As troubling as it sounded then, it sounds even more ludicrous now. I ask you, who in their right mind thinks burning through a year's worth of gate receipts every 2 months is sound business? It does have you questioning the sanity of those decisions, more so now it's rumoured that the execs scour the terraces at the end of each game looking for dropped coins and pay particular attention to mislaid lottery tickets.

    And so they should given the rate in which we made people rich. I won't bore you with the numbers, but when you take into account wages and down payments, a player like Crouch was probably costing us at least £20,000 a week in interest alone and that's before we paid off the loan itself. And remember Crouch was one of many and most of them it has to be said, failing to give anything like value for money.

    Loyalty bonus any one?

    Which when you consider it, probably explains why Pompey's transfers were always shrouded in mystery. The closest we got to understanding what was going on was being told that the Chief Exec was in some faraway place and from that we assumed that a deal was in the offing. But what we never found out was what had been paid for a player's services and when they were sold on, the whole process started again. Agents and players, the only real winners.

    But should we be critical of this process? After all, it could argued that had some greedy little red braced banker not mucked up, we would still be flying high. More money coming in than even Peter Storrie could spend.

    Or should we be looking at this for what it probably was. Persistent lack of judgement regularly involving sums larger than the organic, non TV money, turnover of Fratton Park. Somebody at PFC was gambling big time with our Club and now it hasn't paid off, it's the supporters who are left to pick up the pieces.

    What to do? March, protest, pitch invasion or should we expect the board to admit liability? Resignations? You would have thought so, but that requires dignity and I am not so sure there's much of that left at Fratton Park these days.

     

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  • It's the Premier League, stupid

    Richard Scudamore

    As much as I admire the resolve of the Fratton Park marchers, you have to question the likely outcome.

    Will a few dozen fans delivering a letter to Fratton Park make a penny worth of difference to the intentions of the faceless people that own Portsmouth Football Club? Barclays Bank included. I doubt it.

    You can understand the fans' frustrations. The media's whipping boys one minute and the target of HMRC investigations and winding up orders the next. Couple this to some of the poorest financial management ever to be witnessed in world football and you have a Club hanging on by its finger nails.

    To suggest though that this situation has arisen at the hands of Mark Jacob and his employers, is of course naive. And understandably Jacob and co are at odds to point this out. Claiming not to have been aware of the extent of the Club's debts and even threatening amidst the wise cracks to sue Sacha Gaydamak.

    Why threaten to sue? Choose your own reasons, but I can't help thinking it has something to do with Gaydamak playing the game a little better than Jacob and Co, especially when you consider that Sacha along with Barclays still owns the majority of the land in the immediate vicinity of Fratton Park.

    In short it would seem that Sacha remains in control of the most of the assets and Al Faraj and advisors got lumped with the debt. No wonder they are miffed.

    But how come businessmen cited by Storrie as taking PFC to another level, bought into the Club without the necessary means to manage it?  Clearly they had no idea what they were getting themselves into and even if they did, at best they had underestimated the demands of running a Premier League team that is still reeling from the excesses of the Redknapp inspired spend to the end gold rush.

    But such oversights are not restricted to football and the well wishing marchers shouldn't take it so personally. The owners, whether with good intentions or bad, are symptoms of the modern day game and as such are guilty of no more than exploiting a commercial opportunity, which you can't help thinking, was 'sold' to them by a senior figure at Fratton Park. No wonder Jacob has been bought in. How could the previous management be left in charge when the sticker price on Fratton Park contained a few too many zeros and apparently too little in the way of accurate documentation?

    Ultimately though, man will do what man will do and that's why we have laws, rules and regulations to curb the excesses of the human race. Or that's the idea in any case.

    The trouble is top flight football's rule makers, in this case the Premier League and to some extent the F.A, seem more intent in chasing the green stuff than they do ensuring the Clubs are healthy enough to play on it. Take the Prem's Chief Exec as an example. Richard 'play it overseas' Scudamore, earned a Storrie beating £1.5m last year, with over £700,000 of that being paid in bonuses for negotiating ever higher TV deals. That's 50% of his remuneration dedicated to driving up TV revenues and all the consequences that come with it.

    I ask you, how stupid can these people be? What is the point of throwing more money at the game. We still play with eleven players and give or take, the support staff remains fairly static. So where does the money go? Simple. Into inflation busting transfer fees and player salaries and anything that is left over ends up in the pockets of the owners or the execs.  Under soil heating anyone?

    We see average players earning more in a week than most of us do in a year and so called superstars earning sums so obscene that we all collectively gasp when it makes the news. And does the game improve because of this influx of cash? Does it hell. Anybody who thinks Rooney and Co are providing the public with better entertainment than the stars of, for example the 70s and 80s, really do need their footballing heads examined.

    The fact is the financial culture that now rules our game is being driven by those who run football. Last year I had several off the record chats with Premier League spokespersons about the general situation at Fratton Park and the state of the game in general. Trying to get a rational response was like trying to get Redknapp to acknowledge his part in the demise of any of the clubs he has managed.

    They were quick to remind me that new TV deals had been negotiated, but didn't or couldn't give decent answers as to why the foundations of the game are being undermined by people and practices whose motives are anything but aligned with the interests of the game.

    On asking the Prem why they didn't take a more proactive role in checking out prospective new owners, I was told it was for the law of the land to administer and wasn't really their remit beyond the clearly myopic Fit & Proper checks that were already in place. A clear if implied acknowledgement that as long as prospective owners don't have an obvious criminal record then they are deemed to be fit and proper. So much for all the fuss that delayed Al Fahim's appointment back in the summer.

    And when Al Faraj came along, exactly what checks took place then? Did the league check out his ability to meet even a single month's payroll? I wonder.

    I think we all know the answer  to that and if we don't and we are wrong then there has to be something else adrift when players who take off their shirt can get randomly booked and consequently red carded, yet major structural issues at the very heart of the game go unaddressed.

    And now we witness the Prem withholding Pompey's TV money even though the Club's claiming it's unlawful.

    Whoever is right, one thing is for sure. The Prem okayed the transfer of Pompey's Prem franschise to Al Faraj and possibly much more significantly, authorised each and every transfer in and out of the Club.

    Didn't any of those ever so clever people at the Prem stop to think that the Club with the lowest ground capacity in the League and with a series of owners that were richish at best, may not be able to fund huge salaries and massive fees to clubs and agents without something breaking?  Yet they went ahead and authorised the transfers and now it's gone belly up they are adding to the Club's problems by interfering with our attempts to stay in the league. And if that doesn't scupper us, they've always got the threat of the feared points deduction to put things beyond any doubt.

    As I said, it's the Premier League, stupid.

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  • The good old days or a brave new world? You decide.

    Pompey's first team from the mid 50s

    It's often been a topic for very lively discussion when a group of us interested in football get to sit around either at home, in a pub or maybe en route to a game.

    Is the current football era better than era's gone by?

    It probably depends how you wrap the question up. Are we asking, "Is it more fun to watch?", "Is it more exciting?", "Is it better value?", "Are the individual players now better players?", and maybe if your own team is all that matters and serves as the ultimate barometer for these types of question, "Do I get the same buzz from supporting my team/club now as I did previously?".

    Firstly, you have to have been supporting a club actively for a while to be able to consider these questions in measurable chunks. And even if you can't compare decades or eras there is still value in dissecting your time-served as a Pompey fan into periods where you can honestly see that change has taken place and then assess the impact of that change on you as a fan.

    And we Pompey fans can't deny that we have seen many changes take place in a relatively short period of time - probably more than most.

    Off to the best possible start

    From my perspective, I can look at my experience of watching football and in particular Pompey from 1965 onwards. And perhaps I got off to the best possible start to my life as a fan of the Blues with two home defeats in the Autumn of 1965 and on both occasions we conceded four goals. The only way was up really but to be honest I didn't care. Just to be at a 'Live' football match watching what had suddenly become MY TEAM was an awesome experience. One of those moments when you stand wide-eyed with mouth open and on tip-toe trying to get a view of the action on what appeared to be a massive pitch and not sure at first how to react to what was unfolding. And I think when a goal was scored it was a case of copying the crowd around me rather than reacting to seeing the ball hit the net. But that first day, that first match at Fratton Park got me completely and utterly hooked.

    Born in Walton-on-Thames, the club closest to my place of birth would have been Chelsea (or maybe Fulham but we'll say Chelsea) and indeed, soon after seeing those introductory defeats at Pompey I went to see Chelsea versus Everton in what was literally my third ever 'Live' football match. It ended in a 0-0 draw and both teams were full of names that I should (and maybe did) recognise from my equally limited experience of watching Match of the Day. [I ought to say that Match of the Day was beyond bed-time, even on a Saturday night and my Dad couldn't stand football. In fact, he still can't relate to "22 grown men chasing a bag of wind around a grass field". Oh well.] Anyway, neither Chelsea nor Everton 'grabbed me' in the way that Pompey did. I had instantly gained an affection for the club in Frogmore Road, even in times of consistent defeat as it had been up to that point.

    Losing more than they won was the norm

    As I grew up, my own appearances at Fratton Park became more and more frequent but I felt far from a lucky omen during those years between 1965 and 1979 as the team continued, season after season, to lose more games than they won (apart from 1967/68 if I remember correctly when I think we finished fifth in the old Division 2). But going to matches was, to me, much more special then than it is now. Maybe, because 'Live' football was then under-exposed and limited to the F.A. Cup Final (once a year), the Home Internationals (once a year) and the World Cup (once every four years), the game itself and the players involved had an added aura about them. They were T.V. stars or more likely than that sporting heroes that were more usually seen only in magazines or on collectable football stickers. It was magic! Football has changed.

    And during that time, the wages that players earned were never a discussion point among the fans. Probably because they were in truth fairly average at that time for most players. As a result, the bad feeling amongst fans that this can nowadays engender simply didn't exist.

    Reds for two nasty tackles

    Referees weren't in the spotlight anywhere near as much as they are now. Of course, the rules that they have to apply have changed dramatically and this in itself has had a significant impact on the end product. And not necessarily for the better in my opinion. Players used to be booked for late tackles but they usually received one or two warnings beforehand for challenges that would instantly bring a card in today's games. And they wouldn't be booked for celebrating the scoring of a goal either as they irritatingly are today. As for Red Cards. For fighting, sure. For two bad tackles, of course. BUT, they had to be two really tasty tackles and to be honest I don't think the new rules protect the players any more than they did then.

    I reckon that there are more injuries in football now than there ever were in the 70's and 80's. This of course could be down to the training and also the kit or more specifically the boots that players now wear. It certainly shouldn't be a result of the pitches that are played on because generally the playing surfaces are superior to those that were played on 20 and 30 years ago. Matches were played on snow covered pitches with the snow simply being brushed away from the lines. An orange ball was used and the players did their best to choose the most appropriate footwear. Of course, it was a leveller but to be honest that often favoured Pompey in those days and, in any case, the supporters still enjoyed the end product on the pitch and never felt short-changed with the players being honest enough to put in a shift and make the best of difficult playing conditions. Don't remember too many players wearing gloves either!! Football has changed.

    And if it is true that Referee's get a financial bonus for issuing a certain number of Yellow Cards then 'what the hell are we doing?'.

    The  effect of the media

    The Media has obviously brought about massive change right across the football spectrum. And the resulting financial impact has probably been the single most significant catalyst for the differences in the product today compared to that we were witnessing 30 years ago. The impact has been immense. Players, Managers, Owners, Referees, Agents, Stadiums (well most!), Fans; nobody has been immune from this brave new world and the majority have eagerly embraced everything that has been thrown their way.

     The players certainly have - why wouldn't they?!! And the same applies to the Managers and Referees, all of whom have seen their profiles and as a result their incomes and lifestyles rise disproportionately.

    Agents are a by-product. Seeing an opportunity with so much money flowing through the game they have established their own niche market thus guaranteeing their ability to cream a substantial income from within. Again, in my opinion, their income is hugely disproportionate to the added value that their services provide to the game. But they are undoubtedly here to stay and we the fans will effectively pay their wages. Yes, football has changed.

    Local businessmen all but excluded from the game

    As for the owners. Well, it's a fact that those now showing an interest in football wouldn't have touched it with a barge-pole 30 years ago. And it's not that they have discovered a sudden love for football either; it's simply down to football presenting a means to make a significant contribution to business empires in whatever creative way and with sufficient zero's attached for it to be attractive to those that have previously only been tempted by, for example, the money to be made in the oil industry. No longer (sadly) is our game dominated by businessmen local to the clubs and who have a genuine interest in football. The finances in the game have simply moved on to such an extent as to exclude them almost totally from the football ownership equation.

    Agreeably, some of this 'new money' has been "invested" in the upgrading of or building of stadiums around the country (although not so far at Pompey!). No one can argue that better facilities for the paying customers is at least one positive aspect to the comparison of football now with football of yesteryear. But even if Pompey were now sat comfortably in a sparkling new ground, would this be enough to make me feel better about the game now or would I still opt for a return to the 70's and 80's? I'm not sure.

    The Fan

    The game has changed enormously in every way and so too have the fans. In fact, the attitude of fans to the game is probably another worthwhile consideration in this whole debate. We, the football fan, are a different breed of person now. In some ways for the better but in some ways maybe a little bit more counter-productive and even less supportive to our own clubs. The reason; we are all now experts (or at least we think we are) - much more than we used to be. The football pundit has become very high profile in the media over the past thirty years as their role has evolved. They are no longer simply names tacked on to the end of a newspaper article; it is no more one familiar face or voice that we hear on radio and/or T.V. coverage. Instead, it is a new era of ex-players and celebrity commentators (and even celebrity referees!!) that offer their opinions on the game together with journalists that have now moved on to supplement their incomes with regular T.V. and radio slots where they sit and discuss the topics of the day that relate to the beautiful game. And we the fans have hungrily joined the various debates and developed a knowledge of the game which enhances the couple of hours spent in the pub pre-match and this is a real positive and certainly enriches my life as a football fan.

    Critical fans

    But it also has its downside because we are far more critical of our own team now than we have ever been before. The biased nature of the football fan that I loved growing up with the game has for the most part gone.  We, Pompey, used to lose many more games than we won, even compared to this season! But I remember travelling home from games on the bus, often after a defeat. Sure, we didn't like losing but for some reason, be it the love of football, just the excitement of being at the match or simply the love of Pompey, we would talk about how great our solitary goal was, how brilliant that one piece of magic was from our right winger, and maybe how it would have been so different had so and so not struck the post or whatever. And by the time we got home, the defeat had all but been exorcised and it was almost as if we had won the game instead of lost it.

    It's not an 'age' thing

    But I and we are not like that anymore and as a result I don't think I enjoy it so much. And I don't believe it's an age thing or anything like that because I watch my son and other young fans and they are already at the 'Expert Pundit' stage that has taken me 45 years to reach. I'm proud and impressed (in a way) to hear him and others talk about how the manager should have switched to a 4-5-1 with half an hour to go, how he should have brought on 'so and so' to counteract the ability of the opposition's star wing-back and how we didn't press the ball enough in the middle third. Great, but I think in overall terms it has detracted from our enjoyment as much as added to it and as a logical consequence we can't help but be more critical of our own club and both the playing and the management of it - because we now think we know better. Maybe we do at times but the fact is that I for one still work in Industry and can't find anybody willing to give me a job in football. I wonder why.

    In hope rather than expectation

    So that's it. I've convinced myself that in overall terms I would rather that football was back where it was in the early 1980's than the state in which it sits today. And if I could, I would take my son back to experience a couple of those games back in the lower divisions when 24,000 packed inside Fratton Park two watch Phil Ashworth score twice, or David Kemp get his hat-trick against Rotherham, or those wonderful days at Northampton and Anfield where on each occasion we went in hope rather than expectation. Yes, it's pure nostalgia but I genuinely would like his assessment on football in that era compared to now. And I have a feeling I would know what his answer would be.

    So, Is it more fun to watch - No; "Is it more exciting? - No; Is it better value? - Er, definitely No; Are the individual players now better players? - technically maybe; Do I get the same buzz from supporting my team/club now as I did previously? - probably not.

    A proper football ground and I love it

    Despite the trouble on the terraces around that time, football was still a sport rather than an out-and-out business operation; the top division was a football league and not a financial league, players were in less of a position to hold clubs to ransom than they are now; in fact the players simply cared more for their clubs then as did the owners and the managers; agents if they existed at all were very low profile and less influential, and the fans (apart from the idiots) overcame their frustrations more quickly and didn't over-indulge in analysis in a way that often feeds discontentment. Yes, there are some nice new stadiums dotted around the country but I wouldn't give you a fiver for most of them and when all is said and done, Fratton Park - whilst in desperate need of improvement - is still a proper football ground and I love it!!

    All of the above now forces me to seriously consider every March/April whether or not to renew my Season Ticket. Serious thought given to something that not long ago was as automatic as paying the mortgage. Will I be a regular next season? Time will tell. And perversely it could even transpire that relegation rather than staying in the Premiership actually convinces me to take my seat once again for the 2010/11 season. Play up Pompey. 

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