Operation Avarice would surely leave all but ‘big six’ on life support
Project Big Picture, or Operation Avarice as it should be called, is so wretchedly, nakedly cynical, so obviously greed dressed up as munificence, that it deserves the widespread contempt it has immediately garnered. Everybody can see through what the “big six” are up to, wanting to run English football, ruining the dreams of those who aspire to the heights, diminishing the power of the FA further, and setting the scene for the European Super League. It is “the theft of hope”, as one Newcastle United fan eloquently but mournfully lamented. It is a short-term bandage that leaves a long-term wound that will never heal.
The need for a proper debate on the structure and finances of football is beyond question, and was urgent even before the poisonous wind of the pandemic blew through the English game. But discussions should always take place as a football family, as a collective, not a self-interested cabal led by Liverpool and Manchester United dictating terms in patronising fashion to the rest of the pyramid, including their supposedly less-celebrated colleagues in the Premier League. This closes down the dream factory of English football.
So shortly after FSG’s Liverpool had seven put past them by Aston Villa makes it a strange time to launch Mission Power Grab. At a time when the players of Liverpool, such as Trent Alexander-Arnold, Andrew Robertson and Jordan Henderson, and Manchester United, like Marcus Rashford, are doing so much for the community, the threat by their owners to control English football seems even more egregious.
Elements of the proposal are good — helping out the EFL with £250 million and FA with £100 million, capping away tickets at £20, addressing the madness of parachute payments and encouraging sustainability is to be welcomed throughout the EFL — but close inspection of the proposal reveals immediate and manifold concerns.
It seems strange the elite have recently been pleading poverty, some flirting with furloughing staff, and yet have now found all this ready cash, ready for transferring down-table. What the “big six” offer the EFL is effectively what they gave to agents last year. And it’s not even only their money, and depending on their broadcast negotiating power they will effectively be saving £200 million of the £250 million long-term by losing two clubs.
It needs saying again that Richard Scudamore’s greatest gift, beyond the former Premier League executive chairman’s mastery of broadcast negotiations, was to keep all 20 clubs pointed in the same direction. Not now. This plan points the Premier League towards civil war.
A proper plan would be to acknowledge how much of their talent is honed in the EFL, and how much it is in their self-interest to help the pyramid. There is enough broadcast money at the top level to assist the weaker parts of English football, and they are stronger together, a 92, unique throughout the world.
If the elite clubs are concerned about their own profits, maybe they could temper the wages they lavish on stars, the substantial transfer fees they pay, the riches they give to agents. They could work more subtly with the government, persuade the exchequer to contribute to the lower leagues.
It is particularly “disappointing”, to borrow the word of an outraged Premier League, that the EFL’s chairman, Rick Parry, has fallen into cahoots with the Glazers, FSG and those whose creed is greed. Parry, formerly chief executive of Liverpool, suddenly appears a Trojan Horse. Some of his 72 clubs will doubtless support the proposals, such is their despair which the “big six” are preying on. “Through this proposed restructuring we aim to strengthen those who need it most at a time when they need it most,” Parry says. “This is a blueprint for the future of English football and for everyone who cherishes it.”
Nonsense. This leaves English football being run from Boston and the Everglades. It would leave the rich getting richer, leaving the Premier League under a rule of six, in control of broadcast deals, inevitably maximising their return, running the league, overruling the FA, even deciding who should come into other clubs. It adds some credence to all those stories that certain clubs intervened to stop the Saudi takeover of Newcastle, not because they objected to human rights abuses but because they feared a challenge to their attempted hegemony.
These plans limit the likes of pesky upstarts who dare take on the established order, a Leicester City pushing for the title, an Aston Villa rebuilding. It restricts the ambitions of those in mid-table, and tells the promoted to know their place. They are an affront to sporting integrity.
Reducing the number of clubs in the Premier League to 18 frees up more dates for the European Super League which is, partly, what this is all about, and everyone understands the damage that would do to English football. Those few supporting Parry do not see the real big picture.
