The best league in the world?
Saturday, May 05, 2007
On the surface, things look all bright and rosy within English football.
We have the premier League, which is widely regarded as the best league in the world. Full of international stars. Exciting, attacking, skillful and passionate football.
The Football League is also recognised as having a very high standard of lower league football. Well supported by passionate fans and envied by most lower leagues around europe.
Thing is, something is festering under the surface and the odour is now starting to seep out from beneath.
Let's start with the use of the loan system within the Premier League.
Man Utd have freely loaned out some of their non first teamers this season to some of the lesser lights in the division.
On the surface many may say that there seems to be no problem in that, but players such as Ben Foster (keeper) at Watford have done well, even though he couldn't keep them up. It can be argued that allowing a quality player like that to play against your opponents, especially those fighting for places at the top with Man U, could cause an upset here or there. Claiming valuable points from other title chasers and making Man U's quest a little easier. Naturally, when Man U play the teams with the loanees in, then they will not be allowed to play.
Now this is all above board and legal within the Premier League, but should it be allowed?
I believe not.
In my opinion, loans between teams in the same division should be stopped. There are too many conflicting interests involved and it leaves a bad taste in the mouth.
Next we have the Tevez, Mascherano, West Ham affair.
West Ham were found guilty of fielding ineligible players. When this has occured in the past, the teams involved have been docked points. West Ham have been let off with a 5.5 million fine. This is peanuts compared to the 30-40 million which would be lost if they are to be relegated.
The committee stated that the fine was fair and they didn't think it would be fair to West Ham and their supporters if they docked points which subsequently relegated them.
I find this statement unbelievable!
West Ham FC knew the rules and they broke them!
Is it any fairer on the supporters of a team that may be relegated instead of West Ham, due to them losing points in which the Hammers fielded one or both of these "illegal" players?
Of course not.
It smacks of favouritism at best and complete incompetence and disregard for their own rules and regulations at its worst.
The Blades, Fulham, Wigan and Charlton are all getting legal advice and have contacted the league about this. The whole thing could get very messy and run on for a long time yet. All due to the Premier League bottling its responsibilities.
They need to take a long hard look at themselves and make some drastics changes and soon!
Finally, we have the footballing disaster "SS Leeds (Titanic) United" floundering on the iceberg.
Looking certain to be relegated today, they have decided to go into administration now and have a meaningless 10 points deducted from this season's total. If they had waited until after the end of the season, they would have been deducted from next season's table.
Now you can't blame Leeds and Bates for doing this, as facing certain relegation, it is the sensible thing to do.
What we can complain about though, is the regulations within the Football League that allow them to get away with taking this action.
It is bad enough that a team can allow themselves to be so badly run on a financial basis that they become insolvent, but then that they can choose administration to get themselves out of the hole and get away with paying a pittance to their debtors. Then, the same people involved in the original mess, can simply create a new name for the company and carry on as before.
This makes a mockery out of teams such as the Blades, who have not overspent and have kept the club on an even keel, even though it meant building gradually for a number of years.
If clubs like Leeds can throw money around like confettii and then just start again when it goes wrong, how the hell can we expect other clubs to behave in the correct manner?
The whole affair if quite frankly sickening!
In conclusion, it appears to me that English football needs to sit down and thrash out its problems and quickly, before our precious game is turned into something to be ridiculed around the world.
Ian - Amsterdam Blade
posted by Blades Bees @ 13:18,
