Takeover Thread - July 1st statement, Staveley letter to Tracey Crouch (and response) in OP

[Whitley mag]

A blatant attempt at a power grab by the top 6 on the back of Covid. It would be the end of a competitive league forever, no surprise this is being instigated by American controlled clubs.

 

A move motivated by self interest and nothing else, dressed up as saving football league clubs.

[jdckelly]

theres no way these new things get approved, 2 less teams in the premier league and everyone outside the top 6 have no say basically, they need 14 clubs as it stands to approve it and it'd be like turkeys voting for christmas

[Nobody]

Jesus fucking christ that's utterly appalling. Holding the EFL to ransom for more power in the current climate is amongst the most disgusting things I've seen.

[Whitley mag]

theres no way these new things get approved, 2 less teams in the premier league and everyone outside the top 6 have no say basically, they need 14 clubs as it stands to approve it and it'd be like turkeys voting for christmas

 

They’ll have 9 clubs voting for it, who’s to say a couple of yo-yo clubs don’t also vote for it. Then it’s getting dangerously close.

[Wandy]

Aren't NUFC one of the nine teams with the most seasons in the PL?

[Ikon]

Continual stay. So no, we aren't. Fucking disgusted.

[Whitley mag]

Nope Everton, Southampton and West Ham would make up 9.

[nbthree3]

Aren't NUFC one of the nine teams with the most seasons in the PL?

 

Most definitely, but it's 'consecutive' years that gets you influence now. Same reason why Villa isn't a special status shareholder under these rules. At least they've made it obvious they care about the top clubs only!

[Whitley mag]

Aren't NUFC one of the nine teams with the most seasons in the PL?

 

Most definitely, but it's 'consecutive' years that gets you influence now. Same reason why Villa isn't a special status shareholder under these rules. At least they've made it obvious they care about the top clubs only!

 

They’ve made it obvious why takeover wasn’t approved, it’s all becoming very clear now. This proposal has apparently been a working document since 2017, they had every reason to keep kicking takeover down the road.

[Tsunami]

Utterly disgraceful. Even if we were included, it’s still a top 6 cartel. Wish they’d fuck off to a European Super League.

[Dokko]

Just more ammo for our QC. If they don’t approve and this goes to court the PL probably won’t exist afterwards. The level of corruption in the game is staggering. I remember when it used to be on the pitch, now it’s at boardroom level.

 

I’d rather the whole thing fall apart than the takeover go through, put an end to the PL And return the game to the fans.

[xLiaaamx]

I'd rather we just pulled out of football altogether if this happened. Remove the club from a rigged system. Ask Scotland to take us.

[Wandy]

It truly all makes sense now. Anyone now still want to say NUFC fans were just paranoid that the big six were trying to block the takeover?

[Kimbo]

Repulsive stuff, and hearing of this sort of thing is becoming more and more common. It reminds me of the Juventus chairman earlier in the year saying Atalanta shouldn't be allowed in the CL over a big club just for having a good season. The game is run by absolute cunts that are not football fans.

[Ben]

Can we not just take Sunderland, Middlesbrough and Carlisle and go to Scotland ?

[TRon]

Aren't NUFC one of the nine teams with the most seasons in the PL?

 

Most definitely, but it's 'consecutive' years that gets you influence now. Same reason why Villa isn't a special status shareholder under these rules. At least they've made it obvious they care about the top clubs only!

 

They’ve made it obvious why takeover wasn’t approved, it’s all becoming very clear now. This proposal has apparently been a working document since 2017, they had every reason to keep kicking takeover down the road.

 

It was pretty clear much earlier actually, but those of us who could smell it from a mile off were called conspiracy theorists.

[Guest Cheesy Beans]

It’s never going to happen.

 

There’s been a spectacular plan ‘leaked’ into the media every year for about 10 years.

[ElDiablo]

Shameless. Disaster capitalism, simple as that. Could've done a better job hiding it mind.

[Wandy]

So who is the club in 10th place for consecutive PL seasons?

[Kimbo]

I find it funny how Everton, West Ham, and Southampton would be conned into thinking they're part of the elite group, when really the "big 6" would club together and make them and their votes completely irrelevant.

[Wullie]

So who is the club in 10th place for consecutive PL seasons?

 

Palace I think.

[TheInfiniteOdyssey]

Fucking hell, get this cunt out of football man

 

[gbandit]

Feel like for the last fifteen years football has been going more and more in the wrong direction. The business element of it has created a chasm between fans and clubs that is slowly being recognised by more and more fans. I’m pretty much done as it stands and I don’t really see a way back, especially with proposals like those above. I’m lucky that I love most sports apart from rugby so I can substitute other sports for it. Would love to get excited about football again but that’s not possible with Ashley and I doubt it would be possible under different owners now either

[Scoot]

Corruption right in front of our eyes.

[Dr Jinx]

*taken from the telegraph

 

 

He was the chief executive of the Premier League when its breakaway from the Football League reshaped English football in the early 1990s, and now Rick Parry is adamant that fundamental change is necessary again to save the professional game gripped by the coronavirus crisis.

 

Speaking exclusively to The Telegraph, Parry, now chairman of the Football League (EFL), said that new changes proposed in a radical document authored and endorsed Liverpool and Manchester United were “as big as the formation of the Premier League”.

 

The proposals would, Parry said, finally bridge the financial gap between the Premier League and the Championship and discourage reckless spending by clubs seeking promotion. He believes the proposals will also save the EFL from the looming financial oblivion that is being hastened by the Covid crisis.

 

On the other side of the fence now from the Premier League, Parry has been working on a plan with Liverpool and United for the last three years - even before he took up his role at the EFL. His ambition is to close what he sees as the “unbridgeable gap” between the Premier League and the EFL but he also knows that in order to do so concessions will have to be offered to the game’s most powerful clubs.

 

A former chief executive of Liverpool, Parry says that his 72 EFL clubs will only have a future under these new plans and that many of them who have been sounded out support them wholeheartedly.

 

Proposals would see the Premier League reduce to 18 teams

 

The details, revealed today by The Telegraph, are startling. A £250 million bailout of the EFL and 25 per cent of all annual Premier League future revenues paid to the EFL. A £100 million one-off gift to the Football Association. A reduction of the number of top-flight clubs from 20 to 18. Sweeping changes to the governance of the Premier League that would see power concentrated in the longest-serving, and biggest clubs. Potentially the end of the League Cup. Changes to the three-up, three down promotion and relegation structure.

 

Parry said that the changes were crucial for the long-term health of the professional game in England and would have been so even without the pandemic that has prevented clubs from having paying fans in stadiums. He has the backing of the owners of both Liverpool and United. Parry will be the public face of the new proposals that will face fierce competition from many quarters – especially the Premier League itself and the 14 clubs outside the so-called big six.

 

For United and Liverpool, the pay-off is not a greater share of the revenue from the Premier League’s television deal – they are insistent that will not happen. Instead they want the power, along with the other members of the elite - Manchester City, Chelsea, Arsenal and Tottenham Hotspur – to shape the rules of the league and also to have more matchdays to compete in a potentially expanded Champions League.

 

For United and Liverpool, the pay-off is not a greater share of the revenue from the Premier League’s television deal

 

Under the new rules the nine longest-serving clubs in the division would have huge powers. With just a two-thirds majority, they could remove the Premier League chief executive, change regulations governing cost controls and approve television rights contracts. They could change the distribution model of sponsorship and commercial rights and even the rules of the competition. Remarkably they would also be able to block new owners from buying clubs.

 

Parry said: “The fact that our two greatest clubs are showing leadership at a time when the game is crying out for it is fantastic. For me that’s a great part of the story. We should be looking at our great clubs at times like this and they should be stepping up to the plate. They are. Clearly I have had an input because all of this will come as something as a surprise to our clubs [in the EFL]. I am hoping they will be receptive but it is subject to their approval.”

 

“For me this addresses the three biggest challenges the EFL faces. This started pre-Covid – it addressed the gulf between top and bottom and the long-term survival of our smaller clubs. You cannot do this without a major rethink. It is as big as the formation of the Premier League. It is a coming-together and clearly it’s a great story for all of our 72 [EFL] clubs.”

 

On the question of what leverage the likes of Liverpool and United would have to force change, Parry said they would be “bitterly disappointed” if the proposals were rejected. He maintained that the new proposals had to be implemented swiftly to save those EFL clubs who were on the financial precipice without gate receipts. He added that the “toing and froing and nickel and dimeing” with the Premier League had not moved the EFL clubs any closer to the bailout they needed.

 

Parry said: “They [Liverpool and United] are not making threats about European super leagues as far as I know. In the event it doesn’t happen and they are bitterly disappointed then as to what might then happen anybody can speculate. At the moment it is presented for what it is a really genuinely bold plan for the future of English football.

 

“Yes, there are bits that people won’t like. All your points about the 14 [other clubs] and about competitive balance are absolutely valid. What do we do? Leave it exactly as it is and allow the smaller clubs to wither? Recognise we have an enormous gap, recognise we have a structure that depends [in the EFL] on owner funding? Or do we do something about it? And you can’t do something about it without something changing. And the view of our clubs is if the [big] six get some benefits but the 72 also do, then we are up for it.”

 

Parry said that the proposals, chiefly authored by Liverpool’s American ownership group Fenway Sports, based in Boston, were a work in progress. They are already on their 17th draft. He said that as things stand the League Cup, a cornerstone of the EFL, will be abolished but that there had been some discussion about keeping it – albeit without the participation of clubs in Europe.

 

The likelihood is that there will be huge changes by Uefa or others to the Champions League and Europa League after 2024 when current broadcast contracts expire. A radical expansion is being pushed by leading European clubs, led by the Juventus chairman Andrea Agnelli, and the Premier League’s top clubs want more matchdays free for greater participation in Europe.

 

Parry said: “Who knows what changes will be to European competition after 2024 and obviously we are anticipating there will be a major shift in games. We are realistic. We know that things have to give. We know that second domestic cup competitions [League Cup] are an anathema to Uefa. It’s only us and France [who have one] and we know theirs is going. Even in the last few days clubs in the big six are ‘Saying why are you getting rid of it [the League Cup]? If you know clubs in Europe aren’t going to take part then why shouldn’t we keep it?’”

 

The current model in the EFL is unsustainable, according to Parry

 

The current model in the EFL is unsustainable, Parry says, with owners funding £380 million from their own pocket in the Championship alone last season, at an average of £16 million a club. That total of owner funding rises to £440 million throughout the totality of the EFL. The parachute payments, he says, which came in under his watch at the Premier League are no longer sustainable and distort competition. Last season parachute payments made up 30 per cent of the total turnover of the Championship despite being paid to just seven clubs.

 

As EFL chairman, Parry wants an end to the huge difference in earnings between clubs relegated back to the Championship, and the beneficiaries of parachute payments, and those who are already there subsisting on much more meagre resources. “The fact that two seasons ago you have Huddersfield earning £97 million and Leeds £8 million – it’s not bridgeable,” Parry said. “You have heard my views on parachute payments and the massive distorting impact they have [to a Parliamentary select group hearing]. [Owning a Championship club] is the most expensive lottery ticket on the planet. It’s nonsensical. It can’t be right.

 

“That is not the right structure going forwards. Why do you need parachute payments, you only need them because of the size of the gap [between the Premier League and the Championship] … it’s a total distortion.”

 

Asked what the reaction of Liverpool and United might be to a rejection of their proposals, Parry said: “I would phrase it diplomatically in that, ‘Isn’t this the thing that’s going to prevent them from doing that [leaving the Premier League] and make it more likely they are committed to the future of English football?’ They have thrown their lot in with a very bold plan to save the English pyramid.”

 

He said that the era in which all Premier League clubs had one-vote and a majority of 14 was needed for any major rule changes had served the league “brilliantly” but that change was now required. He said Liverpool and Manchester United had been particularly frustrated that the interim rule to allow five substitutes last season had been voted down for this season. Premier League clubs voted 11-9 against it. The rest of Uefa had adopted it permanently.

 

Parry said: “[under these proposals] They [big clubs] have more space and the calendar isn’t that cluttered. That is a major benefit for them. There are governance changes in there where they want a greater say. They are frustrated that they get outvoted ... how can Huddersfield have the same vote as Man United? How can Blackpool come up and abuse their one stay in the Premier League [and yet] have the same vote as Man United and Liverpool.”

 

The big losers will undoubtedly be those clubs outside the big six of the Premier League who will have two fewer places and less revenue. Persuading them will be the greatest challenge facing Parry as well as Liverpool and United. Parry claims that those clubs are in an “arms race” with one another for the same players. He says the 14 spend more collectively on salaries than the total wage bills of either the Bundesliga, Spain’s Liga or Italy’s Serie A.

 

 

Asked whether the new proposals would affect the competitiveness of those 14 clubs, Parry argued they could assemble the same squads on a lower budget. “It’s all about the supply of money,” he said. “The money goes to the players and less money will go to the same group of players. I don’t think, for example, Brighton’s squad will be any different. It means Brighton’s players will be earning a bit less.

 

“I don’t have an issue with our top clubs being successful in Europe and hiring the best players in the world because they generate the revenues. To have them winning Champions Leagues and bringing in the best talent on the planet is best for English football and great for media values.  We want them competing with Real Madrid and others. There is no problem at all with that. The challenge we have is the imbalance between frankly the 14 and our clubs [in the EFL].”

 

Parry said that under the new proposals, the Premier League would continue to run the top division but taking charge of all negotiations for television rights for the Football League as well as its own. From that total, 25 per cent would go to the EFL. Currently the 14 Premier League clubs outside the top six are in receipt of what Parry estimates is 11 times the television revenue of the 24 Championship clubs. They earn around £8 million each with £5 million of that a solidarity payment from the Premier League. “How is that right? How is that fair?” Parry said.

 

“This isn’t about throwing money at player wages,” he said, “it is absolutely about making all of our clubs sustainable. This is a plan for the next 25 years. A fundamental reset. The thing that has to shine through is the passion that Liverpool and Manchester United have shown for preserving the pyramid and the relevance if Leagues One and League Two is for the most rewarding aspect of all of this.”