Skoorb
Alert Team
Here's the scenario.......picture the scene in a few years....
The rags to riches story of plucky Northern Premier League Division One North semi-professional club Salford City reaches a peak when, having blazed a trail through the lower levels of English football they won the Championship Play-Off Final to reach the Premier League. Having been taken over in 2014 by the famed and feted 'Class of '92' quintette of Giggs, Phil and Gary Neville, Scholes and Butt they won promotion in their first season as owners and brought on board Singapore billionaire Peter Lim to share ownership.
Having delivered such spectacular results and a fairy tale footballing story the owners now feel frustrated by what they have described as the "grossly unfair and draconian spending limits imposed by UEFA's Financial Fair Play rules". Having taken the decision to invest their own money in a lowly non-league club they expressed massive disappointment that they should now be restricted in their spending by rules which are dependent upon their income. "we feel it is really, really unfair" one said. "Why should we be restricted from spending our money to better this club? We cannot compete with the massive clubs in the Premier League and feel that we are being penalised for investing in football"........
Not so funny now is it guys?
Been mulling this over ever since I watched the extremely limited BBC 'documentary' on this little project. Actually I was interested by what wasn't covered in that programme as much as what it contained. There was no mention of how much money had been spent - fine, they are not obliged to reveal those details - but I found it rather strange how the programme skated over how much of the playing squad was changed. This would only have been because they were bringing in better players on higher wages (I must presume funded by the owners) but the mercenary nature of this change was glossed over - in other words you could easily be mistaken for thinking that their success in gaining promotion in their first season as owners was down to how they galvanised the existing team and players into playing at a different level and defying the odds. In fact they brought in better quality players who helped to recover the club after a poor first half of the season. But without this investment it probably wouldn't have happened. 'Financial doping' in the lower leagues?
Interesting how this story of investment in football is seen as laudable but investment at the top end of the sport is seen with suspicion.
It will be a supreme irony (I know there is a long way to go) if the ambitions of these ex-players become hampered by the very rules which so many rags have been in favour of because it helps to protect them.
The rags to riches story of plucky Northern Premier League Division One North semi-professional club Salford City reaches a peak when, having blazed a trail through the lower levels of English football they won the Championship Play-Off Final to reach the Premier League. Having been taken over in 2014 by the famed and feted 'Class of '92' quintette of Giggs, Phil and Gary Neville, Scholes and Butt they won promotion in their first season as owners and brought on board Singapore billionaire Peter Lim to share ownership.
Having delivered such spectacular results and a fairy tale footballing story the owners now feel frustrated by what they have described as the "grossly unfair and draconian spending limits imposed by UEFA's Financial Fair Play rules". Having taken the decision to invest their own money in a lowly non-league club they expressed massive disappointment that they should now be restricted in their spending by rules which are dependent upon their income. "we feel it is really, really unfair" one said. "Why should we be restricted from spending our money to better this club? We cannot compete with the massive clubs in the Premier League and feel that we are being penalised for investing in football"........
Not so funny now is it guys?
Been mulling this over ever since I watched the extremely limited BBC 'documentary' on this little project. Actually I was interested by what wasn't covered in that programme as much as what it contained. There was no mention of how much money had been spent - fine, they are not obliged to reveal those details - but I found it rather strange how the programme skated over how much of the playing squad was changed. This would only have been because they were bringing in better players on higher wages (I must presume funded by the owners) but the mercenary nature of this change was glossed over - in other words you could easily be mistaken for thinking that their success in gaining promotion in their first season as owners was down to how they galvanised the existing team and players into playing at a different level and defying the odds. In fact they brought in better quality players who helped to recover the club after a poor first half of the season. But without this investment it probably wouldn't have happened. 'Financial doping' in the lower leagues?
Interesting how this story of investment in football is seen as laudable but investment at the top end of the sport is seen with suspicion.
It will be a supreme irony (I know there is a long way to go) if the ambitions of these ex-players become hampered by the very rules which so many rags have been in favour of because it helps to protect them.
