Posts Tagged → The Government
Forget the FA, the problem is Richard Scudamore and his mates….
The pervious blog shows just how little power The FA really have, I wrote that before they published a response to the Governments requests. The whole document was a complete disgrace and considering there were over 70 different points in the governments recommendation, 16 pages from the football authorities hardly covered any of it. Richard Scudamore comments from the other day show just how much power the Premier League really has….
We’ll make sure supporters have a proper voice but that doesn’t mean they can get everything they want.
… its everything summed up in one sentence. It makes it pretty clear Scudamore is stuck in his own little word…
It’s very hard to come up with legitimate ways to put fans on boards. We don’t have a Germanic model here.
… its very simple. Include a simple rule which means a new place is created and an elected supporter from each clubs supporters trust is put on the board of each club. It doesn’t require rocket science. Most people might think that will never happen in the Premier League. Scudamore needs to be reminded Swansea already have a supporter on the board. On top of that, 64 other clubs outside the Premier League have supporters on their boards. Considering there are just over 170 supporters trusts thats a huge chunk. Considering more clubs are being taken over by the fans season by season and the shareholdings are increasing season on season. Scudamore is living in the same world as FIFA. Completely out of touch and clueless. Apart from the other facts on directors, does he know 26 clubs are owned by the fans?
Most of the clubs which are owned by the fans are from League One and below but they have been increasing in number. Clubs like Exeter, Wrexham, Wimbledon and Chester are examples of larger clubs which have struggled but have been reborn. Tranmere Rovers and other supporters trusts already have viable plans to takeover their clubs but the current plans from the football authorities limit what can be done. Scudamore comments are that not of The FA, the Government or the fans but the Premier League and its clubs. Scudamore only has the interests of the owners of the clubs at heart and nothing else. Can you imagine the Glazers, Henry, Roman or many of the other owners supporting change from the fans point of view?
The question now is, what is the Governments response to this document? Do they know details we yet don’t? Will they be public and tell us their view? Are they going to ask for more or will they be quiet and slyly accept this? If this is slowly allowed to disappear to allow the Premier League to do as they wish, something has gone seriously wrong. Serious questions should be put forward now to the Department for Culture Media and Sport to find out what the next stage is!
The FA – Not Fit For Purpose And Powerless To Act
If you’ve heard about the report into football governance or kept up to date from the mainly the Guardian or Telegraph. Both have been reporting the stories on the issue so you should have some idea of where the debate and changes are up to. I doubt think the Sun have even mentioned it, too busy reporting Rihannas new hair do, thats the stuff that matters.
At the end of the Culture and Media and Select committee on football governance a report was passed on to the government to review. In the Governments final publication, this was made clear on more than one occasion.
75. The Government is fully committed to ensuring that the changes put forward by the football authorities make a lasting and substantive difference. If that does not happen the Government will introduce a legal requirement on the Football Association to implement the appropriate governance clauses by the swiftest possible means.
Unsurprising one of the first recommendations that was made, has been reportedly completely ignored. The 10 man board with 6 independent non-executive directors hasn’t happened and they couldn’t even agree a small change. Currently on the 14 man board sit 3 Premier League Directors and 2 Football league Directors, its not hard to see why they won’t give up those posts any time soon. If the football clubs have control of the FA, it means the football clubs can still do pretty much as they like. It seems again they’ve got their own way and its as if the introduction of the licensing system is going to say ‘we’ve set up a licensing system and set up the independent body for it but let us off on the other areas.’
The other thing is, this could be a challenge to the Government on areas they really don’t want to change and if the Government did get involved theres a possibly the England Team would banned by FIFA. If the England team was banned just before the Euros, there would be uproar but if thats a price that must be paid, so be it. Football refusing to sorting its self out and allowing a long list of famous clubs to go bust is unacceptable in my book. They been clearly warned and if they don’t want to change, make them by what ever means possible.
It also makes you think what other areas within the governments report have they refuse to move on and it also makes you think the ones they have changed will have been to the complete minimum. Many people think the governments report itself was weak, so to see some key areas within a weak report completely missed shows just how backwards our game is. If The FA have refused to complete just one single point and if they have made it so its the minimum of changes on the rest, the Government should take steps straight away. It shows the football authorities can’t run themselves to do the very basics as the government trusted them to do so and it also means the Government must step in. The government has also been pressured to support supporter ownership in football and they if can’t even change the FA board we have serious problems which have been proven to be bigger than they were before.
The Supporters Trust and Football Governance Committee
Over the last few weeks there have been a number of meetings between the select committee and those invited to give their evidence. Our Supporters Trust has put much faith into this but the question is what happens once its all over? What happens if nothing happens or something happens but it not what any of us wanted? Lets say the rules change but this makes no difference to ourselves? The Red Knights totally failed, followed by a failure by the government to take action. At that point its pretty clear we can’t rely on anyone but ourselves. The inaction by ourselves to do something on our own accord over god knows how many years will hit hard. The Redknights was luck of the draw, caused by Glazers actions. It wasn’t MUST who decided we’re going to raise money, it was someone else. Now again they are relying on an outside party such as Qatar to make a chance. It should have never happened like that. There are 1,000s of us last year thinking ‘phoenix fund’. They had a fantastic chance to start raising big money. If the fans want to buy into the club, they have to raise money, that’s a stone wall fact. What have we raised? 100,000 email addresses and the on rest I’ve not got a clue. They won’t tell anyone or talk about. As an example theres a club called FC United. They have around 2,000 members and they’ve managed to raise between £1.3m in community shares alone. That doesn’t include any donations towards the ground or money used to keep the club going. How many paid members? They won’t say. How much in the phoenix fund? They won’t say. The site says 167,000 members but that means nothing if action doesn’t follow it. It should read the figure in the Phoenix Fund. Money talks more than words. Ask Malcolm Glazer. The trust and the people who run it will see this as criticism but a lot of us will say, this is the truth. Inaction and lack of information. They have Obamas advertising company promoting them, use it correctly, raise some bloody money and cause some damage.
I’ll bring up another issue. The blog run on their site has gone from the story of the Red Knights to quickly advertising BetFred deals. To be honest, this is the type of thing that made many people give up back when the club house was the biggest thing on the MUST agenda. The idea did exist back in 2007, lets not say it didn’t. The idea to offer reds deals to put in the phoenix fund wasn’t a bad idea but it was poorly thought out. The biggest issue MUST are involved with currently is the football governance committee. That is the Be and End All. Not Bedfred, if they wanted a tiny amount of credibility they’d blog every tuesday and provide links to the live feed. Have they done any of this? No. If they want to use Betfred, it should be to promote the trust, not using the blog once every three weeks to advising a company. If Fred doesn’t want to promote MUST on his site or in his shops, tell him to do one. It no loss to me or anyone else. I don’t really understand what the people at the top of MUST are thinking but I think, its time for a big change.
MUST, David Gills Bullshit and International Support
We’ve all seen David Gills comments during the Football Governance Inquiry and for me they are a disgrace. According to him if you are one of the 167,000 members of MUST your view does not matter or if you are part of IMUSA you view does not matter. Anyone according to him calling for the owners to leave is someone who they will not talk with and to be honest I believe everyone wants them to go, no matter how extreme the view is. Some might want Qatar or they might want the fans to take over but everyone on the planet knows, United would be better without the Glazer. I believe that is a view shared by all, by those who protest or not. Its likely a view even shared by David Gill but due to his massive pay cheque, he refuses to believe it. To me that means its only his and a few Americans view that matters. David Gill thinks YOUR VIEW DOES NOT MATTER. The rest of the information he put out was also mostly lies and bullshit. Andersred has looked at some of the figures he gave out and those were wrong. Gill basically lied to Parliament and told a group of people voted for in a democratic system, their constitutes views don’t matter and they weren’t going to be listened too. That could back fire big time. Gill also said the International support didn’t really care about the issues or didn’t know about them. I don’t agree with that view as some of the followers on twitter hate the glazers more than many of the domestic fans.
MUST today called for International growth in their membership and many people may think, why would you want to do that? The Trust and the movement needs as much support as possible. In its current state everyone needs to step it up a gear and the Trust need to plan to promote its self on a massive scale. I can only do so much so if you haven’t joined The Manchester United Supporters trust do it now. It doesn’t matter if you from Salford or Mexico.
http://action.joinmust.org/index.php/content/splash
I’d also call not just for people to join for free but to put into the Withdrawal Share Capital fund. This is the Phoenix fund which would part fund the fans taking a stake in the club if it ever got to that stage. This goes for existing free members or existing paid members.
http://www.joinmust.org/about/wsc.php
They’ll also be calling on fans to contact their local MP in the coming weeks and push the Football Governance Inquiry to make the change. MUST might not be calling for a boycott or a protest but they’ve got the Government questioning David Gill, who then made abit of fool of himself and the rest of football. This could by May force through the bigger changes, we’ve all been waiting for. Who caused this debate? Our Supporters Trust highlighting the problems.
#LUHG you can follow and question me @wewantglazerout
The FA Doesn’t Have Any Power.
We’ve known for a long time there have been problems in football. To do with debt, ownership and on the first day of the inquest from a man who was the boss of The FA, we now know why. The Premier League works for the interests of its chairmen. It aims to keep them all happy so if David Gill says ‘the glazers own this club you keep it that way’ they’ll do there best to see The FA or anyone else can’t do anything. The FA tried once before and they got scared. Now they do as the EPL tell them. The only action they’ll take is against the odd player, to make it look like they are in charge. In reality if The FA says we want to remove all debt. The EPL will say no you won’t. The FA then goes off and crys in the corner. The FA run English Football, they are the governing body. If they put rules in place for the good of the game, all leagues should accept them. The FA is only worried about England getting banned why because that’s how its board make their cash. Shirts sales, ticket sales. Lets get one thing very very clear. The England Football Team is the last place on Earth that should be treated like Tescos. Its the national team and if takes England getting banned for the board to work this out, that will be good for football. You cannot have a governing body, which works more like a business, than a governing body. The same can be said for Fifa in areas. The FA is their to govern football. It has in the past found out many of the issues the government is discussing but has not been allowed to carry them out. UFEA and Fifa have power, The FA has none. Its why on many an issue the FA doesn’t do anything, that’s also true for matters on the pitch. They should find issues, find the solutions and put in new rules. That is The FA’s job, if it cannot do that, huge changes need to happen. Forced Changes.
1:0 To Us? I’d bet on it.
Tomorrow night they’ll likely be stories floating about what Lord Triesman said to the Select Committee but I am very interesting in hearing what everyone has to say. Currently I’d say its a two sided affair but the interesting thing is none of the six to be currently to be interviewed have a strong link to football. That means its not someone from within the EPL, FA or say Manchester United. First at 10:45 am we’ll be hearing from Stefan Szymanski, Sean Hamil and Patrick Collins. At 11:45am we’ll hear from Lord Triesman, Graham Kelly and Lord Burns. The first three should be the most interesting as they are likely to give straight answers or explain in simple terms what is going on. Patrick Collins from the Daily Mail wrote this about the FA and EPL when Liverpool were in court trying to get rid of their owners.
“Now, who could argue with a word of that? And who can remember the Premier League making a remotely useful contribution to the entire debate? Who can recall them offering a frank and articulate condemnation of the appalling way in which Liverpool Football Club has been run for these past three years?
Not their style, I’m afraid. In their view, owners may do pretty much as they choose; be they Tom or George, the dearly departed Shinawatra or the geekish Glazers, who have saddled Manchester United with the kind of debt which is beyond shame or comprehension. Fill your boots, chaps, but please try not to harm the ‘brand’. As for the FA, the people who used to accept responsibility for the way in which English football conducts itself: nothing.”
So we know Patricks view already. He knows like do Liverpool and United could be took over by Kim Jong Ill and the FA would let them take them over. If more people like Patrick are interviewed, the FA could get destroyed. Not stepping in when Portsmouth were in trouble, not stepping during the Glazer takeover and not stepping in when Liverpool had issues. To be honest the only thing the FA would have do is likely fine all the clubs and dock them points for asking for help. The ‘its not our problem’ needs to end and with people like Patrick being interviewed we have a good chance. Its likely 3 more of the people being interviewed could say similar things. Triesman we’ll likely be one of these people. He told the EPL there was too much debt and now hes gone, the new guy says its not that much of a problem. Quiet worrying that the former head of The FA said there was too much debt in football and now The FA says there isn’t. So I am betting on atleast 2 people on the side of the fans, with no one yet insight from the Glazer, Hicks or the EPLs camp. Day One Could Be 1:0 To The People. For more updates follow me on twitter @wewantglazerout , I’ll be trying to pick out the key parts tomorrow after everything has been said.
The True Story Of United’s Winter Transfers
Your now thinking this is going to be about how Manchester United should have spent big money to compete with other clubs and next your going to think I am going to ramble on about how we should have. Infact this is the true story not only of past transfer windows but future ones to come. It all starts back in the Summer of 2009, when a certain club called Real Madrid decided to to splash the cash. At the very time I was on the other side of the world in San Francisco, so if anyone was unconnected and shocked by that weeks events it was myself. I went off one morning and found a Starbucks with wireless internet, put the BBC news page up and there it was Kaka had just moved to Madrid. Afew days later I woke up with a text message saying ‘Ronaldos been sold to Madrid’. I never get messages about football news stories, so for this to be sent means its big news. At that time I am thinking. ‘We’ve just built a great squad, we’ve been in two champions league finals, so why the hell are we cutting it up’ I was also thinking something else and this has always stuck in my mind. They’ve told all the season ticket holders as a ploy, just days before the renewal deadline ‘Ronaldo would not be sold’, all just to sell season tickets, then just after it our best player & the best player in the World is sold off. So I get back to Manchester afew days later and the world to me has gone totally nuts.
This is where the business side of the story comes in. All the figures given are true straight from United’s official accounts. In June 2009 United sold Ronaldo in a £80m deal. In January 2010 it was also reported United had already been paid £35.9m from AON from the new £80m sponsorship deal. This shows up on past accounts. So those two big payments of money are around £116m. In May United was to have reported £95m in cash in the bank, later on it was £162m, and the latest now is £151m in cash in the bank. At this point everything sounds brilliant £150m in the bank, happy days. The problem is of the £80m in the sponsorship deal United have already received £47m. When you add the Ronaldo money to this that’s £127m of £151m cash in the bank. If you are reading that like I am, without the two AON payments and without Ronaldo money since June 2009 the club has only been able to create extra £24m or £35.8m in cash if you take out 2010s payment. To me that’s pretty worrying. With all the prize money, TV money, extra sponsorship deals and increased ticket prices, it shows there is a very good reason why the club hasn’t seen alot of movement in the transfer market. This is not to say the market isn’t over valued, in areas it is. Some of the figures that have been paid out for certain players by City, Chelsea, Villa and Liverpool have been very silly. The reason Manchester United haven’t been out and got a £20-30m player isn’t because they can’t, its because if they do that money is then gone and to recoup that money could in theory take 12-18 months or longer just to get back £30m. One other area shows that at one stage cash reserves reached £162m but then dropped by £12m, so this shows any budget changes or increased costs within the club could have a big effect. The biggest problem I see is if United went out and spent £115m tomorrow on either the stadium or the team, there is only a £35m gap for the budget to be increased, once over that you need an overdraft or you need to find another source of income quick. Remember this is football and alot can happen in a short space of time. This to me is alot more shocking and alot more worrying than any debt and the problem in part is the debt. If United removed the interest payments that gap goes from £35m to £80m. Now I am pretty sure if that was the case, the club would have more access to the transfer market and there would be more value. The fact is until that £45m interest payment is removed and the Government recommends we get a share in our clubs, we are unlikely to see any increase in transfer spending outside of the Ronaldo money at Manchester United in years to come. When the Ronaldo Money is spent, that’s it, that’s the reason it’s not been touched and it won’t be touched.
Love United Hate Glazer
Now Till Late Summer
Alot of people say the Green & Gold is dead and nothing is happening. For me, that’s very far from the real story. This is a waiting game but there are a number of things going on in the back ground. This ranges from now until summer and we should hear news on them. First there is the case of where the missing £249m came from, to pay Glazers debt off. Andersred as ever always has he eye cast out and there is always the likely hood that could pop up again. There are also rumours of a takeover by Qatar but that’s nothing more than rumours. Until it happens we won’t know a thing. If nothing more comes by the summer months there is still hope.
This next piece is in black and white. This will happen. As I type the Government are reviewing football. Its not rumoured or made up. It is happening. They don’t like Manchester United’s debt or the culture of the Premier League. They want to sort it out. By May this year the Government will have completed its review of how to deal with football ownership and football governance. The proposals will be published during May on Football Governance and hopefully through the FA, they will start putting through the changes needed so we and many others can take a stake in their club. They know the problems and hopefully they’ll be robust.
Your Government! Pressure Them!
Yesterday A Very Important Article Was Posted On The Guardian Website. You can Read it here.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2010/nov/03/jeremy-hunt-premier-league-debt-rules
This isn’t saying this is the answer to all our problems but what it does say is the Government wants the Premier League to change its ways. Even though the government have said they ‘won’t introduce laws’ yet to combat such problems, they do and are pressuring the people who matter in football to create a change. I’ve been repeating to many a fan, the way for real change in football is too pressure your MPs, The Government and the football authorities. The thing is I’ve also spoken to a number of fans who agree this is the only realistic way to go.
Protests at Old Trafford are always going to be popular and maybe they’ve been achieving more in private than we all really planned. Those protests at Old Trafford should be a meeting ground for us to spread the word. Pressure The Government. Pressure Your Local MP. Pressure The Sports Minister and Culture Minister. I don’t mean protests I mean asking them to push this to the people that be. Phone them, email them, send them letters. Nothing aggressive, just plain and simple. We want change and tell them what we want. If Your From The Manchester United Supporters Trust. Sean Bones, Duncan Drasdo, etc. I Hope Your Reading My Blog. You Need To Step This Campaign Up Ten Fold On Match Day.
You Can Follow Me On Twitter Here. @wewantglazerout