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THE
STATE OF THE GAME WE’RE IN Since our season turned to goose merde in September perhaps it is time to remind ourselves briefly of some of the main footy issues of the day. The following opinion is a short summary of views expressed in other contributions during the last few years. This might also help us forget for a moment the pain of our current playing form. Like many fans I limit myself to wondering briefly why some of our players have stopped trying while they generously donate the ball to the opposition at a rate of one pass per each thirty seconds of playing time. Or why some of Moysey’s public utterances this season have all the communications appeal of a Swiss euthanasia clinic. Or why he’s had a face like a smacked arse for the last six months. Certainly the time is past when we could hope Moyesy’s worst default might be eliminated by experience. It is now evident he will never change, so we’re stuck with his occasional peculiar moodiness. Which is why a lot of solid Evertonians who formerly supported him without equivocation now have a more jaundiced view. What is of current concern is the curiously detached air he now generates in interviews, as though it doesn’t matter much and the team is a sort of experiment-at-a-distance. It is all very odd. I have no more idea than you why our present circumstance has evolved so quickly, except to note the same players who could perform well last season suddenly can’t do better than squeeze both legs inside the same sock. It’s enough to make you bang all their self-pitying heads together. Why their individual and collective pride almost evaporated is anyone’s guess. Like everybody else I thought we had long ago left behind the kind of Steve Watson/David Unsworth, “We know that wasn’t good enough,” weekly excuse, just as we left behind Dunney’s Weekly Howler. But there’s no point dwelling on it. As always in playing matters, what happens in the dressing room stays there. And anyway we have just won three in a row despite riding our luck right up to the closing minutes while playing like a pack of charlies in each match. Our defence has – for the moment – stopped leaking like an old barge. There’s always something to cling to………like the comedy of ‘Appy ‘Arry doing one yet again from Portsmouth, this time to the overhyped metro clowns convention that is Tottenham Hotspur. So instead let’s have another go at the general state of the game in the thin hope of achieving catharsis. Don’t make book on it, though. I’ve been kicking the nearest cat since the season started. It hasn’t worked. 1. Preliminary. “If
I am not for myself, who will be for me? And if I am only for myself,
what am I? Football at bay in the coming economic depression: Just as there is nothing new in a capitalist slump – only the length, depth and width is ever in question – so there is nothing new in human greed and self-delusion. Each generation has to decide how much leeway it allows to these states of mind. Football is not exempt. In some respects it is the worst of the lot. The question is whether to settle for the status quo or to change it. Those most deluded would like merely to wave a magic wand and be rid of all the problems that haunt the game. Alas, some thought and hard work is required. The truth is most fans simply aren’t interested in getting involved. For them the game is harmless escapism, a few hours break once a week away from the daily grind. By and large they just don’t want to commit any more of their time and effort than they feel necessary. And who is to blame them? According to the consumerist code you pays your money and takes your choice. You do as much or as little as you feel inclined to do. It is, or is supposed to be, leisure (alas again, because we all know there is more to it than that for some fans). Equally, if you choose to do nothing then you can’t rightly complain if your views aren’t taken seriously. You can’t have it both ways. This is why those fans who DO get involved without any thought of personal glory are the real off-pitch, unsung heroes of the game. They do a great deal for no reward whatever, not even acknowledgement from the very fans that benefit most. That is the way of things. Thus, there is no need for twisted self-pitying cynicism, only understanding. I raise this question yet again because in recent months we have heard New Labour politicians Andy Burnham and Richard Caborn, and footy bureaucrats Michel Platini and Sepp Blatter, Old Uncle Tom Cobleigh and All mutter about the condition of English football. The Bolton Wanderers chairman, Phil Gartside, even suggested a two tier Premier League with no relegation from the lowest tier. So much for open competition on a level playing field, or for encouraging ambition amongst so-called “small” clubs. It’s a safe bet Gartside would have squealed like a stuck pig had someone made the same suggestion when Bolton were still in the slum that was Burnden Park. Locally, a clutch of MPs got together to try to scupper a bank loan to the Yank-owned pinkies, where – hugely funny, this – many of their fans seem to want to get rid of the right-wing carpet-bagging Yanks in favour of………right-wing Gulf Arabs from a totalitarian theocratic feudal state. Or, depending on which propaganda you believe, a group of fans who say they can raise enough money to pay the Yank asking price. So that’s alright, then. It’ll be okay as long as the money comes in, doesn’t matter where it comes from, just grab it and run, everything will work out. The current company and shares holding system will deliver. For some people it is as though they have lived in a bubble while the world financial system almost went to hell in a hand basket. Which it might still do. And when EFC gets sold on too that won’t matter either because in the current perception and received “wisdom” only the dosh and “guaranteed success” matters. Just get the “investment” in, rake in the trophies – as if – and pull up the money drawbridge behind you and fuck everyone else the way they’re trying to fuck you. Parody made real, self-righteous divvies ready to criticize everybody but themselves, the footy equivalent of the immortal Boulting Brothers 1950s film satire, “I’m Alright Jack” – more appropriate now than when it was made. But none of the recent voices have said anything enlightened fans haven’t said since installation of the Premier League in 1992. It is worth considering too that if a tiny group of right-wing club chairmen could poison the game so quickly, intelligent fans could administer the antidote just as forcefully but with greater prospect of long term success. In fact determined action could help restore at least some of the moral health of the game. 2. What To Avoid. “Fanatics
have their dreams, wherewith they weave a paradise for a sect.” “The
fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, However, if fans are to have any real affect it will be important to avoid the main pitfall of collective action. History shows all republics are eventually destroyed by factions. To make my own position clear: I never have and never will support mob action led by some back entry führer in search of cheap notoriety. Or those with some sort of weirdly obsessed personality gripe. Or those with a permanent funeral marching through their head. Or those who actually hate the club they are supposed to “support.” Such people are beyond counsel and even therapy. They would destroy the game if they got anywhere near the realities of power. You don’t cure a headache by shooting yourself in the head. For me that kind of mentality was summed up a couple of years ago in two quite minor and otherwise insignificant incidents. The first was at an Andy Gray book “do” and Q and A in The Tent. There was a droning question to Andy from a Steve Coppell sound-alike. It went something like, “You have used the term “we” when talking about Everton. Do you use the same term when you go to a function at Aston Villa or Wolves?” It drew groans because it was obviously meant as some kind of put-down shtick. Andy dealt with it accordingly. The second came a few weeks later at a Q and A Hall of Fame function in the Adelphi. Sitting at the top table were Howard Kendall and David Moyes. A question was directed at Howard, “Would one of your teams have lost 7-0 at Arsenal?” It was the same drone from the same curmudgeon. Howard flattened him with, “Well, one of my teams lost 5-0 at home to Liverpool,” and Moyesy followed it up with, “We lost heavily because we were all still pissed after celebrating fourth place.” Exit one drone amidst roars of laughter. Nothing “clever” there, then, anymore than there had been a fortnight earlier. Now, I am all in favour of anybody in power being subject to difficult questions, even of the sweaty, plebeian kind. Nor do I have much problem if somebody isn’t particularly articulate. Usually the right words will be found from somewhere if the questioner is not neurotic, ill-intentioned (as in the two examples above), ill-mannered or a total yob. Where it goes wrong is when it turns into a pantomime script of poisonous codswallop served up by an ale house gang of tenth-rate paranoid stalkers with a deluded notion of their own importance, a clutz of gunsels with an inferiority complex. Typically, these are the morons who complain about the state of the game and then follow it up with the kind of cheap barrow-boy pitch that would run it even further into debt. The inevitable behavioural conclusion to this is the kind of cowardly thuggery that propelled a Manchester City “fan” to the hospital bedside of the seriously ill elderly mother of the late Peter Swales, owner of Manchester City during 1973-1994. At the time he was the object of a sick hate campaign similar to the kind of thing we see every now and then at Everton. Eventually Swales rightly sold up in disgust to Francis Lee in 1994, a former player and hero-figure to the hate campaigners. City promptly dropped two divisions and took years to recover their position in the game. Swales died in 1996. Lee left the scene in 1998 as the club fell into the third tier of English football. The only thing it demonstrated was to beware of what you wish for. Since then such fans behaviour has got even more irrational and self-destructive……… “I’m Alright Jack” in full flow. Every club now has a tiny gang of permanently malcontented schlock traders amongst its “supporters.” These are the kind of people John Maynard Keynes used to illustrate the basis of stock exchange casino gambling, con men base their “analyses” on ignorance and quasi-mass psychology, when the only thing of any accuracy in the whole rotten and wasteful business of shares dealing is illegal insider trading. Why be surprised when this kind of claptrap eventually filters through to inadequate mentalities attached to football? After all, organised thugs of the 1980s are now middle aged and will not have changed their character. These are the people who almost brought the game to its knees even before creation of the Premier League. The Establishment then took full advantage of the disgust of all decent fans. There is nothing new about it of course. Across the world it has always riddled the game in one form or another. At Everton we have the example of Howard Kendall’s first and most successful spell as manager. Early in his tenure his team struggled and leaflets were handed out screaming for him to be sacked. His home was even daubed with insults. He went on to become our most successful manager. Then in recent years we had the lowlife scum who sent human excreta through the post to Bill Kenwright’s office (which was opened by girls in the office, thus confirming their worst suspicions of football “fans”), at least three separate incidents where serious physical threats were made by Guinness-swilling schmucks, a bottle thrown at a club executive’s car as it left the stadium, and spitting at another executive whilst he was with his young daughter. Then there was the sickening sight of an utter slob in a football strip who took advantage of Brian Labone’s funeral to mouth off poison as the cathedral congregation exited what had been a wonderful and respectful celebration of Brian’s life. And these are only a few of the incidents I know of. This shows why no rational supporter – the overwhelming majority – wants anything to do with them, let alone the creeps who set the tone for this kind of sick behaviour and then whine they had nothing to do with the inevitable and shameful result. Overall, what it demonstrates is that some self-styled “fans” can be every bit as self-serving, twisted and wrong as the creators of the Premier League. It also means any new set-up should identify and exclude them in the same way it should exclude suited-up spivs. 3. The Issues. “Too
many pigs for the tits.” “Always
look for the money and the women.” Over the years, scandal (as always) in Italy, scandal in Holland, allegations against Arsenal and Belgian connections, clubs entering administration, transfer skulduggery, profiteering on the backs of child players, potential scandal in whatever it is they call the lower English divisions these days, allegations by Mike Newell of universal “bungs” in English footy, allegations of corruption in the allocation of TV rights. And so on around the globe. There’s hardly a country with a clean record. All in all, the same old same old as the game, like our society, drifts dreamlike toward some kind of dénouement. There are even those who yearn for the preposterous notion of a sort of footy götterdammerung in the hope it would finally cauterise the problems. More likely, if a reckoning comes at all, initially it will be in the form of a seemingly insignificant event, thence to gradually increasing tremors until the house of cards folds inwards slowly. Recent allegations of match fixing between Derby and Norwich might be just such a moment, but I wouldn’t make book on it. Like all cartels professional football has a way of closing ranks when something like this happens. Most crucial of all, current football administration and its formal agency payments are lawful. There has been some adjustment in recent years but not enough, it transpires, since it has been limited to how the money is distributed within the existing system. Therefore, logically, if matters are to be improved major changes are required in the European Union legal system where it affects professional sports activities, not just football. (Not that the European Commission and Parliament are great examples. Their annual accounts have not been approved by the court of auditors for fourteen years). There is no reason why football should receive special treatment. This is why society (that is, you) should decide the place of sport before it falls even further into the hands of spivs. We are already too far down the wrong road and have been since Britain took a decisive swing to the right in 1980 and started peddling once again the nonsense of nineteenth century Malthusian economics. If you want to see the logical conclusion of current trends look no further than Italian football, long rotten to the core, rife with bribery, match-fixing, drug-taking and a monopoly-owned right-wing media who mostly look the other way despite all the evidence. In spite of huge amounts of money running through the game there is never enough to satisfy profiteers and crooks. Increased money flow has resulted merely in increasing the dense assortment of ugly characters that always batten onto football. The same type of organised thug who finished boxing has now leeched onto football. So have the worst type of “fans.” As a minor example, a few years ago one such “fan” told me he had been “…working on a deal…” where someone he knew could “put a couple of million into Everton.” I did some checks and found the “Evertonian” was a drug-dealing hood who ran a city centre store as a front, known to the police, but awaiting evidence enough to lock him up for a few decades. Hopefully one day they will get the necessary and see him in chokey. Needless to say the “deal” died of its own absurdity without getting anywhere near the club. It’s only useful purpose was to serve as a warning for those who want to listen. I show you the times, and some of the lowlives that infest it. At one point the main organised threat came from Rupert Murdoch and his Euro chums/Sky TV-promoted G14 group. But they disbanded when it became obvious they couldn’t raise enough support. Even naïve administrators and fans could see the threat it held over the long term future of the game. Which is why everybody said a hearty good riddance when G14 folded their tents in 2002. But do not think for one moment they have gone forever. These Jerry MacGuires will be around as long as the game leaves even the tiniest opening. With that as background this much is clear to any reasonably intelligent fan: If you wish to know the state of a nation’s morals and ethics you should examine its justice system. The expression of a nation’s moral and cultural tone can be found in its body of laws. It affects every part of society from employment to business, education, health and housing, and it includes sports. If you think inclusion of the latter is far fetched you need only, amongst other examples, view an infamous photograph of a pre-Second World War England team giving a nazi salute before an international match in Germany, or check out how the neo-fascist Argentine junta dealt with World Cup 1978. Later, journalist Brian Glanville inexplicably referred to two Argentinians, Osvaldo Ardiles and Ricardo Villa, as having “impeccable right-wing credentials” during their inward transfers to Tottenham. Even at this distance in time the words and images are repulsive. However, in contemporary Germany the nazi salute is rightly banned and so is denial of the Holocaust. Germany now actively suppresses the fascism it once promoted. Argentine junta members have been prosecuted and jailed. So law is applied differently to suit circumstances. In Britain we accept not only national but European Union legislation. Now we are legally bi-polar it is obvious there can be no major changes in football until relevant laws are changed. This was emphasised when Sepp Blatter of FIFA said he was in favour of limiting the number of foreign players at each European club. Michel Platini of UEFA immediately and rightly told him that was impossible because EEC employment law allow freedom of movement. Then they both expressed “concern” at the levels of foreign ownership in the English game. And that was that, at least for the time being. For the most part we accept such a society on the basis of a majority qui tacet consentire videtur – that is, silence means consent. In general the law only annoys us when a patently unjust or absurd precedent is established or there is a blatant miscarriage of justice. One British example was the poll tax introduced over twenty years ago, a tax which is illegal in the United States and which prompted here the same kind of justified widespread civil disobedience it once caused there. A democratically elected government can only take draconian laws so far before there is reaction. This may take time but history shows that when enough is enough eventually even normal law abiding people will respond with dissidence, organisation and determination. One of the problems, of course, is that most legislation is usually delayed through the consultation process. Usually the statute book is updated only when political circumstances permit and public pressure is irresistible. The interim period is often characterised by fierce dispute, uncertainty and apprehension. Sometimes it breaks down altogether. Then you get the kind of nationwide inner city riots caused by an extreme right-wing government in the 1980s and early 90s. But law is still inextricably linked with society’s general interpretation of what is good and bad. We leave details to legal draughtsmen, get it on the statute book, and then see how it works out through precedent. Even then mistakes are made or bad or evil judgments delivered. If a society develops along evil lines it will be reflected even more sharply in its justice system. For which most extreme examples, see the history of slavery and apartheid in America, the history of the Third Reich and its 1935 Nuremberg Laws, fascist Italy and Spain, apartheid in South Africa, the development of totalitarian communism and the dismantlement of socially protective legislation (laughingly called “deregulation”) in the USA and Britain in the 80s. In the latter case it was carte blanche for spivs, the results of are now overtly obvious, though enough honest citizens warned of it at the time and since. So the law will not change until enough citizens and politicians are persuaded the present law is bad. The main point of this opinion is that professional football cannot escape this linkage of law and morals. In football’s case the problem is deepened by huge amounts of money flowing through the modern game. Inevitably, our present body of laws is a direct expression of the society we live in, of Milton Friedman’s infamous and now thoroughly discredited Chicago School economics and the outdated nonsense of Thomas Malthus, to say nothing of the sheer lunacy of Ayn Rand (It’s worth noting the last chairman of the Yank Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan, was a life time Rand “Objectivist.” Which is one strand worth exploring if you are trying to work out how the most recent collapse of the banking system happened). Thus, one cannot be considered without the other. Of course it is not merely a simplistic interpretation of right and wrong, because not everyone thinks the same way. It is a matter of what can be agreed upon, of consensus. Nobody I know wants the chaos of anarchy. Where football is concerned there is the added danger of a notorious and dangerously thin dividing line between common sense, anarchic fanaticism and chauvinism. 4. A Response. “O
wavering and new fangled multitude! Is it not a wonder to consider the
inconstant mutability of this uncertain
world! The common people always desire alterations and novelties of
things, simply for the strangeness of the case;
which afterwards gives them small profit and commodity.” Assuming my last observation to be true, if matters are to be set right the fans would need to form a reliable organisation with clear objectives. Without this combination there can be no meaningful attempt to change the law. The popularity of football is such that even the most reactionary European politicians would be unable to withstand a determined democratic consensual assault. But this has its difficulties, as the following two paragraphs describe. One of the most consistent and articulate opponents of the current football set-up is David Conn, a first rate football author and journalist who I met but once a few years ago. He wrote some excellent books on the condition of the British game. We met at his invitation to be part of the audience at a live BBC Radio Five broadcast from Crewe Alexandra Football Club. I had reviewed some of his work on this website (see here) and unknown to me he had read my opinions. I was as interested to meet him as he was to make the invitation. The programme topic was, or was supposed to be, the present condition of football and its future. The discussion was conducted by the programme producer and a panel consisting of David Conn, Pat Nevin and David Bernstein. The programme was often lively but veered off into factional club interests that had little to do with the general good of the game. In particular the Manchester United contingent managed to sound like they want more, though for the moment they have everything. One Arsenal fan even said administrators of the English game could learn great constructive things from Italy and Germany, an observation so absurd I finally came into the discussion. I said then, and I restate it here, we have next to nothing to learn from either country except maybe the German ticket price structure. In Italy’s case the fabric of their game is so rotten with corruption, the spectacle so pedestrian and false, we would be better off abandoning the game altogether than to follow their “example.” Which is not to say, to put it mildly, that the English game does not have severe problems. In fact football troubles are world-wide with different emphases in each country. In Britain’s case legal reform can only happen via the European and British Parliaments and UEFA. Anything else is merely short term and stop gap. Ultimately it would require too the endorsement of FIFA. The central strategic problem is an uneasy mix of political and popular cultures throughout the European continent. As I have illustrated, the game is and always has been a mirror of its time. So given our right-wing society it is obvious there would be considerable dispute with the random suggestions I make later in this opinion. However, this will not last for ever. It only seems like it. Best get ready for an inevitable swing of the political and social pendulum away from the insidious affects of the last thirty years. Now, arguing morals and ethics has always been a fraught philosophical proposition. It gets even more tangled when you attempt to frame it in legislation. Life never has been and never will be just black and white. It gets even trickier when you attempt to apply it to something as pointless as the game of football. As all sensible supporters know, the game is shot through with myth, self-deception, financial opportunism and crookedness, propaganda, tribalism and even psychological and physical brutality. Nobody is completely free of this, including – in the latter case, especially – the fans. Nor does the game exist in a cultural vacuum. Even now it bears a vague outline of its Victorian and Edwardian religious and social roots. So when you attempt to apply moral and ethical arguments you have to take all of this into account. It isn’t easy. The temptation is to reduce it to simplistic solutions and responses that amount to a sticking plaster over a sabre slash. In which case all you get is an infected wound that never heals. Therefore, if you are going to get reasonably serious you have to consider as many relevant aspects as possible. Acknowledging current realities is vital. Mere malcontentment is useless. So is trivial, mindless agitation. So are mere foul-mouthed personal attacks and quasi-macho posturing which amount to little more than an expression of the mentality of those who make them. Mostly, this sets back any realistic hope of reform. Responsible wielders of power aren’t going to pay any attention whatever to a gang of ale house drunks. As a good example, when Manchester United fans won their fight to prevent Rupert Murdoch’s proposed take over of their club they did so on the legal grounds of media/club monopoly control, not because he is a much loathed right-wing opportunist megalomaniac. When the Glazers took over the club there could be no such legal consideration and it went through despite a lot of emotional opposition and even, incredibly, death threats. The Glazers’ bid operated according to law. Murdoch’s bid didn’t. The government upheld the law. The Glazers won. They still own the club. However, this was nothing new where United were concerned. In 1980 Granada TV ran a “World In Action” documentary titled, “The Man Who Bought United,” concerning (amongst other things) the shares buying methods of then Manchester United owner Louis Edwards. Edwards died within weeks and control passed to his son Malcolm, who eventually sold to the Glazers after a short lived farcical tryst in 1989 with an Isle of Man spiv named Ken Knighton. In fact the only recent major casualty of a football “exposé” was Arsenal manager George Graham in 1995. Since then there have been many allegations but not one nailed-on, proven case of corruption. The Football Association has, of course, done nothing. Is there not an important strategic lesson in this for the fans, one that for the moment is blinded by the probability that the Glazer “winners” are little better than the Murdoch and Knighton “losers,” that legality matters and should be learned and used? And are either of them any better than the Edwards family who owned the club in an earlier era? Once you clear away the argumentative debris the fact is United still got sold to a money-making company that bought it with finance from club revenues. This is the method adopted by all current club owners including Everton’s. Ultimately this process takes money out of the game whoever is involved. “Investment” doesn’t enter into it except where it boosts shares “values” and therefore resale and profits prospects. Ultimately even “investment” comes from club revenues. That is, once again, what the fans pay out. There is no such thing as a free lunch, no such thing as a Fairy Godfather or Godmother. In every case it is club revenues that pay back the borrowings all owners take out to finance their purchase of the club. It is the clearest possible example of “Gordon Gekko’s” illusion made real, the rabbit out of the hat. In this process genuine love of football and uncomplicated loyalty, its TRUE value (and impossible to calculate), is almost nowhere in sight. It is profiteering that has nothing to do with economic efficiency. In the lower regions there is relatively little money to be made through increased shares values and that is why fans-controlled football trusts have managed to get a foothold there and not among the so-called “big” clubs. At the time of writing over half of the Football League clubs have been in administration in the last twenty years. Even then there are still occasional opportunities for spivs (euphemistically called “entrepreneurs” and “business men”) to make money from land deals where a club is sitting on a potentially valuable site. As still other examples, in York City’s, Brighton’s and Wrexham’s cases this almost brought about the extinction of the club. Only their fans’ enthusiasm and commitment kept them alive and kicking. There are plenty of other examples. If you want to change all this you have to change the law, not merely change owners. Anything else is mere tinkering, including the affect of an incoming billionaire. It is the system that has to go, and the sooner the better. In present circumstances the overall affect of ownership change is usually peripheral to the game even if it brings "success" to an individual club. You could fairly liken it to a change of prison governor: he might improve the food and conditions and thereby prevent riots but the inmates are still locked up. That is the administrative position of modern football. It is locked in by national and European legislation. But before attempting change it would be essential to ready yourself for the inevitable counter-argument of “free markets” and all the other lying nonsense that has disfigured our society for the last generation. What greater example could there be of this institutional corruption than the banking disaster that now threatens another Great Depression? 5. A Few Random Suggestions. “We
shall not cease from exploration In attempting change it would be necessary to take a long term view. There can be no overnight revolution, no economic miracle, no opportunity for amateur dramatics, no place for self-styled footy Ché Guevaras. It would take a long time and a lot of hard, tedious and thankless organisational effort from a lot of dedicated intelligent people. There would be mistakes along the way, some of them serious. That is the way of democratic consensus. All of which goes against the self-delusion and instant gratification that has always bedevilled the game. And once change was made it would be necessary to keep a constant lookout to avoid a return of the horror we now endure. As the tired but true cliché goes, the price of freedom is constant vigilance. Let that slip and we would be back to square one as quickly as the formation of the much despised Premier League in 1992. Given free rein supporters would probably provide many ingenious ideas for change. But this is not enough. In forming a consensus the behavioural requirements would be for patience, discipline and goodwill, not virtues one identifies with footy fans en masse. Bringing them together would be difficult, though far from impossible. Here is one suggested outline description of one possibility for reforming the game: 1. Fans organise themselves into an articulate and determined movement for change. They evolve their own manifesto for owning and administering the game. (The overall aim is to achieve critical mass, which is no easy target.) 2. British fans make Europe-wide contacts with supporters in other countries to encourage discussion and support. If possible, form a Europe-wide organization. 3. The manifesto is presented in Britain to all national and Euro MPs. The argument would be pressed until it is accepted as national policy by all major parties. 4. The argument then transfers to the European Parliament. Once the argument is accepted, empowering legislation is required in European law. 5.
Empowering legislation would have to state that all professional and
amateur sports are an exception to European and national laws. Otherwise
it would fall at the first legal challenge. This would state: 6. Set a realistic timetable for controlled transition to the new trusts. 7.
Compensation to previous owners and shareholders only in the case of
proven Now, of course, the above crude outline lacks any detail and has many pitfalls. I do not pretend otherwise. It is intended purely as a very broad description. But I believe all of the necessary infrastructure could be put in place after sensible debate within a defined timetable. The biggest obstacles would be the resistance of reactionary politicians of all parties, established vested financial interests, and a bought-and-paid-for media. Once that was overcome the REALLY hard day-to-day work would begin in earnest – hammering out workable administrative details. There are no short cuts for this and no easy decisions. However, if a few Premier League self-appointed barons could do it in 1992, so could enlightened and focused fans do it in the future. After a certain point all that is required is solidarity, determination, self-confidence and staying power. Current self-appointed barons have no monopoly of cleverness, intellect or ability. At the moment they are granted almost exclusive access to adequate capital and that is their main advantage……and why no single “big” club could operate alone as a trust. In such circumstances the trust would be isolated and then annihilated by the system, as the Jack Walker Trustees have discovered at Blackburn (see below). Other random suggestions are: ·
Disband the Premier League and restore a unified Football League. Reform
it as five divisions with the fifth division on a regional basis and
some clubs as part timers if they could make it work. What are the chances of any of this happening? In the present socio-economic climate I would pitch them somewhere between nil and zero. But you never know. There was a time when Nye Bevan was told it would be impossible to introduce and maintain a National Health Service. To our immeasurable benefit, Nye was right. (Try to imagine looking after yours and your family’s health in the horror that is the pay-up-or-die American “health” industry.) It should be noted also that the BBC is run as a trust and is generally regarded as one of the best and most successful organisations of its kind in the world. Both of these examples are of course subject to intense propaganda assault by right-wing owned mainstream media – which is virtually all of it. You have to be ready for the counter-attack when it comes. 6. Ownership. “GORDON GEKKO: It’s all about bucks, kid. The rest is conversation……..It’s not a question of ‘enough’, pal. It’s a zero sum game……..Money itself isn’t lost or made, it’s simply transferred from one perception to another……This painting here, I bought it ten years ago for sixty thousand dollars. I could sell it today for six hundred thousand. The illusion has become real. And the more real it becomes the more desperate they want it. Capitalism at its finest. BUD FOX: How much is enough, Gordon? GEKKO: The richest one per cent of this country owns half our country’s wealth, five trillion dollars. One third of that comes from hard work. Two thirds comes from inheritance, interest on interest accumulating on widows’ idiot sons – and what I do, stock and real estate speculation. It’s bullshit. You got ninety per cent of the American public out there with little or no nett worth. I create nothing. I OWN. We make the rules, pal. The news, war, peace, famine, upheaval, the price of paper clips. We pick that rabbit out of the hat while everybody else out there wonders how the hell we did it. Now, you’re not naïve enough to think we’re living in a democracy are you, Buddy? It’s the free market and you’re part of it. Yeah, you got that killer instinct. Stick around, pal. I still got a lot to teach you. FOX:
Obviously.” Virtually everything revolves around the club ownership issue. There are good arguments that foreign ownership should be halted or reversed altogether. But all too often fans get caught in a welter of hypocrisy, mere self-righteousness, cynicism and confusion. Clear thinking is required. Above all, it needs to be understood that decision-making in any system inevitably revolves around a few people. It is impossible to discuss and agree every single item of club business or matters would quickly grind to a halt in a welter of factions and bitchiness. Sometimes consensus is bypassed even in supposedly democratic government. To illustrate, a story is told about a disagreement in Abraham Lincoln’s cabinet during the American Civil War. This found Lincoln’s opinion opposed by the rest. Lincoln called for a vote and announced the result, “One aye, seven nays……… The ayes have it.” He got away with it too, which is fortunate for American history. But it is a very thin line to walk. This is why individual powers should be carefully defined. At the time of writing the following Premier League clubs are wholly or partially foreign-owned: Arsenal, Aston Villa, Chelsea, Fulham, Liverpool, Manchester City, Manchester United, Portsmouth, Sunderland and West Ham – Total 10. The following are majority British owned: Everton, Blackburn Rovers, Bolton Wanderers, Hull City, Newcastle United, Middlesbrough, Stoke City, Tottenham Hotspur, West Bromwich Albion and Wigan Athletic – Total 10. So half our “big clubs” are now in the hands of distant owners. The likelihood is that this proportion will increase and will include Everton Football Club whether we like it or not. Ironically, Manchester City are now touted as “The Richest Club In The World,” having been bought by yet more Gulf Arabs from a former Thai prime minister who is now a convicted felon in his home country but living in Britain. In London, even Queens Park Rangers (in administration in 2001) was bought by a group of shady Italian and Indian characters plus F1 owner Bernie Ecclestone, none of which has brought them any “success.” Scarcely a day passes without a takeover rumour concerning every club except Chelsea and Manchester United. So is foreign ownership a bad thing? Is it REALLY any different to the home grown variety? What is the difference between the rich British Moores family owning Everton and Liverpool, the rich British Edwards family owning Manchester United, and the rich Russian Roman Abramovich owning Chelsea, the rich American Glazers Manchester United and the rich Americans Hicks and Gillett owning Liverpool? After all, the Moores family walked away from both Merseyside clubs with a tidy profit and no discernible inherited advantage to the clubs. Even now, John Moores’ nephew Lord Grantchester refuses to invest in anything more than a medium shareholding. Nor did the Moores family, contrary to popular belief, provide any significant money to either club: they merely underwrote debts. All the debts were paid back from club revenues, not by the Moores. Everton and Liverpool fans paid for everything. To my knowledge the only English owners who left tangible financial gifts to their clubs were Jack Walker of Blackburn Rovers and Jack Hayward at Wolverhampton Wanderers. Walker bought the club in 1991 and oversaw one championship and a relegation before he died in 2000. He also left the club in the hands of the Jack Walker Trustees, but they now seek to sell it via Rothschilds and this year alone have held talks with three interested parties. Others who have tried to deal in a similar way to Walker and Hayward include Lionel Pickering at Derby County, Steve Gibson at Middlesbrough and Dave Whelan at Wigan Athletic. After seventeen years of ownership and pumping in millions of his own money, Hayward sold the club in 2007 for £10 to a Merseyside property developer, Steve Morgan, who had previously tried to buy Liverpool from David Moores by creating mayhem at annual general meetings. Early this year Wigan were linked, as were Everton, to a possible sale to Lakshmi Mittal, one of the Indian owners of QPR. Plainly, British owners are in almost headlong retreat from the game. A less charitable view is that they are merely cashing in. But there IS a significant difference. It is this: In former times there wasn’t much to gain from owning a club or being a director. Individuals got into it mainly for local status. Hardly any club made a profit – usually miniscule even then – and those that did almost always ploughed it straight back into the club. Dividends were seldom posted. Occasionally directors’ businesses might benefit slightly from the aura of it but by and large few fans paid much attention to boardroom activities. However, the arrival of John Moores at Everton in 1960 changed fans’ perceptions. His club ambitions and intentions were clear from the outset, though he eschewed any wider role in the sport and seemingly had no intention of personal profit. It is fair to say his single minded assault was the first attempt to blow away the conservative Victorian cobwebs that clung to the game even into the 1950s. Others followed. Looking back, it seems entirely appropriate that Moores bought Everton at the start of a decade that promised so much change. However, despite the fuss and feathers of the sixties the mildly altruistic nature of club ownership remained largely unchanged until 1992. Matters began to alter when the country swung sharply to the right in 1980 and eventually everything was put up for grabs, including football. This quickly spread across Western Europe and, after the fall of the old Soviet Empire, to the East. Since then ownership of the “big” clubs has become a profiteering activity in which the main ownership interest is in how to increase the resale value. Home grown British owners might have more genuine interest and loyalty to their club but in the present culture their primary target is always to make a profit. It cannot be otherwise in a one-dimensional capitalist system. The class-conscious and partly religion-based Victorian/Edwardian consensus that ruled the professional game from its inception is long dead and buried by the Gordon Gekko and Rupert Murdoch mentality. The consequences are all around you. If present patterns continue and you wish to see a likely sports future, I suggest you watch a 1975 film called “Rollerball,” directed by Norman Jewison, starring James Caan. It derived from a 1973 short story by William Harrison. Interestingly, perhaps with prescience, the controlling corporation in the story is a Texas energy company (Enron, anybody?) Given the era we are living through a weak 2002 remake naturally emphasised the spectacle of organised violence at the expense of social and political issues. It is a bleak vision. But it is not yet settled. The argument is not lost, only badly dented. Recent world wide economic events demonstrate why. 7. Summary. “You
see things, and you say ‘Why?’ But I dream things that never were, and
say ‘Why not?’ ” Nothing in human affairs is inevitable except death. Life is what we as a society and as individuals are willing to make of it. But the sports suggestions described above can only develop if fans want them. The same applies to any other suggestion. In the end the future of the game really is in their hands. Sooner or later they will have to decide if professional football is worth having or not. If yes, in what form. Ultimately the argument revolves around how much control the fans want to exercise in day-to-day running of a sports club’s affairs, how they do it, and what they expect from the spectacle. Otherwise matters will be left to what is euphemistically called “the free markets” and “the price mechanism,” both of which are lexical frauds in a rigged system. Moreover, they don’t work, as present circumstances have illustrated all too well. They encourage monopoly, not fair athletic competition. “Market” might sound a nice homely expression redolent of canopied barrows in the street but it is actually a closed circle of opportunists and cheap spivs, just as the stock “exchange” is nothing but a casino for the deluded. What seems clear is that it is not wanted by a majority of fans at all levels of the game, though I readily concede I do not have any empirical evidence to prove this. I have only my own contact with other fans around the country and other anecdotal evidence. However, even in its primitive form the British professional game was never the pristine holy virgin some like to pretend, though we appear to have avoided most of the extreme precedents elsewhere. The British game has always been a cartel in one form or another. The Football League was once dubbed, “The Old Pals Act.” The truth is it was always bedevilled by small-time crooks. Its history is littered with examples of player dishonesty and administrative corruption. Only the scale has varied. What matters is how the system is made more honest and how quickly it responds to breaches of conduct and the law. At the time of writing the Football Association is regarded with derision by almost all fans I meet. Few think the present administrators have either the will or the talent to make necessary changes even when they are advised by consultants or independent inquiries. Now, it wouldn’t do to ignore a proper sense of perspective. All professional sports have developed enormously over the last century. Football in particular has grown to such socio-economic dimensions it cannot be ignored. Many individuals make an honest living out of it and their rights cannot simply be walked on. Fans are notoriously conservative (even now, after all the horrors, there are some who, incredibly, support the return of standing terraces). This combination is what forms the major obstacle to consensus. Add in vested interests of all kinds and the task begins to assume gargantuan proportions. Equally, it wouldn’t be sensible to ignore improvements in the game as a ninety-minute spectacle. The players have never been fitter, the game never more open, the level of skill never higher. Few who lived through it will forget the awful defensiveness and constant offside trap of the 1970s and 80s. However, none of the improvements have anything to do with the formation of the Premier League and its administrative set-up. These improvements evolved because fans had had enough of the then spectacle, just as they had enough of primitive ground conditions and organised thuggery. New stadia were built as a result of legislation in the wake of tragedy, not because of the existence of the Premier League. The same applies to control and shepherding of away fans, which now amounts to totalitarian policing – but why did decent fans stand by and let it get to that stage? Still, change is not impossible in even the most conservative of sports. For example, at one time the idea of open professionalism in Rugby Union was considered heresy. Yet it happened overnight in 1995. Up to that moment the game had existed for many years in the total hypocrisy of “shamateurism,” which was yet another euphemism for a class-riddled game played largely by public school boys and governed by old boys from the same roots. Players and others were paid through “expenses.” In the end the Rugby Union system collapsed of its own corrupt absurdity. Eventually reality broke through the self-delusion and hypocrisy. Professional football, indeed all sport, now face a similar watershed, though for the opposite reason. This time the question is not, “How much money?” but, “How much altruism and fairness?” I have suggested the game – indeed all sport – be formed into trusts. But this does not guarantee sport would be forever free of opportunists or criminal influences. One adverse example from a much more important dispute came when, post-Second World War, some American universities in the Deep South were formed into private trusts to try to prevent desegregation. They failed because of Federal government legislation supported by an overwhelming majority of the country. Legalised apartheid no longer exists in the United States, north or south. The lesson, then, is maverick factions will always exist, at best only to be awkward, at worst to overturn honest consensus. This is why trust constitutions would have to be framed to limit frivolous actions as well as provide checks and balances in the use of club powers. Meantime, the harsh reality is that every club has to exist within the present much despised system. The Leeds United saga demonstrated just how badly fortunes can deteriorate when you get it wrong. So did Manchester City’s experience – but does their recent takeover now make everything acceptable? If Leeds had been bought by a richer organisation would that have made the situation satisfactory? The answer, surely, is a resounding no. So if we defeat Middlesbrough next Sunday and are bought out by richer men than the current owners the following Wednesday would that make everything okay? If we then went on to, say, win the FA Cup and get into the top four in the League would that right all the organisational wrongs in football? The answer, equally surely, is an even more resounding no. There is much to do and we haven’t even started. Your call. (12/11/08) Other Stuff From M.B.E. Fanzine Writer Of The Year 2008
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