Originally Posted by
Danstone
Football has been ruined completely by money and greed. I’m a Watford fan and we’ve had a little bit of success in recent years but I’d give that all up to return to the 80’s and 90’s where we had loyalty and owners that genuinely cared for the fans. When we were managed by Graham Taylor he made sure that the club had a connection with the fans and understood that a club has no soul without them. The players had to live near the town, they had to take part in community projects and they would eat and drink in the same places as the fans.
That has gone now. We have a team of players that are there for one thing only, money. When we were relegated last season our so called talisman Shrek, ten years at the club and bloody useless for the last two, couldn’t even wait until he’d left the pitch at Arsenal before doing a come and get me interview for Sky. We allegedly had senior players, who were responsible for our relegation, go on strike until they got their move away. We even had young players who had never played for the first team demanding moves rather than play Championship football! Owners and players don’t care for fans, it’s all about money.
This has been on the cards for a while and will be the final nail in the coffin for the beautiful game. Without that dream of climbing the ladder and qualifying for the biggest competition the smaller clubs will be asking whether it’s worthwhile continuing. If the Premier League is relegated to a second rate competition tv revenue will fall, and if revenue falls for the Premier League that will flow through to all competitions. Plenty of clubs in the pyramid are close to the wall now, any further reduction in income for them now and they will be gone. The owners of the big six, two of whom that are only a couple of injuries to key players away from being relegation fodder, do not understand the history of their teams, and even if they did they would not care. It’s all about money for them and they probably feel that the income from tv rights and overseas sales means that they can survive even if their domestic fans turn on them.
This has to be stopped, the teams have to be expelled from domestic competition and any players that take part have to be excluded from their national teams. Personally I’m not sure that FIFA, UEFA, The FA and the Premier League actually have the balls to stand up to them. Again that will be down to money, a Premier League with Man Utd reserves would still make the backers more money than a Premier League without them at all. I also don’t hold up much hope of the players standing up to the clubs if they can’t play international football. If anyone seriously believes that the likes of Raheem Sterling and Harry Kane wouldn’t renounce their citizenship and bow down and pledge allegiance to the flag of JP Morgan for an extra £100k per week they are living in cloud cuckoo-land. Greed and it’s disgusting.