Thetownend.com

http://uk.eurosport.yahoo.com/football/jim-white/article/14041/

Ime not keen on this fellow Gartside.

hes a cunt

yeah wanker

twohundredpercent have got a pretty good write-up entitled "Phil Gartside's plan to shaft English football":

http://www.twohundredpercent.net/?p=2769

Worryingly, he seems to be getting more traction this time round

If this tosser gets his way, rugby club chairmen everywhere will be rubbing their hands in excitement.

The cunt should be shot.

All of the above.

I remember Scally advocating the same kind of shit when Gillingscum reached the Championship, so just like them I just wish Bolton would hurry up & get fucking relegated back to Div Three/Four so he can Fuck Off

Remember, if this man gets his way he removes our 100/1 shot at getting top flight football down to no chance of ever getting top flight football.

If this man gets his way he'll kill English football as we know it.

Fucking deluded cunt. I don't think anyone higher up is stupid enough to let something like this happen, as anyone with more than a single braincell can see it's nothing but self serving bullshit.

Although saying that we all know people in positions of power are generally thick one eyed egotists, so perhaps there's enough stupidity to ensure a shit club like Bolton guarantee their safety for ever. I'd like to see Bolton going down sooner rather than later please.

Part of his idea is that he wants to even the playing field slightly across the top two divisions by spreading the huge scads of money that the PL get across PL 1 & 2. But the problem is he then wants to pull up the drawbridge after them. If it was adapted to have, say four divisions, of, ooh, perhaps 92 clubs, which shared the TV money out more equally across all four divisions, and maybe went back to the old idea of sharing gate receipts between both sides so the big clubs don't gain an unfair advantage from their larger grounds, but the smaller clubs have to benefit as well, that would really level the playing field. They could call it "The Football League".

I really don't see the distribution of TV money being a problem as there is more money than ever being paid for TV rights for the Football League and some of the Premier League money does filter down (through promotion and relegation, transfer fees etc).

The real problem is that far too many clubs spend money they don't have - through incompetence, through trying to compete with the big clubs and through trying to win promotion. Even worse is that everyone seems to accept massive losses at clubs without batting an eyelid.

Is it really acceptable for a club like Swindon to lose £2m a season?

If you stop clubs from spending money they don't have, wages and transfer fees will fall in to line with what clubs can actually afford. When the Football League clubs have sorted their act out with their finances, I reckon it would put them in a far stronger position to go cap in hand to the Premier League if necessary.

As regards Gartside's proposal; Celtic and Rangers will never play in the English league pyramid and promotion and relegation are here to stay. In short, he's got fuck all chance of getting the support he needs. Even if we were going to be one of the lucky clubs locked in to the Premier League and still say over my dead body and I'm pretty sure 99.99% of other fans would say the same.

Bolton losing 3-1.  Bottom 3 draws ever closer.  Gartside moves in to overdrive.

5-1 actually.

its 5-1 now. Beat me to it

Gartside is a self serving tosser of the highest order. He's obviously got short memories as less than 20 years ago they were in division 4 .

I wish Bolton to be relegated this season and next and then Gartside can then go and screw himself.

Right, that is the problem - the money is distributed in very top-heavy fashion so that teams that get promoted to the Prem or even the Championship often have to spend beyond their means to compete or resign themselves to being yo-yo clubs like West Brom. The massive financial gap between:
1) The European places vs the rest of the Premiership
2) The Premiership vs the Championship
3) The Championship vs League 1

are all substantial gulfs which are anti-competitive in terms of football as a sporting (rather than financial) competition.

Sadly, it seems he is gaining ground among chairman of similar clubs who are terrified of what happens if they fall out of the Prem or who currently worry about what would happen if they were promoted to it. The fall of Leeds, Norwich and Charlton has galvanised a lot of also-ran 1st/2nd tier clubs to say "This must never be allowed to happen to us". And it's what their chairmen (and the big clubs) think that will matter, not what we think.
Absolutely 100% agree with you. Sadly none of the people who'll be taking a decision on this give a flying fuck what fans think.

 I believe Gartside needs 14 votes to make this happen...with no mandate from anyone.

 Just look at the Prem table there are easily 13 clubs who could feasibly see themselves sliding down in the next few years, and probably only 7 who consider themselves fire proof, so it is likely to be close.

What is wrong with being like West Brom? If more clubs were like West Brom we wouldn't be in the mess we are at present. I don't have any facts but I've always had the impression that West Brom only spend what they can afford and are gradually building for the future. One day West Brom will break in to the Premier League for good and will be up there challenging for Europe.

Besides, what would be the point in more money going to the Football League clubs? They'd just all piss it up against the wall as they do at present. I think there is a far stronger argument for a bigger slice going to the FL if the clubs got their finances in order.

And another besides.... the difference in TV income between the top and bottom teams in the Premier League is only about £10m (maybe £20m at most) which is equal to buying one player and paying his wages for a season. The real difference for the big teams are all their other income streams - sponsorship, ticket sales, merchandise and so on and there's nothing you can do about redistributing that is there.

Sorry.

I dont know why, but that sentence made me burst out laughing.

Youve cheered me up no end :)

With regards to Celic and Rangers joing the prem, i thought Scotland wanted fuck all to do with England and wanted complete independance. Apart from the best bits, obviously.

You're not far out in the difference in TV money of £20m :

http://soccerlens.com/20072008-premier-league-tv-revenue/7415/

But since there is also prize money of £761k per place, it does mean the top team also getting £14.5m more than the bottom team :

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/leagues/premierleague/5361321/Premier-League-The-money-table.html

And when you consider that the 'top 4' also get millions from the Chumpions League, which is estimated to be £20m each (minimum), if you add all that together, the top team would get about £55m extra...and that doesn't take into consideration of off field money.

Nothing wrong whatever in being like West Brom and I totally agree that more clubs should follow their lead. I was just saying that that's why clubs overspend - because they find themselves in a league on (sporting) merit, then find they can't compete financially.

Again, I wouldn't disagree. Although I don't think FL clubs have a monopoly on pissing vast scads of money up the wall - Newcastle's excesses in the Prem spring to mind and this season to take just one example, Hull have a £40m wage bill.

It's not so much I'd like to see more money going to FL clubs as I'd like to see the massive differential between the Leagues reduced. Personally, I think there's far too much money in the game and it's not been to the benefit of the game itself at all - some players, their braindead hangers-on and parasite agents have done very nicely out of it.

As summerof69 said below, actually the differential is far greater than that. And in any case, I was more focused on the differential between Prem->Championship->League One. Which is what clubs break themselves on.
I don't want to redistribute the money, so much as reduce the vast inequalities which artificially distort what should be a sporting competition. And has done much to ruin the modern game.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/eng_prem/8353937.stm

Apparently the plans are to be discussed on Thursday and now say; a two tier Premier League with between 36 and 40 teams, promotion and relegation to the Football League (no mention of conditions) and Celtic and Rangers to go straight in to Premier League 2.

Forgetting the promotion / relegation issue for the moment, the plans would result in between 4 and 10 teams being forced out of the Football League in to the Conference. Why should teams lose their place just so Premier League teams can make more money and so two Scottish teams can join our league pyramid? How much compensation would the Premier League pay out to clubs affected by the change (including those relegated as all leagues are re-arranged)?

Celtic and Rangers joining our league is a joke but if by some miracle it does happen, why shouldn't they enter the pyramid at non-league level the same as every other club has to?

Worrying thing here is all the press comment relates to the headline catching issue of the Old Firm moving to the English league.  The restricted promotion/relegation issue between the EPL 2 and what would be left of the Football League is in danger of getting in through the back door and, let's face it, this is what is motivating Gartside.  As Bolton chairman, he is doing his level best to ensure that Bolton never face the prospect of 3rd tier football.  The rest is window dressing.  He is shafting the lower leagues and hoping everyone will look the other way while he does it.

As Ardiles says, the BBC report may not mention the conditions around promotion/relegation but they are there in the proposal, and basically designed to restrict entry to the top two tiers to "big clubs". If these proposals go through they may as well abandon all pretence at a league structure based on sporting competition. Instead the PL chairmen can all sit down at the start of each season and compare balance sheets and just base the League table on that.

If Bolton weren't so shit then this cunt wouldnt even thought of the idea.

If it ever happens, this wanker will have ruined football and i hope he carks it.

If it does come to a restriction on the ability of lower league clubs to win promotion, I could see the government getting involved here.  I don't think there will be many people prepared to sit by and watch the fabric of the most popular sport in the country dismantled for the benefit of Bolton Wanderers Football Club.

Sadly I don't think many people will notice - the armchair fans and media will all be busy getting themselves over-excited by the "Scottish distraction". And it's not just Bolton - all the mid-tier Prem clubs and "Big Championship clubs" chairmen will be queuing up to justify this if they think it'll save them from following Leeds, Southampton, Norwich down to a place they and most of the media seem to think they should never have ended up. Except for the small matter of not having got the results good enough to keep them up of course

Don't UEFA and FIFA really frown upon governments getting involved in the running of sport leagues? I thought greece got in trouble for something like that a few years ago?

Yes, but that was because the Greek government was trying to gerrymander the actual running of the Greek FA IIRC. And given that FIFA/UEFA look even more askance at the Prem than we do, they may well be inclined to regard any such "Oi, Gartside, Nooooooo!" intervention by the government as being in the better interests of the game. Just don't see any government having the bollocks to do it.

Anyone have an idea of what Gartside's criteria are for promotion to the second tier are?  Would they be insisting on a minimum average attendance the previous season, for example?  Just wondering how high these hurdles are going to be set.

As pauld said, its a matter of degrees. FIFA have suspended numerous national FA's due to too much involvement from their government - a government enforcing its own people in to positions of power is normally an instant suspension for example and FIFA don't fuck about with it either.

To be fair to FIFA I don't think they get anywhere near enough credit for keeping politics out of football. If we had a repeat in football of the Zimbabwe cricket debacle with the level of interference from our government in it, I reckon we'd be suspended from international football on the spot. Politics have no place in sport but unfortunately FIFA are about the only governing body that enforce it.

But a few statements and gentle persuasion from our government on this subject wouldn't even register at FIFA.

Don't forget though Paul, there's more chairman outside the prem and ccc, than in it. There's also shit loads of fans. I mean you remove the carrot from in front of these clubs and i think they'll be absolute fucking outrage. I expect it will become a very, very, very long drawn out debate, which will take years to conclude and will perhaps eventually be concluded with nothing changing.

The government might be a bunch of overpaid under braincelled pricks, but even they can see that if these clubs are scared of losing money, don't fucking spend it. I mean plenty of clubs do fine without trying to act like the new billionaire boys club.

I hope Gartside gets stabbed.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2009/nov/06/premier-league-two-division-gartside
Or "Fuck off Rochdale", in other words

I agree that if this happens football is fucked.


I agree again and also what about the teams that dont get into Pl1 and 2 then surley they have no more targets to aim for - no more dreams of premiership football.

On the plus side, Franchise FC would be completely ####ed.  Winkleman would disappear in a puff of smoke faster than you could stay 'Asda'.

Having rules to ensure a club is financially sound is fine with me. But obviously it would need to apply to current Premier League clubs as well which would probably be an issue for a number of them, including Bolton no doubt.

I don't see that size has any relevance though, but having ground requirements would be fine as long as it is done to encourage improvement rather than blocking entrance.

The whole purpose of Gartside's proposals is to ensure the drawbridge stays shut. This would be drafted so as to sound reasonable but actually be wholly about blocking entrance

Unfortunately, Gartside could think Wankleman as a 'visionary' (who else could steal a football league club from a community') as they've got a new 25k stadium, even though it's a soulless bowl. He'll rather have them in than Blackpool, Scunny, Plymuff , Peterborough and anyone else with a 'substandard' ground.

It's all pretty inevitable in the long run. In a way it would be nice that there's a Gartside (as in someone to blame) and a restructuring event to take our arguments out on. In the long term I can't see England supporting 92 professional league teams.

In a way, it's surprising how well the lower league clubs have survived the axing of shared gate receipts, the Premier League, the monopolization of sky tv and the continuingly growining gulf in income that it's brought along.

Maybe it's better that there are these blatant efforts to cut loose the lower leagues, the fact they come with a proposal means that it's something which clubs can fight against.

Leave football and it's current trends to it's own devices and we'll have the same result anyway, it will just be slow and painful with lots of clubs dying and nothing to unite the ones which gradually drop off the ladder - until it's too late anyway.

Look at the Prem, it's been the same top 4 for about what, 5 years now? And that was only Everton finishing above Liverpool because they'd made a big effort to win the Champions League.

That's going to spread down the leagues as the financial gaps get bigger. It's rare now that you get a team promoted to the prem really making an effort for anything special, obviously because the top4 is closed. That will filter down, Gartside or not. I bet if you do a graph of League One promotion teams finishes in their first season in the chapionship (or from div 2 to div 1, maybe go back to div 3 to div 2), that you'll see a fairly healthy average dip.

Or maybe not.

Who knows, that all seems a bit pessimistic. Apart from maybe that with proposal's like this there's a chance for fans to be united. Apart from Franchise of course, they can fuck off.

I've done the big rambling drinking think again haven't I?

I just don't agree that the English game is as fucked up as most people seem to think it is, with regards the top 4 clubs and the alleged financial gulfs (which make competing impossible).

Look at Spurs for example. They're currently 4th in the Premier League, have just reported a £33m profit, have spent a lot of money (which they can afford) on players and will soon be moving to a new and expensive stadium (again, which they can afford).

You can look at other clubs as well; Aston Villa and Everton being excellent examples.

I've said it before but I'll say it again in case anyone missed it. The biggest problem with the English game is far too many clubs spending money which they don't have and this needs to be addressed before we even think about other changes related to finances.

On the Old Firm issue, as well as stopping them joining, can we take it one step further and throw out Cardiff and Swansea (go on then, and Wrexham).

Spurs are a really bad example in that they're far from typical - it's no coincidence that as well as the financial success you cite, they're also one of the most expensive clubs in the country to watch. They've racked their prices right up but they can get away with it in a way that, say, Blackburn, Bolton, Charlton (when they were in the top flight) and we (if we were ever to get there) simply wouldn't get away with. Because they're a "glamorous" and "fashionable" club who can afford to price out their old fans because they know they'll pick up better heeled replacements from the "new fans" in what is a very affluent catchment area.

Villa are being bankrolled by a billionaire sugar daddy and Everton are more or less bust - Kenwright's desparate to get out, he's on record as saying as a mere multi-millionaire he just can't compete with the billionaires.

In any case you're tilting at the wrong windmill really - where Gartside's proposals are aimed at and what I think most of us are concerned about is the massive gulf between the Premiership and the Football League. Which is causing clubs to break themselves to get up or to stay up. There's a reason why the pundits soil themselves every May about the Championship play-off final - "The richest single game in world sport" - worth £60m to the club that wins it, we're constantly told. But that huge amount needs to be committed in the first season almost entirely into the playing squad. And still newly promoted clubs struggle to attract the kinds of players that will allow them to compete. Why would the kind of average to middling player that fills out most Premiership squads go to newly promoted and widely reckoned to be likely to struggle Burnley for example, when he can rake in 30-40 grand a week at Bolton? Who'll spend that kind of money on frankly fairly mediocre players because they're shit scared of going down. Because if you remove that 30-40m golden teat, then all of a sudden they've got a squad of overpaid mediocrities on massive salaries with long contracts (and they all do have long contracts because otherwise you can't compete to attract even the mediocre players). And if you don't go straight back up in the first season, it could break you completely.

And the Brizzles. They're pretty much Welsh

This cunt needs shooting.Would love Bolton to go down this season now,you watch the attendance drop at the reebok if they do.

Most of the papers seem to reckon the proposal will be chucked out today anyway. Tbh, I'm increasingly coming to the idea that Gartside set this up as a straw man anyway, rather than seriously expecting it to get adopted. Certainly that'd apply to the Rangers/Celtic thing which was only ever in there to draw attention away from the restricted (or none in the original) promotion aspect of his proposals.

But none of that alters the core fact - DRS is right and we should get arriba to cut him.

It has been thrown out so the BBC site says on the breaking news bit at the top, no big suprise, but it will rear it's ugly head again in the future i'm sure.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/eng_prem/8353937.stm

So like I said, use the clearly unacceptable Celtic/Rangers thing as a straw man so you can slide your far more damaging "pull up the drawbridge" proposals in under the radar. I guess they didn't even discuss throwing Bristols City/Rovers out of the League because they're Welsh?

A bit like 'Game 39' !!

Until Bolton are relegated to the Championship I would imagine.

Hopefully in 6 months time...

The problem isn't the financial gap between the Premier League and Championship. The problem is that Championship clubs spend money they can't afford in an attempt to get promoted to the Premier League, and once there clubs spend money they can't afford in an attempt to stay in the Premier League. This is the first thing that needs to be sorted - stopping clubs from spending money they can't afford.

And if clubs stop competing on salaries with money they don't have, the massive salaries simply won't be there for the players and they'll either have to take what is on offer or fuck off out of the country. Salaries are highly inflated at present, solely due to clubs competing with each other, spending money they don't have and pushing salaries ever higher in the process.

I'd prefer us to stay in the 1st Division rather than spend money we don't have and the same applies if we get promoted to the Championship. If by some miracle we get promoted to the Premier League, I'd by far prefer it if we banked as much of the money as possible and built an even stronger squad for the Championship the following season after the inevitable relegation.

Early minutes released for the meeting have revealed the following.

'...resolved to abandon any plan to invite Rangers FC or Celtic FC to join the Premier League.

It was further resolved that Phil Gartside is a ####er.'

[OK.  I made that last bit up.]

This is the reason Rangers and Celtic are desperate to join the PL :

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/glasgow_and_west/8356651.stm

jonny, we're arguing the same thing from different ends:

1) There is a massive financial gap between the Premiership and the Championship
2) In order to compete, all but the top few teams need to massively overstretch themselves
3) They can choose not to overstretch themselves but if they do so, they must also accept they likely will not be able to compete

As I've said before I agree with you that clubs shouldn't gamble with their futures by paying out the stupid wages, but many do so rather than not compete. Whether you blame the clubs for trying to compete (as you do) or the massive inbuilt financial distortion of the Premiership for making it impossible for them to do so without risking the club's future (as I do) is a bit chicken and egg really. Fact is, it's supposed to be a sporting competition and it isn't. The Premiership is ruining English football.

They're playing in the Scottish League so perhaps they should spend like it. They do not deserve to be in the PL and shouldn't be allowed in the PL.

If they can't sustain their current spending perhaps they should stop, er, spending?

I personally couldn't see them doing anything in the Premier League anyway. I think they'd struggle and sooner or later suffer the same plight albeit in the Championship.

Oh, and Gartside, what a total and utter cunt. I truly hope Bolton get relegated ASAP. Almost as much as i wanted Reading relegated when they were playing with the big boys.

here here

The other side to this will be the massive loss of revenue to the scottish leagues, without the big two advertising and TV revenue will be lower, and what about a chance for other SPL teams to cash in on the PL money?

I don't want any of them here, and no SPL fan should want them to leave behind a farcical league with an even lower standard.

I now want Bolton in the FA Cup 3rd round (assuming we get there !!) so we can give abuse to Gartside.

and we should throw rthe Scummers out of the league as well - doh!!!!

i always find it weird that the welsh fa are in charge of suspensions for the welsh clubs even though its an english league, wonder if they try and fiddle it sometimes?!

It has been done. What about matey boy who played for Cardiff in the FA Cup Final because his suspension was rescinded/reduced! (Can't remember who it was)

 Scummer Purse.

Don't forget the slap on the wrists the Welsh FA gave Cardiff when they beat Leeds about 7 years ago, when Sam Hammam did the 'Ayatollah' around the pitch.

After the Douglas fiasco we should insist on being governed by the Wiltshire FA.