Big on criticism… Liddle on advice
Fair Game’s Matt Riley takes a closer look at the view of Times’ columnist Rod Liddle
Rod Liddle’s click baiting headline in yesterday’s Sunday Times was clearly designed to get our blood boiling (tick) but it also raised some valid points. Despite needing a short sharp shock in the Crouch re-education camps for using the word ‘froideur’ in the first sentence, Liddle may not be the warmest Crouch acolyte but, like the legendary Derek Smalls of Spinal Tap, he has a different role to Crouch in the red corner and the Premier League behemoths in the blue:
“We’re very lucky in the band in that we have two visionaries, David and Nigel, they’re like poets, like Shelley and Byron. They’re two distinct types of visionaries, it’s like fire and ice, basically. I feel my role in the band is to be somewhere in the middle of that, kind of like lukewarm water.”
I agree that the ‘almost haves’ of Villa, West Ham and Palace have been sent out to read the “mood music” and his endorsement of Tracey’s personal and professional qualities is certainly something we at Fair Game support. However a ‘but’ always lurks with a warm handshake and no eye contact. The report “having many virtues” is my school maths’ report. My virtues were off-piste for a maths’ curriculum or any hope of exam success. Maybe I impressed the teacher with my punctuality. False equivalence is set up to be dismantled when Liddle reports that “everyone else has been clapping their hands”. If I get a costly but detailed MOT showing my car is unroadworthy I appreciate the discovery but don’t celebrate the cost it comes at.
Liddle is fully behind the abolition of parachute payments to stop the financial clown car Championship from catapulting any more custodians into oblivion and he raises an important point that some clubs may be actively gaming this system by allowing the yo-yo process to play out for their own financial benefit.
The independent regulator, a central plank of our Fair Game manifesto, is the pinch point that the Premier League lobbyists are also targetting. By painting the person yet to be appointed as a chinless mandarin, they create a narrative undermining the legitimacy of the idea rather than understanding that the right person in this role could command respect and a healthy self examination of finances. My choice is our advisor Kieran Maguire. Free from the fetid world of party politics and widely respected, football is DNA deep but he has a clear head to act. Questioning what a regulator would do is disingenuous by Liddle. It’s simple. Put in place a clear set of protocols for club management that are tiered, widely publicised and equitable rather than the ridiculous current situation of seventy seven different accountancy systems being used across the football leagues. For Liddle to suggest that an independent regulator would have strangled the Premier League at birth is an argument looking to start a fight in a phone box.
Questioning “how exactly is this regulator going to spend his time?” first assumes it will be a man and secondly, with so many clubs needing oversight, constant communication, advice, training and support it would fill the inbox of even the most organised regulator.
The shadow boards argument is a busted flush. Saying some people are against the Eddie Howe reign at Newcastle and conflating it with fans having veto powers in clubs suggests the opinion of that bloke at the end of the bar you studiously avoid is immediately acted on. Movement does not come from a minority (unless it is the Franchise League) and the remit of Crouch’s report for a shadow board is based more on preserving a club and community’s heritage rather than knee-jerk coach swapping. It’s also telling that Liddle’s source is that arena of the considered and logical response, a fan forum. As the great and often late David St Hubbins once said:
“I believe virtually everything I read, and I think that is what makes me more of a selective human than someone who doesn't believe anything.”