Case for a regulator: Step One: Conflate Conservative Crouch to Chairman Mao
Fair Game’s Matt Riley examines the sappers sent out by the Premier League
IN THIS febrile recoil by members of the Premier League to the Crouch report, it is easy to overlook how one of their central contentions is just plain wrong. So intoxicated are they with pursuing Mark Twain’s ironic advice that they have highlighted the unsustainability of their argument. To conflate exponential financial strength with the need to avoid even the lightest touch of regulation speaks more about the people saying it than Crouch and her report.
The Premier League have sent out the sappers of Villa, West Ham and Palace to test the strength of Crouch’s foundations while Richard Masters plays a straight bat by suggesting he is ‘open to an independent regulation’ to buy time before he gets the scouting reports from his triumvirate of vanguard clubs. While Leeds Chief Executive Angus Kinnear sputters out how Crouch is creating “Maoist collective agriculturalism” he really should have listened to the editor in his head. Not only is the comparison fetid, but to adopt a teenage response to any form of control; (you won’t give me an allowance? You are such a fascist) shows how much his buttons have been pushed, his nerves pinched. When my local, Trust own club holds a fifty/fifty raffle the winner is warmly invited to give back ten per cent of the winnings to help run the club. Does this signal a Great Leap Forward by Exeter City that will free us all from the capitalist pig-dogs seeking world domination? Or will it support its local outreach programme and help finance its academy system?
Whilst the big dogs in the Premier League are diffidently paring their nails behind the scenes, they need to be careful not to overload their argument by putting too much focus on their weakness. Just because our Prime Minister can get away with it, does not mean it works outside a hermetically sealed world of Old Etonians. By shouting the loudest that your suicidal wages to income ratio is a unique selling point of the league and annual losses that would fund the NHS, they cannot pause for breath. If they do, fans and politicians have time to reflect on the madness that, just because you tell us the emperor has new clothes, as soon as we feel one step removed from your propaganda, we will see a man full of sound and fury but signalling nakedness. The line of logic is instructive. Tottenham’s £706 million debt is one of the smallest in the league, a figure released early to presumably justify little transfer action in January. Promoting the least bad as the best is the mindset of a delusional collective drunk on the fumes of their own egos.
We look proudly at our 33 Fair Game clubs and how they try to make a difference. Tranmere Rovers have hugely difficult financial decisions to make after a stand roof was blown off by Storm Arwen. The financial cloth will be cut accordingly and sacrifices will be made. Does this make Mark Palios and his board evil? Unfortunately, in the heady world of the Premier League billionaires, their answer will suggest that is one possibility…