Press-ed back again

[chrisw1]

This is an excellent article Dave.

[walsall villain]

Spot on. And to think Chelsea were once skint playing to low crowds in an awful stadium. I know things change but at the moment it is hard to imagine how the the dominance of the chosen few will ever end. No wonder we take such pleasure from the times we beat them at Villa Park.

[silhillvilla]

Spot on. And to think Chelsea were once skint playing to low crowds in an awful stadium. I know things change but at the moment it is hard to imagine how the the dominance of the chosen few will ever end. No wonder we take such pleasure from the times we beat them at Villa Park.

Football is cyclical. Things will change. It's just a case of staying alive long enough to witness it.

[cheltenhamlion]

They have to pick from a 25 man squad now, fbriai.

The transfer record thing is an interesting comment Dave. None of the clubs you mentioned were particularly rich or successful.

Even with the advent of flogging a player to Spain for ridiculous money, how many clubs would ever be likely to be in a position to blow the 60m Man Ure did this summer on Di Maria?

The answer is only 2. One backed by Russian oil money and the other supported by a state.

Wolves had a local businessman as chairman when they signed Andy Gray.

Financial Fair Play my arse. Modern football can go and fuck itself.

[fbriai]

They have to pick from a 25 man squad now, fbriai.

Am I wrong in thinking that they don't count under-21 players in the 25, effectively increasing the squad size significantly, CL?

I would require the same squad to be used across all competitions, too. So you wouldn't get the likes of the Arsenal using the League Cup to give experience to their youth team.

[Dave]

Good article, Dave.

The ever-widening gap at the top of the Premier League is there for all to see and we all know it's down to the way the money is divided up.

Is it?

50% of the revenue is shared completely equally.
25% of it is prize money
25% is distributed based on how many live matches are televised.

It means that the club finishing last will make about 70% of the club finishing first. Which doesn't seem either a) particularly unfair on the club finishing last or b) the reason why Chelsea are so much better than Burnley.

[MONCABA]

Chelsea & Man city are owned by real life football manager gamers. The rest of us dont stand a chance unless we can find a cheat for the game.

[not3bad]

Chelsea & Man city are owned by real life football manager gamers. The rest of us dont stand a chance unless we can find a cheat for the game.

And with FFFP they've made sure they'll be the only players. Even if another team got a sugar daddy they'd be hamstrung by FFFP.  As has been said before "they've pulled up the drawbridge".

[frank]

Good article, Dave. When I heard their bench I just had to laugh. What chance could we possibly have? I couldn't see us scoring except from a corner or free-kick, and unfortunately Westwood's delivery was very poor. And yet...I wasn't all that discouraged. We were a bit unlucky with 2 of the goals when the ball fell favourably for Chelsea but we were never going to win against such a strong squad. They were man for man better; only Delph might have made their bench. You can't blame our players for that. As you say, it's a fact of life in the PL, sadly.

[dave.woodhall]

In part-reference to Dave, you could get six supporters of six from the Other 14 clubs and come up with a workable solution to increase competition. We've debated the loan system on here many times, you could share gate money with the away club, impose a salary cap. Something needs to happen.

[cheltenhamlion]

Count me in and on behalf of The Trust should such a thing happen.

[Villa in Denmark]

I know it may be sacriledge for some but it may be better for some local rivals to merge just to survive (not Villa of course) but wouldn't Walsall and Wolves be better off?
As for a super league, no way that Sky would allow that to happen.
I have noticed when commentators speak about our forward line they never seem to mention the fact that our two main strikers have been out of action for a long time.

It's been done over here in the 90's creating 3 of today's teams.

On Jutland, FC Midtjylland (FC Mid Jutland) have plodded by for most of the last few years enjoying some form of financial stability without ever causing the trophy engravers to bother looking up how these new fangled teams spell their names.
FCM have over the last couple of years built a half decent squad that has come close last year and currently lead the league (Thanks mainly to FCK doing their very best Man Utd impression), but all built on solid "rugged" football and half decent scouting.

On Zealand there's FC Nordsjælland and FC København.

For FCN you can pretty much cut and paste the FCM synopsis apart from landing a young coach, Kasper Hjulmand that took a half decent group of players and got them to over acheive for 3 years straight winning to Danish Cups and the League (as well as giving Jores Okore his chance )

Neither FC Midjylland or FV Nordsjælland really initially capitalised on the fan bases they should have had from merging two teams with distinct identities as that generation of fans were somewhat put off / disenfranchised by the mergers.

That leaves the bastard spawn of Scandinavia's Satan, the Chelsea of the Baltic.  Ladies and Gentlemen I give you FC København ( F&%/ng C%¤ts fra København as they're known round these parts).

A mutant club created by various money men purchasing two almost bankrupt middle of the road clubs from Copenhagen, and with one of them, the national stadium thrown in FOC, plus at the same time getting 3 other minor clubs from around Copenhagen to toady up (or in practice give up and go away.)  Add several million danish kroner at rate of roughly 10:1 to what other clubs could afford, add an income stream no-one else can get near to from staging 90% of Denmarks internationals, plus several big concerts each year, plus the stadium being used for other ad-hoc sporting events and you've got a recipe for financial doping on a scale that makes Man City and Chelsea look almost Corinthian. 

The only good bit has seen them become victims of their own business model, as they can't compete in the Champions League which has two knock on effects.  As soon as they get a half decent player he's gone (sound familiar?) and their arrogant twatish fans (see the Chelsea connection yet?) moan like hell about them losing games all the time.

This added to seriously floundering about for the last 1½ seasons and the way they handed the title to FCN in 2012 have provided some light relief.

[fbriai]

Good article, Dave.

The ever-widening gap at the top of the Premier League is there for all to see and we all know it's down to the way the money is divided up.

Is it?

50% of the revenue is shared completely equally.
25% of it is prize money
25% is distributed based on how many live matches are televised.

It means that the club finishing last will make about 70% of the club finishing first. Which doesn't seem either a) particularly unfair on the club finishing last or b) the reason why Chelsea are so much better than Burnley.

Fair point, Dave. I'd have better expressed myself had I written 'it is down to the disparity in wealth'.

I think the general point is valid though. It's the effect upon competition that is the problem. There is now such a gap between the haves and the have-nots as to have as good as set things in stone. Either something is done about it or, as Dave says in his article, everyone else is just going to have to settle for, at best, 7th place.

[Holte Sweet]

Something clearly has to change.  Whilst the current cartel arrangement suits Sky and BT the law  of diminishing returns must surely eventually apply.

Genuine supporters are already disinterested and Sundays will appear far from Super when teams are regularly playing in half empty grounds.

The hype of  continues to  generate decent attendences at the moment but when sport becomes non competitive who will be bothered to watch it?

It doesn't strike me as a viable long term  business model.

[OzVilla]

In part-reference to Dave, you could get six supporters of six from the Other 14 clubs and come up with a workable solution to increase competition. We've debated the loan system on here many times, you could share gate money with the away club, impose a salary cap. Something needs to happen.

Salary caps work well in Australia - a point being when we moved here 10 years ago South Sydney (they play Rugby League) we're the total whipping boys of the competition.  They've strengthened, bought on good young players and now are favourites to win the competition this week. My team, Brisbane Broncos, are the Man Utd of the NRL. They get the highest gates averaging 30k+, have the best record over the years and loads of kids grow up dreaming of playing for them.  They not been to a grand final since 2006.  The same goes for Aussie rules and they have a draft pick system which helps the lower teams even more.

Of course, dynasties still occur as in all sports but this is largely down to good coaching and strong foundations through the Clubs.

As well as being a ST holder, I used to watch all football back in the day.  Now I only really watch Villa games and tbh I've not even bothered to catch up on the highlights of either Arsenal or Chelsea.  That would have been inconceivable a few years back.