Champions League restructuring

[steamer]

BBC have a good view this morning
These wankers are ready for the shitstorm and will let it blow through, FIFA led by Infantino also have not been as Strident as UEFA in there condemnation.
You can smell compromise which is probably what they have planned for, extra donations to lower tiers etc.
Best bet is the fans and Govt stopping it. Football administration is fixated on the Mana from the God of Television.

[RamboandBruno]

Carraghers saying the fans can make a difference. I hope fans keep on protesting, I hope there’s hundreds outside Villa Park on Wednesday and no matter what Klopp says, I hope it does make Man City’s players and manager feel uncomfortable.

I thought Klopps interview was really weak and full of deflection as was Tuchels earlier in the day. Of course the manager and players haven’t made these decisions, but they have arguably the biggest role to play in all this now.

We can talk about fan power, but ultimately the pandemic has given the green light for this, they, the owners who want this, have seen TV subscriptions go up, their ‘product’ as they see it not be too adversely affected, by us not being there in the grounds, fake noise replacing us, and have decided that it doesn’t matter if the TV subscription comes from Birmingham or Beijing. I said earlier I hope the fans protest and I do, but ultimately the owners won’t care about 50 odd Leeds fans, or even a 1000 fans somewhere else, but it might have an impact in the pawns in all this.

Players and managers always turn a blind eye, to decisions in the game, ‘we just want to play football and don’t think about what goes on in the boardroom’ is a classic quote, often wheeled out, this was the equivalent of what Klopp and Tuchel did yesterday.

My hope is that multi millionaire players and managers, know they have enough money and want to be involved in competitive sport and international football. My fear is that it’s never enough money and they’ll be bought off with the promise of more riches. Tuchels interview about coming to Chelsea to coach in the best competitions sets alarm  bells ringing for me. With the best will in the world for all the 35 Year old James Milner saying he doesn’t like it, it needs the Salah’s and Maines and De Bruynes to come out and say it’s not for them, as much as we don’t like it, they are far harder to replace in this model than us. Until the end of the season I don’t think the players or managers at these clubs should be allowed to get away with washing their hands of responsibility in all this. The Spurs vacancy is also interesting and will be telling as to whether they get their first choice considering where they are going.

[algy]

I wonder what our owners make of it, having invested heavily, I find it worrying, I think if the six are expelled from the EPL overtures would be made to the Old Firm, and a possible seting up of a team from Dublin, you have to fight fire with fire. unfortunately this would have repercussions in Scotland and Ireland, there is away forward without these 6

Christ, not another Wimbledon in Dublin effort with the likes of Eamon Dunphy leading the charge again!

It's a strange time in football across Europe with the Dutch and Belgian leagues likely to merge. The Old Firm might well be encouraged to come down for a trial period but in the midst of a likely imminent Scottish independence referendum that's going to be a hard sell.

Post-Brexit I'm not sure how well a Dublin team would work out - they'd be under totally different rules for signing players for a start.

With Scottish teams, I'm not totally against the idea, but I'm also not really in favour of it either. Mostly because I think a stronger move would be to fast track supporter-owned clubs (eg FC United of Manchester) to the Premier League. Supporters of those teams then have a clear choice between the club 'in spirit' and the ESL team. Not all will switch clubs, and many will undoubtedly support both, but it massively dilutes what power someone holds when they buy a football club.

Combined with the removal of the city/area name (via council powers) it means if some cockwomble like Mike Ashley wants to join them, he can extract the material assets and employees, but the football club itself is not his to buy. That, and the "legacy supporters" remain where they were. Ok, it's highly likely those clubs will go tumbling down in to the Championship or lower as they'll have no players, stadium, manager etc - but at least you've given the supporters a fair chance, and to boot you've sabotaged the ESL.

[sid1964]

IF a compromise is reached, and this is my worry, from what I heard yesterday that the 14 need the 6 because of TV revenues etc. and the 6 are allowed to form their own ESL, then any top players currently at the 14 clubs will want to move to a club that is in the ESL.

We just would not be able to compete - and if that is the case then how quickly will it be before our current owners decide to not invest so heavily in our club

It would be interesting if the 14 clubs contacted the fans of these clubs to ask them their opinion of what they should do?

[simboy]

Bamford got it right last night. The hypocrisy is eye watering from UEFA.

“It’s amazing the amount of uproar when somebody’s pocket is being hurt. It’s a shame that this doesn’t happen with issues like racism.”

Having said that, there’s room for a concerted effort against both in the game.

[Nunkin1965]

The timing of this by the soulless and spineless owners sums up their utter disrespect of supporters and employees of all types.
Nobody can protest on matchdays in their thousands up and down the country.
Unfortunately they dismiss this out of hand which is a huge mistake on their part.
One pathetic statement and lets leave it to bemused players and staff to take all the questions?
Unbelievable arrogance.

[Ads]

Perez seems to be full of all the hubris you'd expect from a man who fronts a facicst Club. Essentially saying he's saving football and UEFA won't do anything.

I think he's in for a shock when his side is booted out the CL and La Liga on Friday and in the coming weeks

One telling comment about Ramos, saying they'll look at his contract at the end of the season, but Madrid "are in a bad way financially, nobody is putting money in". Skint pricks.

[sickbeggar]

Reading between the lines its seems the ESL were flushed out before they were ready to launch. I'm not sure who they're expecting to fill the empty places but it won't be the German/French clubs from what i can see. Even the name ESL sounds a bit naff when half your teams are from the UK and 9 of your line up are from 4 cities

[Ads]

No 10 looking to coridinate for a joint European governmental response to these Super Scabs.

[andyh]

Bamford got it right last night. The hypocrisy is eye watering from UEFA.

“It’s amazing the amount of uproar when somebody’s pocket is being hurt. It’s a shame that this doesn’t happen with issues like racism.”

Having said that, there’s room for a concerted effort against both in the game.

Oh fuck.
You know it’s bad when a ****** like Bamford is spoken about positively.

[simboy]

Add the skintness of Madrid, the “£1 billion” spent by Levy on stadium spuds, the extreme player wages paid by man citeh, the other manchester club, Liverpool and the arse and you can see their desperation. Don’t forget arse laid off their mascot (as well as a lot of other staff) last year “due to the pandemic and we are looking at a lot of problems coming home to roost.

The 30% they were getting out of the change in European football won’t cover the costs.

My bet is that this is about tv rights in Asia. The clubs want those outright, uefa/fifa/pl won’t give them up.

[simboy]

Bamford got it right last night. The hypocrisy is eye watering from UEFA.

“It’s amazing the amount of uproar when somebody’s pocket is being hurt. It’s a shame that this doesn’t happen with issues like racism.”

Having said that, there’s room for a concerted effort against both in the game.

Oh fuck.
You know it’s bad when a ****** like Bamford is spoken about positively.

Yes, sorry. It seemed a better option than Cole or Richards on the topic. I feel very very ill.

It’s pretty amazing that UEFA/FIFA/PL/Johnson are being lauded as bastions against a greedy few.

Strange times indeed.

[Somniloquism]

Reading between the lines its seems the ESL were flushed out before they were ready to launch. I'm not sure who they're expecting to fill the empty places but it won't be the German/French clubs from what i can see. Even the name ESL sounds a bit naff when half your teams are from the UK and 9 of your line up are from 4 cities

I would argue that they always planned to announce before UEFA announced the new format as otherwise the arguments for the ESL would look a bit dumb if the new format is almost the same. However they expected the full contingent of 15 to already be in place and that didn't happen.

[sickbeggar]

Reading between the lines its seems the ESL were flushed out before they were ready to launch. I'm not sure who they're expecting to fill the empty places but it won't be the German/French clubs from what i can see. Even the name ESL sounds a bit naff when half your teams are from the UK and 9 of your line up are from 4 cities

I would argue that they always planned to announce before UEFA announced the new format as otherwise the arguments for the ESL would look a bit dumb if the new format is almost the same. However they expected the full contingent of 15 to already be in place and that didn't happen.

yeah I was reading those quotes from the UEFA bod about his conversations with Agnelli who switched his phone off after being called out. Sounds like they panicked when the cat got out the bag.

[Somniloquism]

My bet is that this is about tv rights in Asia. The clubs want those outright, uefa/fifa/pl won’t give them up.

Well being outside of UEFA, Fifa, PL and they can also set their own rules on squad sizes, foreign players, and any other rule they want to implement to allow them to field all the "top" players in these "top" teams. Whole swathes of subs (remember the big teams wanting that this season), quarters instead of halves or at least added Advert refreshment  breaks on 22 and 67 minutes. Other things that will enable more advertisers to pay.