After Coronavirus - What next for league football? (poll)

[Indian Dan]

They are saying it could be more of a reactivation of the virus which I suppose means if you have ever caught it you will always have it - it just lies dormant. Not good news when it comes to infecting others though.

 

[chipmunx]

They are saying it could be more of a reactivation of the virus which I suppose means if you have ever caught it you will always have it - it just lies dormant. Not good news when it comes to infecting others though.

there are 6 or 8 different strains of Covid-19 already in different parts of the world;- where the original virus has mutated (as all viruses do) - so the chances are that if you've had one you might be immune to some, but not all of the other strains.

 

[Indian Dan]

Thankfully, as viruses mutate they invariably get weaker.

 

[valefan16]

Thankfully, as viruses mutate they invariably get weaker.

The do to survive I believe as if they kill too many people the virus can’t survive as less to infect so weakens to prolong its own life.

 

[Super_horns]

Just shows there won't be a mad rush to start again until the Government are totally sure it's safe to.

 

[Greenacres]

Just shows there won't be a mad rush to start again until the Government are totally sure it's safe to.

I think that is pretty much certain...the straw-poll among my friends and neighbours seems to suggest a view that the lock-down will continue till the end of May, at least in it's current form...though clearly none of us have any expertise in this matter as we don't have a virologist or anyone with that type of knowledge among us.

 

[shoddycollins]

There was somone in China I believe over a month ago who got the virus a second time. For various reasons though it doesn't seem to be as huge a cause for concern as it might appear at first. Numbers from China are probably more likely to be underestimated rather than overestimated but seems to be under control there. South Korea is probably just being a bit more honest with its reporting.

 

[Indian Dan]

Did the virus actually infect any other areas of China- Beijing or Shanghai, for instance?

 

[shoddycollins]

Did the virus actually infect any other areas of China- Beijing or Shanghai, for instance?

Yes... I've seen this as the opening assumption in some conspiracy theories about it being a biological weapon, also that there was no lock-down in major Chinese cities.

China has reported around 400 deaths in each of these major cities. Experts with experience of the Chinese government seem to think China is understating this. Certainly if coronavirus was a biological weapon and China were lying about it they'd want the world to believe Beijing and Shanghai were hit as badly as any other city, not apparently do the opposite. Also Chinese lockdown has been strict by our standards, we say don't travel and have occasional police checks, they put military checkpoints at the boundaries of affected cities. Beijing and Shanghai included.

Western governments were still putting on flights to get their citizens home from Wuhan when Chinese residents of the city were being prevented from travelling to other parts of China by military checkpoints.

 

[Indian Dan]

Well, in protest I’m cutting out Chow Mein from now on.

 

[Boletus Edulis]

Well, in protest I’m cutting out Chow Mein from now on.

I’m taking my copy of Mao’s Red Book to the charity shop in protest.

 

[Vanni]

The Italian league doesn't have B teams but I do get your point. Funnily enough, one example we should look at in these leagues is their zero tolerance approach to clubs amassing debts in the hope of achieving a pipe dream. Spain expelled Reus from the Segunda Division last season, the Bundesliga and German lower leagues won't hand clubs licences in any of the three national divisions either should they be in debt.

On the other hand, if our game is obsessed with looking at other leagues, they should know that Italy has been a basket case for years. 20-30 years ago it was by far the best league in the world. They had clubs in European finals every season, they were the richest clubs in the world, but then a major event happened in the country, they joined the Euro and suddenly the volatility of the new currency wreaked havoc. Soon the banks were called in and many clubs sold off players and were reduced to second-rate status with Parma and Fiorentina eventually going bankrupt and Napoli going down to Serie C before being bought by de Laurentiis. Only Juventus have recovered from the crisis of 20 years ago, and even though they were match fixing charlatans, they do own their own ground unlike most in Italy, which is why their failure to invest in infrastructure when they were the best league in the world caused terminal decline to their league.

The English game is lucky in the sense that all leagues, and not just their league, will suffer. But the Bundesliga and Ligue 1 are the best leagues to cope with this financial crisis out of the five major leagues. Both leagues are regulated by a financial auditor each year. The Bundesliga has a strict zero tolerance on debt and Ligue 1's auditor sets the salary cap at clubs each year for which strict penalties are enforced should they exceed it. I fear for the other three leagues as they're all swimming in debts. We may have the richest TV deal in the World but it's a deal up for renewal in 12 months. It could even be renewed if the PL voids the season as that would be a significant breach of contract. And we don't know how sharply it's set to decline. So I disagree when people say the usual hierarchy will sort itself out. It may not affect the Manchester clubs, Spurs and Liverpool to the extent it'd affect the lesser sides up there. But they too will have to adapt and face changes. There'll be an end to youth players getting daft wages. Maybe an end to stockpiling to cut costs. And almost certainly the end of renewing contracts of no hopers like Jesse Lingard and Phil Jones in the hope a gullible club will shell £30 million on each of them. The Super League idea will be mooted once this has died down, but they'll get nowhere near the money they once thought they would for it. So it's a non-starter.

Change will indeed come, but we may not know the full extent of this change for another 6-12 months yet...

Excellent post

I did know about the Bundesliga's view on debt but I wasn't aware that the French did have a similar system in place, so many thanks for that bit of info.

What you said about Italian footy is indeed correct, and at one point in time they were the clubs to emulate if one craved success in the European cups. Thing was not a single club owned their home ground. I've been to Italy a few times and I did take the opportunity to watch a few league games while over there, just like any other footy fan would do I guess. I visited Serie B grounds mostly, and even though some of the grounds I went to had hosted Serie A games only a year or two back, the state of the ground and the facilities weren't the best. When I inquired about this, the locals told me the clubs were reluctant to spend money on something that wasn't theirs but was owned (and run) by the city council.

Ps. Re. B-teams in the Italian pro leagues, there is at least one such side in the Serie C - Juve's u/23. The club's wiki page says this -

''Juventus U23 was founded on 3 August 2018,[1] following the reintroduction of reserve teams in Italian football after over sixty years, and was officially admitted to the Serie C championship.[2]'

 

[Deepcut Cobbler]

The Italian Prime Minister was saying yesterday that there 'might' be the beginning of a graduated drawdown of their lockdown at the end of April/early May. He stressed that this will be a slow, graduated drawdown ensuring safety at all times. Opening industry, factories and more essential services before entertainment and sport.
I can see this going towards the end of May at the earliest before they begin.
Italy were at least a month ahead of us.

 

[Dave-Vale]

For me, the current season has to be finished. Even if that means scrapping competitions for next season (League Cup/EFL trophy/FA Cup) and playing more games in mid week to ensure the season ends in May ready for the Euros.

Anybody else really missing football?

 

[Indian Dan]

But there’s a limit to how long many clubs can stand still for before going bust. Some clubs are probably desperate for 30 June to come so they can trim their wage bill. How long do other clubs keep on paying for players that may have run OOC but have, perhaps, a rolling monthly contract extension for when this season may start.

For example, we’re probably paying Doyle £5k a week at the moment and up until 30 June. Do we just let him go and save the wages or keep him on until the games begin again - could be a long time.

Some clubs, especially the going nowhere clubs, who are desperate for this season to be finished anyway you want.

 

[shoddycollins]

Currently this is the position of the EFL:

• No training activity is to take place with players until 16 May at the earliest.
• Earliest EFL games could restart is early to mid-June.
• Estimated to take two months to finish 19/20 season [including the play-offs] taking us past 30 June contract expiry, and dates of loan deals ending.
• Length of a new pre-start training period is unconfirmed.
• Timing currently assumes that remaining 19/20 games will be played behind closed doors.

We've added that:

If a 19/20 restart is to include waiting for long enough to enable fans to be in attendance at the games, and together as normal, that will inevitably push those timings back even further, and that will make the already complex issues the game faces many times worse. Having said that, behind-closed-doors games create a whole range of issues too.

We've also not taken up the EFL's offer of a £119k loan (yet) as we're not sure we'd be able to make repayments.


On an issue which we haven't talked about in this thread so far:

It’s clear clubs are also reliant on each other for loan payments and transfer fee payments in the coming months. It’s reported that approximately £4.5bn is owed by clubs across Europe in transfer fees to each other.

That includes £1.7bn by Premier League clubs, with some due to EFL clubs, which we will rely on in future. Almost all transfer fees receivable by EFL clubs originate directly or indirectly from the Premier League.

If EFL clubs can’t make transfer payments, or the Premier League clubs suffer, then the future hidden contagion will spread through the pyramid. Some of these deals have been financed by banks, and clubs now owe banks (not other clubs) and have spent the money. The ramifications of this are unknown.

https://www.carlisleunited.co.uk/news/2020/april/chief-executive-every-club-has-its-own-approach/ if you want to read the entire club statement though I'm sure your clubs have all said something similar.

 

[Greenacres]

Our club isn't saying a great deal at the moment...although to be fair, I'm not really expecting them to.

 

[Vanni]

Our club isn't saying a great deal at the moment...although to be fair, I'm not really expecting them to.

I don't think I have come across any further comments from Vince after that comment he made about the league being halted too soon and that we could've carried on for a little bit longer (behind closed doors of course). Or else, if he did, then it wasn't reported by the likes of the BBC. I do agree with him and we could've been looking at trying to fit in only 5 games or something rather than 9 or 10 games. Calling it all off when the they seemed premature to me, but I do get that my opinion is not one that is shared by everybody.

 

[chipmunx]

I don't think I have come across any further comments from Vince after that comment he made about the league being halted too soon and that we could've carried on for a little bit longer (behind closed doors of course). Or else, if he did, then it wasn't reported by the likes of the BBC. I do agree with him and we could've been looking at trying to fit in only 5 games or something rather than 9 or 10 games. Calling it all off when the they seemed premature to me, but I do get that my opinion is not one that is shared by everybody.

i think they probably called it off at the right time - the National league played on that weekend - but half the games were off as players etc were showing symptoms and they got slated for not calling games off when the EFL did.

 

[valefan16]

6th June restarting if circumstances allow it.

 

[TrinidadsNumberOne]

Excellent post

I did know about the Bundesliga's view on debt but I wasn't aware that the French did have a similar system in place, so many thanks for that bit of info.

What you said about Italian footy is indeed correct, and at one point in time they were the clubs to emulate if one craved success in the European cups. Thing was not a single club owned their home ground. I've been to Italy a few times and I did take the opportunity to watch a few league games while over there, just like any other footy fan would do I guess. I visited Serie B grounds mostly, and even though some of the grounds I went to had hosted Serie A games only a year or two back, the state of the ground and the facilities weren't the best. When I inquired about this, the locals told me the clubs were reluctant to spend money on something that wasn't theirs but was owned (and run) by the city council.

Ps. Re. B-teams in the Italian pro leagues, there is at least one such side in the Serie C - Juve's u/23. The club's wiki page says this -

''Juventus U23 was founded on 3 August 2018,[1] following the reintroduction of reserve teams in Italian football after over sixty years, and was officially admitted to the Serie C championship.[2]'

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direction_Nationale_du_Contrôle_de_Gestion The DNCG here is the French national body that regulates the finances of the clubs. Given French Football has only one professional club in almost every city (I think Paris and Ajaccio are the only exceptions to the rule), clubs do receive money from their municipalities for competing, and so there is a public interest in the finances of the clubs and it's why you rarely see French clubs in financial trouble. Mind you, it's no wonder they're in a healthier state given that they've done a great job at fleecing the Prem for mediocre players over the last 25 years. You just have to see how they almost got £54 million off Liverpool for a crock in Nabil Fekir before Liverpool saw sense and he was shipped off for a third of that price to Real Betis!

We need something like that in this country, but you just know the Premier League clubs would be staunchly opposed to it and that foreign investors would be put off buying clubs in the top two divisions. To ourselves at the lower levels, that's probably a good thing. But an auditor would sort out the unsustainable clubs at our levels too. SCMP does a decent job, but going the French way would take that role further. EPPP would be scrapped (hooray) and the independent auditor would recommend clubs develop their facilities and revenue streams as opposed to signing a journeyman on £5000 a week in a short-term bid for promotion. Of course, radical debates will be brought back to the forefront again (artificial pitches is what I'm thinking here), but profitability and sustainability is what we should be after these days, not pipe dreams.

I never knew that about Juventus U23 so thanks for that! But it's interesting that only one club is at that level for now. I wonder what the Italian Ultras think of it at the lower levels.

As for the lack of stadium ownership in Italy, I believe Napoli are trying to buy their stadium and Udinese (owned by the Watford owners) and Sassuolo also own theirs too. I think Roma have a stadium on the way too. But I can't help but think the only thing that would accelerate new stadia in Italy is to give them Euro 2028 and give them time to get 10 new stadiums built or modernised in Rome, Milan, Naples, Florence etc. But we're seeing in England now that clubs are willing to sell stadiums and training grounds just to fund promotion bids. I know dodgy stadium sales have happened since before FFP (Gillingham did it in the 2000s where they sold the stadium to eliminate debts only to buy it back at 10% of the value). But when Leeds sold Elland Road in 2004, they did so with great reluctance to pay off their debts. Nowadays, the clubs are all too happy to sell off assets. Now with clubs in financial turmoil, could they possibly afford to buy them back even at a reduced rate? I can't see it at all...

 

[Luke Imp]

Most clubs will surely work their pitches now in many cases, ours looks in great nick! Askey was saying it needs to finish but they need a pre season with friendlies to get up to speed, certainly if potentially playing 12 games in 56 days. Doing that from cold and half the players will be out for the start of the next season!

We started ripping up and relaying our pitch and the three training pitches a couple of weeks ago. With what I expect will be a quick turnaround from one season to the next, it's probably the only chance to do so.

I sincerely hope this is the end of unsustainable bankrolling of non league clubs once and for all. Everyone bangs on about the unsustainble wages in the PL and the Championship, but bankrolled non league clubs are forcing some in League Two to overstretch in order to compete/remain in the league.

Mind you, the National League is so incompetent, they'll turn a blind eye to it and allow it to continue once football breaks free from the coronavirus turmoil it finds itself in.

Said it before, but there's a certain irony behind the NL being really, really strict with clubs in financial difficulty but not adopting something along the lines of SCMP FFP, yet the EFL have, what we're told, are strict SCMP FFP (they do embargo clubs to be fair) and fanny about with clubs if they get into difficulty.

If Bolton or Bury were in the NL, they'd have been dealt with much quicker.

Lastly, scrap the transfer window for good. Clubs need to sell players from June-March to really ease their financial burdens for the foreseeable future. The transfer window restricts trade. Let's get it back to how it used to be. And all fees to be paid up front and not this ridiculous amortised shit which is going to cause a ton of hardship at the top two levels and on the continent for the next 5 years.

I'm not sure on that. It works ok in the NL below because there needs to be that flexibility due to the hybrid of FT and PT.

Our final season in NL was the first they got rid of the transfer window and it all seemed a bit chaotic at times. The turnover of players seemed very big and felt very scattergun from most clubs. I always think outside the transfer window keeps things settled down.

I think it makes it more difficult if players can be bought/sold/signed the whole season.

The current rule (clubs demanding compensation under the age of 24) is fine despite its flaws but, as I've alluded to in other posts, the EPPP system for Academies we have in this country needs to be scrapped at once. It forces clubs to spend set amounts of money on one of the four categories, which has led to some clubs (even ones higher up the food chain like Huddersfield and Brentford) scrapping Academies altogether which would've been unthinkable in the 1990s. It's a system that ruins young careers, promotes mass stockpiling and rips off lower league clubs to the point they don't think an Academy is viable anymore. Clubs then use the money saved to "go for it" in the league and that causes the big problem we have today. Our fans moan we can't develop clinical strikers, how can we if the last one we had (George Nunn) was snapped up just before he could sign a pro-contract with us for a paltry £300,000 by Chelsea. And you just know he'll never play a game for them...

Clubs should be allowed to spend what they want on Academies and scrapping EPPP would drive player wages in the lower leagues right down. We live in a country where PL youth players are getting £30-50K a week despite being nowhere near the first team, and then they have no motivation once they're released that they exit the game at 22, richer but with no direction or no desire to get back into the game they once loved.

Agree totally r.e. EPPP (the U24 rule isn't clubs 'demanding' compensation, it's money they're entitled to, just in a bit of a grey area with regards to how much).

The EPPP was pushed through because the PL threatened to pull funding if it wasn't. I always cite Jack Hobbs who Liverpool signed from us back in 2005. We ended up with a deal worth £750k plus a friendly where we kept all gate receipts but under EPPP we'd have got something silly like £60k. The deal we got kept the youth system going for years and enabled us to make improvements to it as well at the time.

Clubs should be able to negotiate their own deals, not be hamstrung by set fees that are, bizarrely, in favour of the clubs with the most money.

If you're a lower league homegrown club not spending above your means, cutting your cloth accordingly and playing young prospects like ourselves, Exeter and Ipswich for example, then those will be the big winners in the lower leagues. I don't know how many clubs will fold, my guess is it won't be as many as others forecast given the EFLs desire to only expel clubs as a last resort compared to other countries who won't tolerate this bullshit. But there'll be a 92 team league next season for sure.

I was saying this on our forum today. There's going to be a good opportunity for well run clubs providing they're able to guide themselves through this. Income will drop for everyone, but those cuts should be less severe amongst the well run ones and players should become available for them that once weren't. It might also be that the gap between the leagues, both financially and quality, shorten for a few seasons.

 

[Indian Dan]

Whilst the fluffy dream of clubs producing their own players the fact is it is only for those who ar3 happy to stay a cyclical club.

Do well in the cycle when their youth team produce a couple of decent players, back to square one when the many other seasons when they produce fuck all.

If there are 4 leagues remaining after this is finished there might be a realignment where such clubs prosper but it will, again, only be temporary.

 

[Luke Imp]

Whilst the fluffy dream of clubs producing their own players the fact is it is only for those who ar3 happy to stay a cyclical club.

Do well in the cycle when their youth team produce a couple of decent players, back to square one when the many other seasons when they produce fuck all.

If there are 4 leagues remaining after this is finished there might be a realignment where such clubs prosper but it will, again, only be temporary.

True, I also think the whole youth set-up has an intangible angle to it as well (local community) but the main point is that it stops clubs being able to negotiate the transfer of their own home-grown player and instead receive a figure which has been dreamt up in the PL as being acceptable and, generally, heavily weighted with milestone payments that may not even materialise in most cases.

We have discussions on our forum all the time about youth set-ups. As it is in EFL in L2, and some of L1 as well, grants probably cover a decent chunk of costs. To then go up categories, it costs far more and EPPP has effectively made that a waste of time. It's now more cost effective for clubs to either scale back so it's covered by grants or not have one at all, which is wrong.

 

[Luke Imp]

And all fees to be paid up front and not this ridiculous amortised shit which is going to cause a ton of hardship at the top two levels and on the continent for the next 5 years.

Forgot to add, transfer fees paid up front isn't going to happen, we're way past the stage of that being possible (albeit Man Utd paid most of the £80m up front for Maguire apparently but they're an anomaly alongside a handful of other clubs). There's a lot of money in football, and a lot going out of football, but it's not a cash rich industry. Football clubs generally operate under a break even cash flow model, which is why we're hearing about all these urgent talks about wage cuts/deferrals.

 

[Chris FGR]

No chance of starting anytime soon, we can't even test all NHS staff let alone be able to constantly test all players, officials, media etc every week which is what would need to happen to get training and then games on.

 

[Indian Dan]

Ppg. Get it done!

 

[Deepcut Cobbler]

No chance of starting anytime soon, we can't even test all NHS staff let alone be able to constantly test all players, officials, media etc every week which is what would need to happen to get training and then games on.

Plus one player gets it and it puts the rest of the squad out for at least 14 days...

 

[chipmunx]

Plus one player gets it and it puts the rest of the squad out for at least 14 days...

and the same for any team they'd recently played....

 

[Super_horns]

EFL to agree wage deferrals?

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www....-footballs-biggest-pay-deferral-deal-far.html