Changing Times in English Football

Over the past couple of months, my thoughts have been turning towards the future of the football league.

The landscape of British football has changed considerably over the past 20 years.

The biggest change is how the football economy has changed.

The main changes have come in the form of the Bosman rule, all-seated stadiums, Sky television, and the creation of the Premier League. These changes have had a major impact to lower-league clubs, which are now facing much harder trading conditions.

The football economy was made up of smaller clubs developing players from their own training schemes and selling them to clubs in the higher divisions to develop further, and possibly sell to a club in higher league later down the road.

This enabled money from the top of the game to flow downwards into the pockets of smaller clubs, enabling them to meet their running costs and survive.

When the Premier League was born back in the '90s, very few people could have predicted the impact it was going to have on English football. The Premiership has helped to push and develop English football into one of the most desirable sporting products on the planet.

This, in turn, has attracted some of the largest television audiences on the planet, and also compelled some of the top players in the game to make England there home.  The clubs themselves are attracting billionaire owners from all over the world, who push money into clubs like it's going out of fashion and buy the best players in hopes of creating the next Manchester United.

The football landscape has now changed, with hundreds of millions of pounds leaving the UK shorelines bound for foreign bank accounts for overseas players. This change in the football economy has made it much harder for smaller clubs to sell their talent, forcing them to raise the price of their players, and pushing potential buyers back to looking at the cheaper alternatives from other shores.

Lower league and smaller clubs have also had to watch out for much larger clubs trying to poach their talented schoolboys and induct them into there own academy system, while paying as little as possible. This is one the area that saddens me the most, as a lot of the Premier League clubs who follow this approach to acquire young talent earn £30 million in TV revenues alone, while the club they're poaching from will turn over roughly 10 percent of that figure.

Sitting just below the Premiership is the abyss of the Coca-Cola Championship, where clubs fight for the right to return to one of the pinnacles of world football—where buying a player worth several million or tens of millions is standard practice and Hollywood-sized salaries are the norm.

When many clubs leave the Premiership they usually have one of two choices.  One choice is to use the money and the parachute payment they have received and push for an immediate return.  Or they can squirrel away the money and hope the squad that they have is capable of pushing for promotion. But the Championship is no walk in the park, as there are plenty of hungry teams out there looking to reach the summit.

At the moment, English football is heading for a crossroads. With large numbers of football league clubs facing financial difficulties, it will only be a matter of time before we start to see some of these clubs entering administration—and possibly not exiting.

I feel the Football League needs to change the way the debt is handled, as currently a club will only be allowed to exit administration in the eyes of the football league if 100 percent of their debit is repaid. This rule has upset the taxman, as he feels that reclaiming the public’s money is more important, but so far the judges have chosen to allow clubs to exit administration under these terms.

With the credit crunch biting down on everybody and with a massive outlay of public cash going to the banks to bail them out I feel it’s only a matter of time before a judge makes a landmark ruling and does not allow a club to pay more back to its football debts than the Tax Man.

What the FA and Football League need to realize is that the money that is made within the football economy in England needs to filter downwards. They also need to help clubs manage their finances and keep better order.

In the Coca-Cola League, two clubs have a restrictions on how much of their turnover they can spend on the wages of players. This will have some impact in helping clubs to survive, but they also need help identify further opportunities and help engage themselves in their communities.

There are some fantastic clubs in the lower league, bursting with history and pride in the game, but they are being overshadowed by the so-called big four.