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"Project big 6"


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Surprised there's not a thread on this already. Maybe because it doesn't fit with the common rhetoric in here and amongst most football fans in general. Liverpool and Man United conspiring again, for their own benefit, to prevent competition. Imagine that, where have we seen it before...

MARTIN SAMUEL: Manchester United and Liverpool's Project Big Picture is nothing but a disgusting Big Six power grab... Rick Parry is Faust in a Mickey Mouse tie and he thinks we're STUPID 

Rick Parry helped destroy the fabric of English football once, and now he’s going for it again.

His alliance with Manchester United, Liverpool and any fellow travellers within the Big Six is the most flagrant, abusive and ruinous power grab the domestic game has seen since the formation of the Premier League with Parry as its chief executive close to 30 years ago. That put the power in the hands of 20 clubs.

Now Parry and the elite want this narrowed down to a cabal of six. They are promising all kinds of bungs and sweeteners to get their way, painting themselves as the saviours of the game, the friends of the little folk, but do not believe a single word of it.

This is about six clubs controlling the wealth and seizing the power, right down to deciding who gets into their competition. This is about closed shop protectionism that will end the Premier League as a vibrant competition. This is about getting your round in with another man’s money.

This is, in essence, every rotten, contemptuous, self-serving, destructive idea the likes of Manchester United and Liverpool have come up with across the last two decades, repurposed as a rescue package.

Project Big Picture? Far from saving our game, all it would do is reduce. Reduce what makes football fun. Reduce its unpredictability, reduce the excitement, reduce the chances for Wolves or Leicester or Aston Villa. Reduce the hope of a change of ownership at Newcastle. Reduce your chances of promotion. Reduce your hopes of success if you get there. Reduce, reduce, reduce.

Of course Parry supports it. He has no idea how to address the financial crisis in the EFL, so will cling to any lifebelt tossed his way. If it means selling out the League Cup, the Community Shield, 14 current Premier League clubs and any in the Championship with ambition, he’ll do it.

That is how desperate he is. He’s Faust, in a Mickey Mouse tie. And he thinks we’re stupid. They all do.

Take the proposed new superpowers, the nine longest-serving clubs in the Premier League, whose votes would count for more than the rest. That’s the big six, plus Everton, Southampton and West Ham.

Those nine clubs are to be afforded ‘long-term shareholder status’, would have unprecedented power, even able to veto new owners at other Premier League clubs, decide on the chief executive and amend rules and regulations. And maybe the six think the three will be flattered to be included.

Depends whether they can handle basic arithmetic. For what would be needed for vetoes and changes to processes is a two-thirds majority of long-term shareholders.

Ooh, what’s two-thirds of nine? Wouldn’t be six by any chance, would it? Everton, Southampton and West Ham wouldn’t be privileged members. They would be ridiculous patsies, carved up and cynically outvoted at every turn. 

That is what Project Big Picture is. One big carve-up. Take wealth distribution, 50 per cent of which would now be divided on merit, rather than equally. But not real merit. 

Some of the cut would be calculated over the last three years so if Manchester United or Liverpool had a bad season, it wouldn’t matter as much because other, more successful years would be taken into account.

At the moment central income ratio is capped at 1.7 to 1 between big and small; this might see it reach 4:1. And what’s fairer than a league in which the wealthiest get four times as much basic income as their rivals lower down?

The same with television revenue with clubs permitted to sell eight games on their own platforms. This would greatly harm the broadcast deal, with the loss of exclusivity, and that money could only be recouped if the PPV packages were hugely successful. And who is likelier to benefit there: Manchester United and Liverpool again, or Burnley and West Brom? 

So, again, the elite clubs lose nothing, the smallest clubs get squeezed. The only time they are all treated the same is when handing out bungs to the EFL and FA to make it happen. 

Paying £250million to the EFL and £100m to the FA, the clubs are equal. When voting, sharing television revenue, creaming off the profits of PPV, they are not.

The donations, the good causes, the infrastructure, they are all the sheep’s clothing, disguising the wolf. Everything here benefits the elite. Small clubs would lose two games’ revenue in an 18-team competition, plus the odd bonus League Cup fixture. 

The elite? Nothing. Those gaps in revenue would quickly be filled by expanded European competitions and the revamped Club World Cup, the gulf growing ever wider.

This plan is not to be trusted — even the charitable aspects.

When Parry helped set up the Premier League, it was ostensibly to aid the England team. Soon, everyone knew the truth. Do not be fooled by this, either. Do not be fooled by the grassroots talk, the money for the women’s game, the £20 tickets for away fans — this is a power grab dressed up as reform, the closed shop reworked as opened-armed generosity.

And they want to tie the Premier League to UEFA’s financial fair play rules, too. Of course they do. They are stricter and unyielding. 

Manchester United and Liverpool can usher in UEFA’s FFP — attached to revenue streams only available to the biggest and richest clubs — then that truly is the end for the likes of Leicester or Wolves challenging the status quo. And that is what terrifies them.

Not that another club like lovely Macclesfield might go bust. Aston Villa 7 Liverpool 2. Manchester United 1 Tottenham 6. That’s the waking nightmare, and it always has been. That they won’t be good enough to sustain their status.

That, like AC Milan in Italy, they will slip from relevance. So they want it all: the money and the control. They want to make the rules, shape the game, decide who gets what, who gets in. And Parry, once again, is their willing accomplice. 

Just as he was in 1992 when, as chief executive of the fledgling Premier League, he helped alter a system that awarded 50 per cent of broadcast revenue to clubs outside the top tier — the second tier got 25 per cent, those below 12.5 per cent each — to one that benefited a small group and placed football on its road to ruin.

Only fools could not see through this, but in many ways, it is almost a positive. Project Big Picture is so transparent in its aims, so repulsively skewed towards the richest, so disgustedly naked in its protectionism that the howl of rejection and outrage should be deafening.

Under the guise of improving the economic outlook for all, it delivers the bulk of its money into the greasy mitts of an over-privileged, over-entitled elite. It fixes the game in favour of six clubs, while shifting the financial burden to the 14 straining every sinew to remain competitive. 

It is a disgrace, the opposite of a solution, and deserves a pauper’s grave.

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Good read that, and sums up exactly how I feel about it. I can't believe anyone would give it the time of day, but then English football is a strange beast. Not that the Scottish set up is much better, but this would basically replicate what we have, just on a larger scale.

It's unacceptable and should not be allowed to go ahead.

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45 minutes ago, Dieter's Heeder said:

Surprised there's not a thread on this already. Maybe because it doesn't fit with the common rhetoric in here and amongst most football fans in general. Liverpool and Man United conspiring again, for their own benefit, to prevent competition. Imagine that, where have we seen it before...

It’s not United and Liverpool conspiring, it’s the multinational sports conglomerates that own them conspiring. When the EPL signed up to the ‘collective bargaining’ arrangement in currently place, English football was in a totally different place.  Can’t on the one hand sell all the clubs to foreign owners for hundreds of millions and expect those owners to respect a settlement from nearly 30 years ago they’d no part in.  English football ‘sold out’ a long time ago, this was inevitable.

Edited by RAG
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39 minutes ago, RAG said:

It’s not United and Liverpool conspiring, it’s the multinational sports conglomerates that own them conspiring. When the EPL signed up to the ‘collective bargaining’ arrangement in currently place, English football was in a totally different place.  Can’t on the one hand sell all the clubs to foreign owners for hundreds of millions and expect those owners to respect a settlement from nearly 30 years ago they’d no part in.  English football ‘sold out’ a long time ago, this was inevitable.

But those who own them ARE the club, whether they like it or not. Likewise with a club closer to home who went bust, they can't libel it all as being the company and separating the two where it suits. The two things are intertwined, and whilst the owners call the shots then they represent the club as a whole where football related decisions are made. 

Agree with the rest of your post btw. 

Edited by Dieter's Heeder
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25 minutes ago, Dieter's Heeder said:

But those who own them ARE the club, whether they like it or not. Likewise with a club closer to home who went bust, they can't libel it all as being the company and separating the two where it suits. The two things are intertwined, and whilst the owners call the shots then they represent the club as a whole where football related decisions are made. 

United and Liverpool are subsidiaries of the global sports brands that own them.  The clubs are a mere possession of said global sports brand, thats how I see the modern EPL owners relationship differing from your traditional ‘custodian’.  

Problem for the EFL in this is they’re going cap in hand for £300m, strings will be attached. Alternative is to let lower leagues collapse, which would suit these American businessmen even more, as that’s the end of relegation and guaranteed income for the EPL franchises.  Mental finances of the Championship mean the EFL/lower league EPL teams are over the barrell on this one IMO.

Edited by RAG
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2 minutes ago, RAG said:

United and Liverpool are subsidiaries of the global sports brands that own them.  The clubs are a mere possession of said global sports brand, thats how I see the modern EPL owners relationship differing for your traditional ‘custodian’.  

Problem for the EFL in this is they’re going cap in hand for £300m, strings will be attached. Alternative is to let lower leagues collapse, which would suit these American businessmen even more, as that’s the end of relegation and guaranteed income for the EPL franchises.  Mental finances of the Championship mean the EFL/lower league EPL teams are over the barrell on this one IMO.

Agree with all of above side note for me the European Cup lost its allure when the Champions league came you should only be in the EC if you win your domestic league

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That league was always going to devour itself. The smaller teams being capable of the results they pulled off the last few weeks is what makes it different to other leagues where the big teams losing is a rarity.

This big 6 movement coupled with the £15 ppv arrangement could see a mass revolt but those clubs don't care about fans. Given how dull the matches are with empty stadiums you'd think they'd be trying to get fans onside instead of pushing them further away.

Ian Holloways comments on BBC radio humberside are absolutely spot on.

Edited by red_dug
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On 10/12/2020 at 9:07 PM, RAG said:

It’s not United and Liverpool conspiring, it’s the multinational sports conglomerates that own them conspiring. When the EPL signed up to the ‘collective bargaining’ arrangement in currently place, English football was in a totally different place.  Can’t on the one hand sell all the clubs to foreign owners for hundreds of millions and expect those owners to respect a settlement from nearly 30 years ago they’d no part in.  English football ‘sold out’ a long time ago, this was inevitable.

They bought the clubs knowing the rules. If a foreigner buys any company, they need to comply with the rules and don’t then whinge that those rules were established years before they bought in.

it’s also pretty rich that the Glazers are moaning when they own the Tampa Bay Bucs and the NFL divvies up revenues equally between the teams and the draft system looks to provide an element of levelling of the playing field.

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22 minutes ago, Jimmy Superscot said:

They bought the clubs knowing the rules. If a foreigner buys any company, they need to comply with the rules and don’t then whinge that those rules were established years before they bought in.

it’s also pretty rich that the Glazers are moaning when they own the Tampa Bay Bucs and the NFL divvies up revenues equally between the teams and the draft system looks to provide an element of levelling of the playing field.

The rules were changed in 1992 to suit the big teams, is no reason, change couldn’t happen again If 14 clubs vote for change, according to the EPLs own rules, which aren’t set in stone.  The FA (I believe) hold a special veto share, but they’re being offered a gift/bribe of £100m. I suspect outside hardcore English football fans, most people couldn’t give a monkeys about it, the fees involved the the EPL being totally vulgar - over £1bn in transfer fees when clubs are going bust during a health pandemic.

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Around half the league could have a bad season and end up in the relegation zone, no club is going to vote for a proposal that will lose them a fortune. Some of the proposals are reasonable, a twenty club league is too large, but lumping them all together guaranteed that they wouldn't get the support. 

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