The Premier League is papering over the cracks in English football

Simoc A lack of sympathy for other people shows your own stance But what if it happened to you .. .maybe some dodgy entrepreneurs might take over your favourite club and send it out of business or maybe it will happen in your workplace and you won’t get paid for months and you would lose your house ( a lot of these players are young kids who are not being paid at all , they are not megastars . A better society does care about these things .

It is hard to pick exactly what will light up a discussion and generate debate. It could just be the time of year I suppose?

Judging by the lack of responses, I’d be inclined to suppose that English Premier League or lower leagues are not really subjects of much interest on this site. The struggle for survival in the lower divisions is similar to life on the African Savannah for many species, reliant on good rain to survive and without much help from the Apex predators. Many clubs survive on a shoestring budget and you sense that any one of many could topple over at any time. Yet somehow this particular species of animal survives each season and the cycle (unattractive as it is) continues.

Doesn't sound to bad. You've highlighted bad business practice and probably bloated egos come into it in a high profile sport. But less teams isn't necessarily worse. They have history and if someone with wads of money wants to unload it, just join the football business, or buy an expensive yacht, which gives you no fame and less grief. History is just that. We move on regardless.

Actually there's been a fair amount of coverage of this in the UK. You've just got to know where to find it. I live in Worcestershire so our local BBC News covered the Coventry City problems, following the story all the way to the bitter end. Plenty of newspapers and broadcasters are covering Bury and Bolton's troubles as well. As a side note, Sky and BT show the top five English leagues between them (PL, Championship, League One, League Two and the National League).

Interesting comments Waz and Mike. Is it the EPL’s fault? Not directly. Is it the EFL’s fault? Partially. Is it the FA’s fault? Some responsibility, yes. Is it the owners’ fault? Again, partially. But it’s a lot more complex than simply saying the EPL have nothing to do with the woes of lower league or that it’s simply bad ownership or overspending. In Bolton’s case, it very much does stem from the Premier League days, when they run up close to £300m in debt. However, a large amount of that was to the owner, the late Eddie Davies. Davies wasn’t a bad owner, but once he decided he wanted to sell up after Bolton’s relegation started, then the problems began, even after Davies wrote off £125m. Subsequent owners just didn’t have the capital. It’s the biggest danger when it comes to wealthy benefactors / groups. The cost of building and maintaining a club that’s remotely capable of challenging for a place in the Premier League - there’s increasingly fewer individuals, companies or consortia willing or able to invest (Crystal Palace have been up for sale for ages without a sniff of interest). But with the lure of Premier League riches, you do tend to attract a certain type of individual who is willing to gamble irresponsibly in the hope of making it back with TV money (and if they do, that’s no guarantee of stability - look at Blackpool for example). Secondly, parachute payments from the Premier League can disproportionately affect budgets from Championship downwards. They already give the relegated clubs somewhat of an advantage and the EFL (not EPL, in fairness, although it is one body sorting out another’s issues) does very little to reign them in, so you have an unsustainable amount spent on wages in relation to turnover. There is a cap of sorts, but if you flaunt it and get promoted, there’s little comeback and the reward outweighs the punishment. Thirdly, a lot of clubs are receiving a lot less for young players due to changes in academy rules and compensation. Players such as Ethan Ampadu, for example, would have reached a much higher value but Chelsea were able to acquire him from Exeter City for a much lower sum. Finally, on bad owners, this is definitely an EFL and FA issue that they seem to be reluctant to take. The Bury mess, in particular, is one partly of their own making - especially as the financial situation would have been known at the AGM in June. There’s a reluctance to tighten any framework for owners or enforce what few rules do exist. Steve Dale, for example, was allowed to purchase Bury without the EFL following their own procedure. And finally, once you get to the stage that Bury are at it becomes less about overspending and more about something less pleasant. Previous owner Stewart Day did indeed overspend, and when his business went under, it was inexorably linked with Bury. Had Day opted to put Bury into administration, it would probably have survived. Dale, on the other hand, is specialist in making money from distressed companies and after purchasing the Shakers for £1 from Day has taken Bury into their current situation not by overspending but by not spending anything at all. Lots of issues around this that I won’t get into in the comment to prevent the moderators from legal headaches but I’d recommend reading Accrington chairman Andy Holt’s Twitter feed and Ian King’s 200% blog. Both are very good at giving context to this.

Kannga2 Coventry's case is indeed a long story and started after they got relegated from the Premier League. Too many players had no relegation clauses in their contracts and the parachute payments were almost non existent. The sale of the Ricoh Arena to Wasps would come under much more scrutiny in Australia. There was a sweetheart deal done with Wasps that gave them a 100year lease over the stadium at a peppercorn rent. Sisu the company owning Coventry City took the council to court and lost, they appealed and lost and have now lodged it in a European Court in regard to alleged corruption within Coventry Council. Because this went against the grain with Wasps they are refusing to enter into negotiations with Coventry. It is a sad state of affairs when the stadium was built for Coventry City and between the council and Sisu (who are as bad as each other) the fans have to suffer. Meanwhile the team is unbeaten this year with three wins and a draw and long may it continue.

The financial bubble that soccer lives in will eventually come crashing down . It’s at an unsustainable level, or at a level that only a dozen wealthy oil sheiks can maintain until they find another hobbie. There is not going to be a trickle down effect of wealth from the Manchester city type clubs and the gap will widen between rich and also rans to a really boring uncompetitive level in the epl Coventry propably should not have sold the old highfield road , but I can’t remember the whole story , but they’ve been very unlucky with owners and apparently the owners sold their new ground to a rugby union club wasps Anyhow, it’s 40 minutes on the train from Coventry to St. Andrews in Brum and it’s a terrific 30,000 seat stadium .

I see the same issue emerging in regards to the AFL and the WAFL clubs - in a couple of years, we'll likely have a Fremantle Dockers reserve side and a 10 team competition, which means one of the traditional clubs will go to the wall or have to merge. Arguably there are too many clubs in England for the population, but when you look at non-league as well (and the National League is effectively the 5th Division now), I'm surprised more clubs haven't failed. So the solution is to send more TV money down the pyramid (in AFL and EPL) to make sure that the grass roots of the game are protected. But I also take Waz' point that there is only so much that can be done. You can't insulate clubs against bad business practice/asset-stripping any more than you can every business/company in an economy. Regulation & fit and proper tests can only achieve so much - though they could step in a lot earlier if a Tax debt is unpaid. If it's your club - and soon it will likely be mine - it would be terrible.

I personally don’t see the link to the EPL here? The failure of several lower league clubs is not down to the success of the top flight! As Fadida correctly points out - perhaps they need to spend more time looking at how the lower league clubs are run and who is running them rather than blaming the EPL. Bury and Bolton failed because they were badly run, if they had more money they would still have failed ... because they are badly run. How they can allow massive debt with their tax office to build up I don’t know. If club owners can’t meet their tax obligations, pay their staff wages, then it’s simple ... strip owners of their ownership - watch how well run clubs are then instead of this sham that is stuck on the rinse n repeat cycle. There are lessons for the independent HAL which we should understand - owners care for their clubs until they don’t, then we get the Tinkler effect. Safeguards need to be built in to protect clubs from imploding and disappearing forever, but even then - there’s only so much that can be done.

Great article, Mike. It’s amazing how little coverage this issue has got in the UK press. The media obsession with Premier League glitz is causing them to overlook the terrible situation of some proud old clubs.

Unfortunately it's a scene played out many times over the years. Clubs spend what tbey don't have (Bolton), or sell to dodgy owners (Bury, Blackburn etc) whose plan is to asset strip the club, or just lack business acumen. I would have thought Bury's debts would be fairly minimal ie a few million , and that most premier league footballers could easily afford to buy them and save the day. Perhaps lower division clubs need the safety of a salary cap? Not to mention a better ownership test