Driving to Carmarthen I was listening to the debate on Talk Sport about the impending demise of Bury and Bolton Wanderers, ironically clubs who are about 16 miles apart. They had been given until 5:00pm today to either come up with buyers or produce a realistic reason for them not to be wound up. Remembering the dark, dismal days when the Swans looked likely to go to the wall and how I felt about that, I have every sympathy for the supporters of both clubs. Others here will know the black abyss of hopelessness that such a scenario produces for the true fans.
The EFL sat down at 5:00pm to discuss the fate of the two clubs but meantime there has been a lot of discussion by the pundits and people within the game and, almost unanimously, they agreed that there are A GLUT OF OTHER CLUBS WHO ARE ON THE BRINK OF GOING OUT OF BUSINESS!! It seems that Bury and Bolton are just the tip of the iceberg and more will follow in early course.
Just losing their football club is bad enough for a community to digest but then there are the inevitable casualties of not only people within the infrastructure of the clubs losing their jobs but the knock on effect on local businesses, who will suffer loss of trade and, in turn, have to create redundancies to survive themselves. It's horrendous!!
Much of this is down to bad owners many of whom promised the world but delivered bugger all in terms of finance and backing. Ring any bells? And it is here where the EFL are being criticised because they have allowed patently unsuitable people to take over these clubs, when a little judicious investigation would have revealed them to be the men of straw they proved to be. Fit and proper owners they were NOT.
Of course, the other factor that has to take a large share of the blame are the wages being demanded by players and their agents. And this originates at the very top of the game where the fabulously wealthy clubs don't give a fuck what they have to pay in transfer fees and obscene SALARIES to get a player whom they think will deliver them more glory....... and money. This then sets the bench mark for other transfers that happen down the line. There is a domino effect in fact that forces clubs to pay outrageous fees and SALARIES for very often, bog standard, average players. During the programme, one particular case was cited where it is known that a club within the EFL system has a wage to income ratio of 106%!!!
This madness has, imo, directly come about because of the profligacy of the teams at the top of the Premier League: and, let's face it, they don't give a shit about any team going out of business, or the resultant effect it has on the fans and local community, so long as they can keep dipping their own greedy snouts in the trough. I tell you, I pray for the day when one of these 'entitled' clubs goes to the wall at which point I will be cheering from the rafters.