Good article written by Martin Samuel in The Daly Mail.
"Roughly 25 per cent of Bury's income was provided by the Premier League solidarity system so, given what we now know of their precarious finances, the Premier League money has probably made the difference at the club for a number of years.
In 2014, Manchester City allowed Bury to use their old Carrington training ground rent-free. To lease such a site would cost in the region of £80,000 annually, but Bury were required to simply maintain the facility and pitches, which it did not do, leading to break-ins and general disrepair. At one stage the water was cut off due to unpaid bills. So how far should this assistance go?
Karl Evans, Bury's CEO under former owner Day, talked of the profligate nature of the regime.
'Stewart put out a statement that Bury was going to be a Championship club in five years' time and it ate away at him,' Evans said. 'I would say, 'This is our budget', but the managers knew which of his buttons to press, even though the club could not afford it. We had nine strikers at one stage.'
And this is what a Premier League emergency fund would subsidise? The right of Bury to have nine strikers to back up a chairman's ego-driven promise? And what would that say to the rest of the lower leagues? Spend what you like, do what you like - we'll pay.
Ipswich Town won the League the year Accrington went under; Leeds won it the year Aldershot and Maidstone went. Did that matter? Yet somehow, in 2019, it is the fault of English football's elite that Bury's owner took a gamble with money he did not have and ended up destroying the club.
So where from here? Well, plainly, the EFL needs to apply its fit and proper persons test more stringently, particularly when it appears Dale was allowed to buy Bury with many questions about his funds and plans unanswered.
Yet that would not solve any problem if he was still the only interested party. Worryingly, though, events of this nature tend to lead to calls for greater restrictions on investment as if, because Bury handled it badly, the same would be true of all owners.
The EFL's executive chair, Debbie Jevans, said she would not be averse to a salary cap. Yet why should Mansfield, and others, not be able to run a financially healthy business and then, within reason, have a little go? Not like Bury or even Bolton, just the sort of investment good business people make across all industries, when they decide it is the right moment to look upwards. The sort that gave us Bournemouth."
Read the whole article here, it's worth reading, and, in my opinion, Martin is spot on:
MARTIN SAMUEL: Don't blame the elite for the demise of Bury... their fall is their own business | Daily Mail Online
