Parachute Payments - a fair system or not?

[Dirk Gently]

Sure, but the PL have to operate within the rules set by the FA, so they might not want to be fair, but the FA should be.

Have you ever looked at the composition of the FA Board and seen how much power and influence the PL have there? The bastard child that the FA agreed to create in 1992 - so they could get one over their old rivals the FL - has now completely outgrown and consumed them.

 

[Dirk Gently]

As you say ... it needs a few more thousand words to tell the whole story.

The bit I would question is your assertion that the Premier League "exists to represent the interests of its 20 member clubs". I think the evidence is fairly clear that the Premier League exists to represent the interests of about 5 clubs. The rest are bought off and keep quiet.

If, of course, this were ever to be seriously threatened, the Big Five would simply exercise their threat to pull out and take their self-interest off into some form of European Super League.

Fair enough. But much of the time the interests of the top 5 are also the interests of the 15 hanging onto their coat tails. And, to give them some praise, they do still think collectively where it counts, in things like collective selling of TV rights.

 

[Gritt23]

It's not fair at all, and actually contributes to the financial meltdown that football seems to accept as part of the normal course of events.

Without the parachute payments clubs would have to introduce some form of tiered contract whereby a players salary is commensurate with the division that the team is competing in, and is automatically adjusted following a relegation. So a player signs a 3 year deal for a Championship club for example, and the contract will pay say £10k a week for any season in The Championship, £35k for any season in The Premiership, and £2,500 a week for seasons in League One etc. Sign a player like Carlton Cole in teh Premiership, and maybe he is on £50k a week, that would drop to £15k a week in they get relegated to The Championship.

This gives the players a better incentive to fight against relegation - just how bothered do some players look about relegation from the Prem when they know they are going to continue getting a kings ransom next season anyway. If their money was to drop automatically, then even if they do get relegated, they may be more accepting of a move away from the club, rather than staying and draining funds the club can't afford anymore.

For me, THAT is a change of tack the game needs to make anyway, and if you do away with parachute payments, clubs will have no option but to make this change for themselves. They would have to actually have a properly financed Plan B for dealing with relegation, rather than Plan B being "well, we get parachute payments for a while, so we just HAVE to get back up before they stop."

 

[Triggaaar]

No. The FA has been emasculated by the big boys in the Premier League.

Have you ever looked at the composition of the FA Board and seen how much power and influence the PL have there?

No. Do you fancy explaining (in an unbiased way if possible) to those that don't know?

 

[Dirk Gently]

No. Do you fancy explaining (in an unbiased way if possible) to those that don't know?

Will do, certainly, when I have time ....

 

[Triggaaar]

Without the parachute payments clubs would have to introduce some form of tiered contract whereby a players salary is commensurate with the division that the team is competing in, and is automatically adjusted following a relegation. So a player signs a 3 year deal for a Championship club for example, and the contract will pay say £10k a week for any season in The Championship, £35k for any season in The Premiership, and £2,500 a week for seasons in League One etc. Sign a player like Carlton Cole in teh Premiership, and maybe he is on £50k a week, that would drop to £15k a week in they get relegated to The Championship.

This gives the players a better incentive to fight against relegation - just how bothered do some players look about relegation from the Prem when they know they are going to continue getting a kings ransom next season anyway. If their money was to drop automatically, then even if they do get relegated, they may be more accepting of a move away from the club, rather than staying and draining funds the club can't afford anymore.

That may be just off the top of your head, but I like the basic idea. I would probably prefer it for relegation only, not for promotion, since some players simply won't be good enough for the league they're getting promoted to, and so they won't get a game and they won't leave as it would involve a pay cut.

 

[Triggaaar]

Will do, certainly, when I have time ....

Thanks. Although it'll probably be depressing.

 

[Rugrat]

That may be just off the top of your head, but I like the basic idea. I would probably prefer it for relegation only, not for promotion, since some players simply won't be good enough for the league they're getting promoted to, and so they won't get a game and they won't leave as it would involve a pay cut.

The idea is fine as a concept .. trying deploying it. Yes there are some examples but players won't sign a contract like that.

 

[mikes smalls]

Have you ever looked at the composition of the FA Board and seen how much power and influence the PL have there? The bastard child that the FA agreed to create in 1992 - so they could get one over their old rivals the FL - has now completely outgrown and consumed them.

On that note I've been reading a good book, Glory, Goals and Greed: Twenty Years of the Premier League by Joe Lovejoy.
It a good read and the chapter on the inception of the Premier league is very interesting.

 

[Rugrat]

No argument with that. But the problem most people have is thinking that there is still an "entire structure". The PL regard themselves as being English football in its entirety thee days, and they don't care a tinker's cuss for the pyramid lower down. There are two structures - the PL and the FL and downwards, with a gaping great chasm between them (a few years ago, the average PL wage was 4.54 times greater than the average Tier One wage.)

Yes, the PL does pay £2.2M a season to each Tier One club and they laughingly call it "solidarity payments" - but really that's just to keep Championship clubs dependant on this money, so they can win votes on things like EPPP by threatening to withdraw it.

Agree the comment about structure ... indeed the whole thing went tits up as soon as they allowed the Prem League to establish itself as a "separate" entity

 

[Notters]

Touchy subject for me. I think the whole system is totally f***ed and clubs outside the Prem have little chance of ever developing or aspiring to compete at the top level without the support of a benefactor and it feels wrong.

The wages paid to Prem players is obscene and parachute payment have to be in place otherwise pretty well every relegated club would go bust straight away, that's why they get it (I believe). It's not intended to give them an extra advantage just recognises they have financial obligations that aren't always easy to unravel. So, given the financial structure of football, I have to say it's fair

Agree with you rugrat. But surely it should just be in players contracts that they won't get paid as much if the team is relegated?

 

[Aadam]

I don't think it's fair at all. When a club is promoted their immediate reaction is to strengthen and spend money. Unsustainable amounts of money if they were to return to the Championship a year later. Unlike Blackpool -- who kept their £10,000pw salary cap when they went up -- most teams will break the bank to sign second rate Premier League players in an attempt to stay up and solidify a position in the league. Look at QPR, they're paying Barton a reported £80,000 a week [Guardian]. Most Championship sides don't pay their starting 11 this. Plus, he is on a 4 year deal. So if they were to go down, they'd have no option to sell. Who else would take Barton off their hands and pay him this?

It's irresponsible, but you can't blame them. The Premier League sits at the bottom of a rainbow, and all the promoted teams want their share of the gold, and are willing to spend whatever they can to keep receiving it. Before the break away all 92 football league clubs shared the TV money and sponsorship. Now, as we all know, the top 20 share the Sky TV money and sponsorship and only a tiny amount is trickled down to the rest of the football league. The average Premier League team receives £45m while the average Football League Championship club receives £1m.

The answer is that it is not a fair system. The solution, who knows.

Their contracts should include relegation release clauses, so if other clubs would give them contracts when initially sold, they would after relegation too. Also, would Barton and Zamora really be happy in the Championship anyway?

Didn't Barton play for Newcastle in the 09-10 Championship season?

 

[Triggaaar]

The idea is fine as a concept .. trying deploying it. Yes there are some examples but players won't sign a contract like that.

The problem is the FA and the will of the FA, but they have the power to make contracts like that mandatory. But without the FA, it would still be possible. If that's what clubs did, players would have to get used to it. It's not like Zamora had several clubs fighting for his signature, and he wasn't happy at Fulham, so what else was he going to do? If it became the norm, it would work, as long as players had relegation release clauses.

 

[Triggaaar]

Didn't Barton play for Newcastle in the 09-10 Championship season?

Yes, point taken, but if Newcastle couldn't afford his wages, I'm sure he's have been happy to go to a premiership side.

 

[Simster]

No it's not. Promotion to the old First Division (and relegation from it) worked perfectly fine before the conspiracy that is the Premier League happened.

I'm not convinced by this argument. Back in the 80s, we saw Bristol City, Swansea and Wolves all plummet from div 1 to div 4 in the space of four or even three years - in many cases, the problems were partly attributed to the cost of wages spiralling as players have automatic triggers in their contracts that spark bonuses in the event of promotion, which were not revoked when they subsequently got relegated. Those clubs nearly when bankrupt as a result.

As far as I can see, football needs to do a better job of sharing it's wealth for the good of the professional game, and yet there appears to be no appetite for this at the top of the tree. Instead we get whining that doing this would mean they couldn't compete for the world's very best players, as if that is a major problem for the Bundesliga which is a far better run and better attended league.

 

[yxee]

Parachute payments exist to remedy the problem that bottom half premier league clubs have a natural fear of expanding, but this is not the true problem, just a symptom. They only have this fear because of the unnatural gulf of income between the 20th and 21st league positions, which only exists because of the practicality that a league of 92 teams must be subdivided in order to fit home and away games into a single season - a team which finds itself at the bottom of league 1 therefore has a massive advantage over a team that finishes top of league 2, despite the marginal difference in league position, because it has the 'fortune' to have been placed in a league with the big clubs which attract the big TV audiences.

If the Earth happened to orbit the sun so slowly that 1400 days fit into a year we might very well have a single league with 182 games a season. The arrangement is totally arbitrary yet it profoundly affects the entire game.

The Premier League, as it currently exists, owes its existence to the lower leagues, because without the structure as a whole it cannot claim to be "the best league in the country", let alone the world, however this debt is rarely paid back to the clubs struggling in these leagues, and when it is paid, it's paid erratically to a handful of clubs which are likely to win promotion very quickly. The system is a mess and it needs an overhaul.

 

[Gritt23]

The idea is fine as a concept .. trying deploying it. Yes there are some examples but players won't sign a contract like that.

Which is why we don't have it currently, because clubs know they can take a period of that wage in The Championship because of teh parachute payments, but if they weren't there, clubs would simply have to be more circumspect.

I'm not saying that it would definitely come in, but if that were to be the fall-out of the removal of parachute payments, then it becomes another good reason to get rid of them.

 

[Rugrat]

Which is why we don't have it currently, because clubs know they can take a period of that wage in The Championship because of teh parachute payments, but if they weren't there, clubs would simply have to be more circumspect.

I'm not saying that it would definitely come in, but if that were to be the fall-out of the removal of parachute payments, then it becomes another good reason to get rid of them.

I think if parachutes were removed it would make matters even worse. It's about the only way half the teams (or more) in the Prem can afford to give contracts to players, because if they get relegated they can at least pay the ones they can't unload. Take the parachute away and I'd fear the whole thing implodes.

It's a crap but necessary payment that keeps the Prem League going with some (not much) element of competition. The game went bonkers when the PL and FL split, Sky got in on the act and agents held clubs hostage for the players that would make the difference.

I hate it with a passion but self regulation or a mandated contract structure that reduces wages when clubs are relegated will never happen in my humble. Not sure what the answer is, don't think there is one

 

[Dirk Gently]

The whole thing is tied up with multiple other strands - quite apart from the PL powerbase on the FA (which I'm struggling to summarise in under 500 words!) there's the whole question of Football Creditors Rules - under legal challenge but anyway the Government have pledged to remove this by legislation if the football authorities won't remove it themselves. May take a while, though, and will require fundamental changes within football as FCR underpins the whole game - what team would agree to play a cup tie at Pompey if FCR didn't guarantee them their 40% of the gate?

On the subject of relegation clauses - current regulations require that new player contracts do have a clause stating what will happen to player remuneration in teh event or promotion or relegation. Unfortunately, most clubs just put words to the effect "to be agreed when it happens". For every rule there is a loophole!

 

[Gritt23]

Take the parachute away and I'd fear the whole thing implodes.

Maybe it needs to!!

We currently have clubs having an unfair advabtage, and if the justification is how else can those clubs afford to pay the players that give them this unfair advantage. That's just madness.