Pull yourselves together

[Stato]

You, for me, personify the type of fan who takes everything the board say about FFP utterly credulously, as if in seasons to come it will guarantee we will prosper while the feckless rest go out of business.

The problem of FFP is that it's trying to challenge something much, much bigger than itself, the billionaire economics of the Sky-funded Premiership. It's like the gravitational pull of Mercury trying to combat the gravitational pull of the Sun. There is no indication it will transform the investment-led economics of how teams function at this level. The consequences for clubs in the Championship are harsh, we have to pay players wages in a market utterly distorted by Premiership wage benchmarks without having the Sky funding. But the gravitational pull of the Sky cash will continue to attract clubs that will pay this money. If we stand apart from that, we might congratulate ourselves for being very sensible and pure, but will likely do so in a half-full Amex scrapping away in the last third of the Championship. Better than Withdean? Certainly. But what the new 15,000 ticket holders thought they were signing up for? I don't think so.

I don't have an illusions about FFP and Brighton's future and it takes some extrapolation to come to that conclusion from a post which merely says "Stop throwing your toys out of the pram. Things will improve."

Its pretty obvious that second division football cannot sustain the ridiculous wage demands and that sooner or later the bubble will burst. After this happens, I would like to have a club to support. I am of the view that paying the type of wages that are expected is immoral. It would be this rather than bad results which would be more likely to disillusion me with professional football.