“FIVE OR SIX CLUBS COULD GO OUT OF BUSINESS”
Peterborough chairman Darragh Macanthony has never been one to shirk an opinion, and fortunately for FFT he’s got several on the future of Football League finances, salary caps and a “broken” loan system
In footballing terms, Peterborough United were among the biggest victims of the coronavirus pandemic.
When the League One season was brought to a sudden halt in early March, Posh were sixth following a 2- 0 win over Portsmouth. When the season was curtailed and settled by points per game, Darren Ferguson’s side dropped to seventh and out of the play- offs… then watched beneficiaries Wycombe – who leapt from eighth place to third – triumph in the Wembley final.
After some time to reflect after only four of the 23 teams voted to play on, FFT chatted to Peterborough chief Darragh Macanthony about his thoughts on an uncertain future for Football League clubs...
How do you see the landscape for clubs in Leagues One and Two?
As football clubs, it’s our job to play. I’ve had people on at me throughout the summer on Twitter telling me that the season shouldn’t restart until there are supporters back in the ground. That argument annoys me, because while we got away with curtailing the season, we wouldn’t again with our television deal. If some clubs don’t want to play football again, then the Sky deal would be null and void. The solidarity deal [ with the Premier League] will also be dead. That money is all we have coming in at the moment, and that income is about £ 1.5 million. A smaller club in League One or Two with crowds of 2,000- 3,000 are probably turning over around £ 3m a year – so do some basic maths and you can work out how much of that is TV cash, how much is gate receipts and how much is sponsorship. So it’s a ridiculous argument. We all want crowds back in the stadiums, but what we don’t want is to return and find out that we don’t have a TV deal. If we’re back with no crowds, limited crowds or full crowds, we have to be playing.
How bleak do you think it could possibly get for some clubs?
Some will use this as an excuse to say they are in trouble, but the truth is that they were probably suffering long before the pandemic. There will be a dark period for eight or nine months, not just for clubs but fans losing their jobs and not having a proper income. If we can get through, things pick up and normality returns – not the new normal, the old normal – then we should be able to put this in the rearview mirror. But we have to eat some s** t in the short- term. I said before that maybe five or six clubs could go out of business, and maybe another 25 could be in financial trouble.
What’s your view on ifollow streaming games that fans are not able to attend?
If clubs can get most of their season- ticket holders into the ground this season, then that takes care of that and the rest can pay to watch via ifollow in the short term. Clubs argue that they won’t make as much money, but this is a pandemic and nothing is ideal. You have to deal with the hand that is dealt to you. Maybe more money could be invested into ifollow to improve the experience.
What do you make of the salary caps that are now present in Leagues One and Two?
They won’t impact Peterborough too much because 10 of our players are under 21 and that doesn’t count towards the cap. But if others want to do it, that’s fine by me – the majority of clubs voted to say they couldn’t find £ 400,000 to finish the season, so maybe a salary cap isn’t a bad idea. Being serious, I have always said there should be more of a control on spending. If you look at the clubs who wanted to end last season early, 25 per cent of them were genuinely about money, another 30- 40 per cent were worried about getting relegated, and the balance will be clubs who had something to gain or lose.
Would squad caps be effective, too?
I don’t think that will happen. I put forward my proposal of a capping squads to 23 or 24 players, and then a certain amount of under- 21s. But the days of 30+ player squads has to go. We were guilty of that a few years ago – we had 37 pros at one time. You can’t do that any more, so common sense needs to take over. I am all in favour of common sense changes, not ones for the sake of them.
When it comes to player salaries, how key is the role of the PFA?
The biggest conversation in football that we are not having is about the PFA, who have got away with saying very little. What I would like the PFA to do now is to get their members – especially the ones in Leagues One and Two – to unilaterally agree a 25- 30 per cent pay cut. Not a deferral, a cut. What clubs can do to balance that is offer the player another year on their contract. That way, a player who is earning £ 1,000 per week with a year left on his deal agrees to take a 30 per cent cut to £ 650, but knows he has an extra year and is also helping his club and fellow pros. It will help the team sign more free agents. If that adjustment happened, then football would be in a better place straight away. But those conversations are not happening.
Should the Premier League do more to help lower- league clubs? How?
The Premier League need to do a deal to help us – I have been going on about this for months. How do we find £ 250m-£ 300m to help clubs out? I came up with suggestions and ideas that we factor in TV money from the Premier League, but nothing happened. I’m all for the Premier League players raising £ 30m for the NHS – it was a very admirable thing they did – but while that was going on, there were lower- league clubs on the brink of going out of business. It would have been nice if there had been a pot of money to help us finish off the season. League One needed about £ 7m to complete the campaign. Lots of top- flight players have progressed from the Football League: Jamie Vardy won the Golden Boot last season, Harry Kane spent time on loan at four clubs early in his career, and 75 per cent of the England squad that reached the 2018 World Cup semi- finals had played in the Football League. A bit of help in return would have been nice.
What else can be done to improve relations between Premier League clubs and those in the Football League?
The loan system is broken at the moment – the terms of doing loan deals with a Premier League club are weighted so heavily in their favour. I said about three years ago that we needed to make serious changes. I wanted to bring in a £ 750- per- week cap on wages in League Two; £ 1,200 for League One. Some clubs, including Peterborough, are having to pay £ 3- 4,000 per week for loanees from the Premier League – and instead of paying for nine months of the season, we’re paying for 11, plus their accommodation. The Premier League club has the option to recall them at any time, and if we don’t play them enough, we pay more. The conditions can be horrific. We’re not being bullied, but we are being forced to sign players because that’s the way the game works. I suggested that we should
reset – if every club in Leagues One and Two agreed not to loan players from the Premier League and the Championship, what would happen? Clubs from those leagues would be concerned that their young players weren’t getting any football, so then we can redress the balance and tell them our terms about a salary cap. All it would take is one window and we would have completely changed the landscape. Everyone was in agreement... but nothing happened.
How do you rate Rick Parry’s leadership of the EFL during this time?
I wouldn’t have wanted to be him. [ Laughs]
Rick was new to the job and this landed on him very early on. The one thing he has is experience. He was there at the beginning of the Premier League, he has run one of the biggest football clubs in the world [ Liverpool], so I was very happy when he was appointed. Am I happy with how the last few months have been handled? Not at all. What I wanted from the EFL was strong leadership. I hated the fact there was a vote to determine if the season restarted. We should have been told when the season was restarting. I don’t want any more of this democracy – I want to see some more leadership.
Might this episode prevent Championship clubs from overspending in an attempt to reach the Premier League?
I think there will be an adjustment for two or three seasons, but football’s football and it’s always about rich people who buy clubs. They use them as toys: go in, invest a lot of money, then s** t themselves when they don’t enjoy the success they want. Suddenly they lose interest, the club is saddled with huge debt and are losing £ 20m a year. It’s one of those industries that doesn’t make any sense. It’s a lot of fun but also very expensive. I think the smaller clubs might have an advantage in the next few years, while the bigger ones re- adjust as they deal with the pain that is coming down the road. If you are a club with a really good squad and can keep it together for a two- or three- year spell, then you could have a really good run. That’s certainly what I’m hoping will happen for our club, anyway.
“SMALLER CLUBS MIGHT HAVE AN ADVANTAGE IN THE NEXT FEW SEASONS, WHILE BIGGER ONES DEAL WITH THE PAIN TO COME”