MARTIN Samuel’s
excoriating verdict on Gordon Taylor
GOrDOn TaYlOr is not a stupid man. he must know how bad this looks. he must appreciate how rapidly his members are falling from favour with the rest of the country. astonishingly, he doesn’t seem to care.
If the chairman of the Professional Footballers’ association continues down this path, if he refuses to compromise in the face of financial crisis, the industry may never fully recover from the coronavirus pandemic.
unless footballers are allowed to demonstrate some understanding of the pain the country is feeling, when the game returns the appetite for it will be roughly on a par with cock-fighting.
The subscriptions that have been cancelled will not be taken up again. The grounds that have lain empty will no longer be full.
This much-vaunted festival of football will be met with the hollowest laugh and rejection.
unless the PFa relents on playing hardball over salaries, unless those on £200,000-a-week contracts are seen to care, the reputation of footballers will suffer irreparable damage.
It seems unfathomable, therefore, that Taylor is still refusing to strike a deal that would save football clubs from ruin.
It is unfathomable that Taylor apparently believes clubs are crying wolf, exaggerating their difficulties to take advantage of the situation. It is now being speculated that any decision on wage reductions has been put back another week at least. If this is the case, Taylor is deluded.
Certain clubs — Manchester united, Manchester City, Chelsea — may be protected from the worst by wealthy owners or a powerful commercial arm, but the majority are terrified for their immediate future. and while the problems in the lower leagues are well documented, do not imagine the Premier league is immune.
Without the next tranche of television revenue and merit money, many wage bills cannot be met. That four Premier league clubs have already placed the non-playing staff in governmentfunded furlough is not just rank opportunism.
Take Tottenham. It may seem appalling for the state to be picking up even the tiniest portion of their wage bill, but do not think the crunch in football is any less real.
Some sources place Tottenham’s monthly salary commitment in the region of £12.33million, plus a suffocating mortgage on the stadium. how is that to be met without a revenue stream?
The decision of Canal+ and beIn SPOrTS to withhold rights money while ligue 1 remains suspended in France is a stark warning of what is to come.
If Taylor imagines Premier league clubs have a secret stash hidden away, he is mistaken.
Much of what is earned is out on the field; much of what comes in is already accounted for. This is not the 1950s — a ceiling on wages and grounds full to the rafters. These days, we know where the money goes.
So let’s think kindly and imagine the delay has only occurred because Taylor has rhinoceros hide, is tone deaf or has lost his mind. Perhaps his union wishes to agree the parameters of any arrangement with clubs, so that arbitrary wage cuts across the industry do not arrive by the back door. It may be that football’s finances are very different at the end of this, that contracts are not as lucrative, that transfer fees are suppressed, and no union would agree to its members taking a 50 per cent hit, without the prospect of deferment, repayment or a return to normality in future.
In that case, Taylor’s strategy may appear greedy and callous, but it isn’t entirely surprising.
Yet football has become an easy target because of Taylor.
Politicians, noisy celebrities, those living on social media, know they can win approval by giving the game a kicking right now.
JulIan KnIghT, chair of the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport select committee, waded straight in on football’s greed this week.
‘It sticks in the throat,’ he said. ‘This exposes the crazy economics in English football and the moral vacuum at its centre.’
Talking of moral vacuums, do you know how Knight makes his money? he writes. One of his biggest sellers was a 2004 guide on how to avoid tax.
One of the chapters advocated emigrating to escape inheritance tax. another showed how to avoid inheritance tax while still getting free local authority nursing home care. another book by Knight, on obtaining British citizenship, pointed out:
‘Becoming a British citizen means enjoying full voting rights and access to all sorts of benefits.’ Governmentsponsored furloughs, maybe?
Yesterday, Knight called on the Chancellor to impose a windfall tax on any Premier League club that refuses to cut players’ salaries. If he does, perhaps the head of the DCMS committee can then advise on how to avoid it.
Actually, any salary cut undertaken without agreement awards the player a free transfer, so Knight’s plan would literally ruin football clubs overnight.
If Tottenham cut Harry Kane’s salary without negotiation he would be a free agent. One might think in Knight’s position he would know that, but empty political leadership is surely no revelation. Matt Hancock, Health Secretary, was on football’s case too, yesterday.
You’d think he’d have more important things on his mind, the government having tested just 0.4 per cent of key NHS workers for coronavirus up to April 1.
This isn’t to say football shouldn’t be judged; more that it’s sobering to know who is doing the judging.
For the game would not be alone in playing the system on coronavirus.
Take supermarkets. As has been widely reported, panic buying and the prospect of a long- term lockdown have combined to create a shopping bonanza. The figures for major stores are even better than Christmas. Yet supermarkets have been given the same rates and VAT holiday the Government has awarded to small businesses, whose premises have been ordered shut. Is that right? Is that fair? Couldn’t that revenue be put to better use?
Yet barely a murmur on this anomaly. Even the banks withholding Government money and sending small businesses to the wall does not attract the column inches of condemnation levelled at footballers and their clubs.
Taylor should take heed. This is not a battle he can win, certainly not for hearts or minds at this stage.
There is a very real risk intransigence will bankrupt football clubs while this attempt at brinkmanship will further alienate an angry public. Coronavirus is an enhancer and it has already made the debate over footballers’ salaries a defining issue of this new age.
Taylor was caught out by the scandal over brain injury in his sport — following when the PFA should have been in the vanguard of study — but to be wrong-footed by this is, if anything, worse.
The strength of feeling is obvious and only a fool would ignore the public mood.
Taylor either does a deal today, or the clubs and his members should do the right thing without him.