PARRY’S SALARY CAP SERVES ONLY TO TRAP THE BIG FISH

FROM next season, paying players too much in Leagues One and Two will earn a points deduction. And not paying them at all? The same. No wonder the Professional Footballers’ Association are alarmed. The penalty for falling foul of the new salary cap regulations — £2.5million in League One, £1.5m for League Two — will start with fines and end with points taken if the breach is above five per cent. Yet Macclesfield Town were also fined and suffered points deductions during 2019-20, for repeatedly not meeting the wage bill. How can that be right? How can defaulting on employee wages be no more serious than an attempt to invest in a football club by paying more? It’s another triumph for Rick Parry’s EFL — a haven for bad owners and hell for ambitious ones. Any club that defaults on wages should have to apply for re-election, regardless of their

final league position. Yet the EFL have far too many rules to thwart ambition, far too few to fight off crooks. So Sunderland, average attendance 30,317, will now be subject to the same budgetary restrictions as Accrington Stanley, average attendance 2,862. And this being the third tier, a big fish cannot even escape to the top flight. Win promotion and Sunderland would still be in the Championship, run by the EFL, and subject to sanction. No wonder the clubs of any size or ambition — Ipswich, Sunderland, Portsmouth — voted against the new rules. They will now be held to disproportionate restrictions, in a league operating to the needs of the least ambitious, in the bogus name of financial sustainability. If it doesn’t matter how many come to watch, how long until they just stop going?