Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
PYRAMID YELLING
Hoops boss Warbs warns: 10-15 clubs may go under if fans aren’t let back in
IN his previous incarnation as a City banker, Mark Warburton used to sign off billion-pound deals like a supermarket cashier scanning groceries.
So, when the Queen’s Park Rangers boss warns that English football could lose “10 to 15 clubs from the pyramid” in the game’s gravest financial crisis, we had better listen.
Warburton understands money, and if his dire forecast doesn’t ring any alarm bells, there’s nobody home in the belfry.
Rangers, who have one of the b o tt o m- s i x b u d g e t s in the Championship, were well worth their point against a club insulated against relegation by parachute payments, and still packed with Premier League experience.
Warburton, responding to the rejection of Project Big Picture – the Premier League giants’ power grab thinly disguised as charity – said: “We need an alternative distribution of wealth. There’s no revenue coming in at the moment, nobody coming through the turnstiles, and we can’t go on like this.
“It may be that we lose 10 to 15 clubs from the pyramid, but that’s the harsh reality – there was a good game of football here, but there were only about 50 people allowed in the ground to see it.
“There’s a lot of talk about parachute payments, but we go into the season knowing three teams have parachute payments which are multiples of their overall squad budget.
“Is that a level playing field? No, it’s not – but life’s not a level playing field, so you have to deal with it.
“You come to places like this, you know what you are facing, and have to apply yourselves to do the job as best you can.”
QPR are a well-run club who did not deserve the knee-jerk twaddle that came their way when players did not take a knee at Coventry last month. This is the club who staged the Game 4 Grenfell in response to the terrible inferno on their doorstep, and who renamed their ground the Kiyan Prince Foundation Stadium after a teenage victim of knife crime.
And the Hoops gave Bournemouth a timely reminder of the value of grinding out results, while
striker Josh King gets over the disappointment of his deadline-day escape tunnel back to the Premier League collapsing.
King sat out a frustrating deadlock at the Vitality Stadium and Cherries keeper Asmir Begovic (below) said: “Now that all the various transfer windows have closed, everyone has to get their heads down and fight for the club to get some good results.
“Josh is a top player and we know he can make a difference for us. Football is a business and he’s someone we’re happy to have around the place.
“Now we know who’s staying, we have a good squad and can push on.” BOURNEMOUTH: Begovic 6, Mepham 6, S Cook 7, Rico 6, Stacey 6, Gosling 6, Lerma 5 (Stanislas 76, 5), L Cook 6,
Smith 6, Solanke 6, Surridge 5
(Danjuma 61, 7)
QPR: Dieng 6, Kakay 6, Dickie 8, Barbet 7, Wallace 6, Amos 6 (Carroll 72, 6),
Cameron 7, Osayi-samuel 6 (Adomah 67, 6), Ball 6, Chair 6 (Willock 83), Bonne 6