Holloway blasts Red Devils and Liverpool for their ‘selfish’ proposals
FORMER LEICESTER CITY BOSS HITS OUT AT RADICAL SHAKE-UP
FORMER Leicester City boss Ian Holloway has slammed Liverpool and Manchester United as “selfish” over their proposals to shake up English football.
Plans for Project Big Picture have emerged over the past few days, with the two north-west giants leading a bid to change the structure of the game and the way revenue is distributed, all while giving themselves extra voting power on Premier League matters.
Under the plan, the Premier League would be cut to 18 teams with the League Cup and Community Shield scrapped, while a £250 million bailout would be handed to EFL clubs amid the coronavirus pandemic, with sides in tiers two, three, and four receiving a greater share of future TV money.
However, in the Premier League, revenue will be distributed a lot less evenly than before, while the longest-serving nine clubs in the division, which includes all of the ‘big six’, would see their opinions count for more in Premier League votes.
City, as the 11th longest-serving side in the top flight, would not receive special voting rights.
Their former manager Holloway, who oversaw the club’s relegation to League One in 2008, has strongly criticised the plans, even though his current side Grimsby would stand to benefit.
He said: “What are Liverpool and Manchester United thinking? How selfish are you? Breaks my heart to say it, I don’t get it.
“Why do they need two less teams in the top flight? Bit of a threat are they? Not where you want to be in the league at the moment are you?
“You should be under threat, the game doesn’t belong to you. The club might, but for how long? The game belongs to people in England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales. It belongs to us.
“Every community deserves it, and you’re just at the top of it, so who do you think you are?
“They want to squash the competition and make sure they’re going to be the top six forever and a day. You’ve got to earn that right, because we all want to catch you.
“We’ve all got to have a dream haven’t we? We’ve all got to be able to believe, and it’s just nonsensical to me. Football cannot die, but selfishness is what’s killing it.”
While EFL chairman Rick Parry has given his support to the plans, the Premier League and Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden have expressed their concerns.
Holloway believes the Government needs to step in to prevent the elite clubs taking control, and to ensure the smaller clubs stay afloat.
“I listened to the Government’s man who’s in charge of it all, and at last he’s started to threaten them and say we’re going to have to step in,” Holloway said.
“I think they need to step in right now and tell them what we want, not what you think is right. Who are you to suggest that?
“I think governance is absolutely vital right now, because money is going out of the game left, right and centre, billions and billions of pounds buying footballers, and it’s going out the game. The game needs it, put it back in the game, get the Government to control our game and make sure the people at the bottom still have a club.
“Greed is disgusting, and that’s what I’m seeing everywhere. It’s absolutely vile, and I hate it, so step in.
“Go and tell the top clubs that you can’t do that, please. Somebody needs to. It just doesn’t make sense to me, not in any way, shape or form.
“They have to step in and stop the top from being uncontrolled. They should have limits to how much they can pay for somebody – when’s it going to stop?
“Let’s make football strong and divvy it up fairly from top to bottom. The game’s in danger when all of that money goes out of the game. It’s all wrong.
“There’s more than enough money in the game to stop it going out, and it needs to be done right now. They’re not going to do it, because they want to get richer and richer.”