Lower league clubs face scrap to make every penny count
IT IS quite difficult to listen to bleating from the Premier League about their financial losses due to coronavirus at a time when the gap between the haves and have nots gets ever greater.
News that Gareth Bale was set to return to the Premier League came at the same time as Macclesfield’s 126 years of existence was ended in a virtual courtroom over debts which amount to a week’s wages for the Welshman.
And while Brentford and Hull pulled off notable Carabao Cup shocks this week, a more reliable gauge of the growing chasm between the top flight and the rest came from the opening weekend results.
For all Leeds’ attacking heroics at Liverpool, all three newly promoted sides lost. In the Championship, the three freshly relegated sides all won.
The shorter close season certainly will not help West Brom and Fulham’s chances of for once avoiding the drop, the latter’s boss Scott Parker warning in the wake of their Carabao Cup win at Ipswich that reinforcements are urgently needed to stand a chance of staying up.
But, for now at least, it hasn’t harmed Watford, Bournemouth and Norwich to have started the season with a significant number of players with topflight credentials.
While empty stadiums impact on top-flight gate income, that figure was already dwarfed by worldwide broadcasting deals. Down the pyramid, clubs are grabbing every tenner they can get from streaming passes – although forcing season-ticket holders to pay for away games, something they got free in Project Restart, may do more to damage goodwill than boost the coffers.
At least Exeter have had a £4million windfall from Ollie Watkins’ £28m switch to Aston Villa thanks to a 15 per cent sell-on clause they inserted when the striker left for Brentford.
Developing talented players is likely to become ever more important as clubs look to find ways to survive. Perhaps it is time for the EFL to insist an Exeter-style clause is inserted into all transfers to ensure the developing club gets their dues.
Just one small way of trying to level the playing field.