STAN COLLYMORE

I DON’T care if it’s the Premier

League, Bundesliga, La

Liga or Belarusian League, if the remainders of their seasons are being broadcast in the UK then they should be broadcast free to all on terrestrial

television as a goodwill

gesture.

Footballers bagging up food or donating money or medical machinery, have made me proud of my profession lately. But we have seen the industry itself at its worst, downright disgusting at times – looking at just about any ridiculous angle to get the gravy train back on the tracks. Football as a business has shown it is generally not to be

trusted.

IT wasn’t so much the six-point plan that MP Damian Collins and Sunderland co-owner Charlie Methven sent to the FA and EFL last week that had my blood boiling – it was the timing and the hypocrisy of it all.

Calling on the government to buy minority stakes in EFL clubs to stop them going bust is fair enough. I’ve argued for years that something needs to be done to save football from eating itself.

Indeed, on the face of it, their letter (under the banner A Way Forward for Football), which claimed ‘we may only have a few weeks to save professional football in this country,’ should be warmly welcomed.

But the timing of it makes me so angry because I’ve heard it all before from Collins, several times in fact.

Reckless

And his failure to act on any of those previous occasions, when he really had the chance to do so, has helped get us where we are now.

I don’t want to play party politics here because I’d be saying the same under a Labour or Lib-dem government.

But it is 10 years since the Conservatives returned to power and during that time we have seen reckless owners plunge clubs such as Blackburn Rovers, Charlton Athletic and Bolton Wanderers into chaos, we’ve seen Bury go down the swanny, and yet nothing has been done about it.

Now we are at 11:59.59 with the coronavirus pandemic wreaking havoc in our game, and all of a sudden Collins wants to ride to the rescue with support from a bunch of MPS who’ve hardly shown an interest in football before.

When he was chair of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, Collins had plenty of time to weigh in and sort football out but did he act? Did he heck.

Damage

He proffered a few soundbites and threatened to intervene but really all he did was take a step back and allow football to carry on eating itself.

Lower-league wages were allowed to go through the roof and clubs were allowed to live hand to mouth.

They saw clubs such as those I’ve

Football clubs are rampant businesses and if anyone who supports one of then they should think again. But just because others are doing it doesn’t