Greed of the elite is like a boa constrictor that squeezes the life out of England’s small clubs

ANDY HOLT, the owner of Accrington Stanley, is sitting in his office, his voice shaking with anger and frustration. He says he feels like walking away from the club he has rebuilt because he is so sick of the drip, drip, drip of betrayal that has been visited upon him and Stanley as the greed of the elite drives England’s small clubs inexorably towards the wall.

‘It’s like having the air crushed out of you by a boa constrictor,’ he says. ‘Every time you breathe in, they squeeze you a little bit tighter. All I want is to run a cracking little club that can exist without going into debt in League One, League Two or the National League. But the harder I try, the more they do to make it impossible.’

The next big squeeze is coming on Tuesday night when Liverpool will field a shadow side for their FA Cup fourth-round replay against Shrewsbury Town at Anfield. Jurgen Klopp and the first team squad of the champions-elect will be in the middle of their winter break and will not interrupt it. The prestige of the FA Cup, already diminished by degrees over the last 20 years, will take another big hit.

Klopp has not caused this crisis for the cup. His action is a symptom of the problems it faces. Not the cause. Tuesday night’s masquerade will be just the latest blow in a prolonged bombardment of our most famous football competition.

But for Holt and the supporters of many lower league clubs, the Liverpool manager’s refusal to attend the tie has become a cause celebre, a powerful symbol of how the richest clubs in the English game care nothing for the poor of the Football League.

Because even if the magic of the cup has been diminished for many of us, it still works a wonderful sorcery for many lower league clubs. It has the power to regenerate, even to resurrect, with the gate receipts it can generate.

FA Cup and Carabao Cup ties and replays against the big clubs are lifelines for lower league teams. Stanley built a new stand at one end of their Wham Stadium on the proceeds of a League Cup run four years ago. But now the competitions are being undermined and the lifeline is being withdrawn.

Below the Premier League, as Holt pointed out last week, there are more and more signs that our football culture is under threat. The 20 teams in the top division are bloated with television cash but more and more in the lower divisions are in acute distress.

Players’ wages are not being paid on time, clubs are facing winding up orders, players are suing clubs to be released from their contracts because they are not being paid, clubs are selling t heir grounds and leasing them back, Bury have gone out of business, Bolton and Birmingham have been deducted points. The idea of the 92, the number that has underpinned our professional leagues for so long, is at risk. More than at risk. After Bury’s demise this season, there have only been 91 teams in the league. Bury will be replaced next season but more clubs will go the same way. And the more the Premier League turns the screw, the more certain it is that other lower league clubs — clubs at the heart of their communities — will bite the dust.

Last week, Pep Guardio la suggested that, in the interests of player welfare and easing fixture congestion, the Carabao Cup ought to be scrapped. In the next breath, he criticised Manchester City fans for not turning up in greater numbers to watch the club’s FA Cup tie against Fulham. Maybe a man of his intellect ought to consider that demeaning competitions is unlikely to improve attendances.

There is still some sympathy for the Premier League stance. It seems absurd that when English football finally introduces a winter break, there should be FA Cup replays right in the middle of it. There would be more sympathy for it, though, if clubs did not take their players on long- haul pre- season tours and accept an extended Champions League format that is set to increase the load.

That is the problem for managers like Guardiola and Klopp. They rage, quite rightly, against fixture congestion and agitate, quite rightly, for player welfare but they make their stand on a hill where only the small clubs will die.

In the fierce financial battleground of English football, where the denizens of the lower divisions groan and scream in their death throes, the rich of the Premier League are the generals who watch from horseback.

It might be different if our top clubs were going up against UEFA or giants like AC Milan and Real Madrid in the quest for improved player welfare but they are not. Their foes in this war are

Accrington Stanley and Southend and Rochdale and Oldham. Klopp and Guardiola are populists but, in this instance, they are fighting for the haves, not the have-nots.

The benefits that the cups bring to clubs like Stanley are tangible. Last year, Holt walked me round the Wham Stadium before the FA Cup third-round tie against Derby County that brought Frank Lampard and his former side to Lancashire.

He pointed out the new stand behind the goal, built with the proceeds of that 2016 League Cup run. The match against Derby, which was televised, was worth £200,000 to Stanley, whose wage bill last year was only £1.3 million. That kind of windfall made a world of difference. In the three years before this, Stanley made £750,000 from the cups.

So when Guardiola suggests throwing the Carabao Cup in the bin, he should think of the consequences beyond the gilded halls in which he walks. If the Premier League is intent on devaluing domestic cups, the very least it should do is strike a deal to compensate clubs already struggling to survive.

If they don’t, if other managers decide it is not worth turning up for FA Cup ties any more, then the break- up of the 92 will start to accelerate fast and something that has meant so much to our football culture for so long will be lost.