The Ferraris will be going, the Lamborghinis too. Fans have had enough of it
PLAYERS WARNED THEY COULD LOSE EVERYTHING IF THEY FAIL TO HEED VIRUS ‘WAKE-UP CALL’
PAUL SCALLY has warned players must take wholesale wage cuts – or 1,000 of them will end up on the dole.
The Gillingham chairman insists players from the Premier League down to League Two will have to reduce their contracts drastically to save football from the coronavirus crisis. Businessman Scally believes up to 45 clubs in the EFL will be in danger unless the “reset button” is pressed and even top-flight clubs will struggle to pay wages. He believes there should be a “solidarity plan” involving every club in all four divisions and wants to see:
●Agreed wholesale wage cuts and no poaching players from each other, so players will have to accept it.
●Premier League giants providing loans to keep lower-division clubs alive.
●A solidarity tax to force clubs to pay fines on overspending into a pot to ease the cash crisis.
●Every club drastically reducing costs for three months to save football. Scally said: “If the PFA say players won’t take a pay cut then you will find most clubs in Leagues One and Two won’t be paying them. Then you will have 20 players at each club, 50 clubs, 1,000 players out of work
“[PFA chief executive] Gordon Taylor is not stupid. He will know that.
“It will be exactly the same in the Premier League, believe me. If this goes on for a long time, there’s no way Premier League clubs can carry on paying players £100,000 a week, let alone £200,000 a week.
“If you’ve got a player on £3,000 a week in League One, they maybe take home about £8,500 a month, and how much do they need?
“You can take a mortgage holiday in these desperate times. You don’t need too much to get by. They’ve got to readjust – or be out of work.
“If you’re a Premier League star with five cars, then just don’t pay the lease for three months. There’s something not right about the wealth in the Premier League but this is doomsday.
“It will be a wake-up call. The Ferraris will be going, the Lamborghinis too. Fans have had enough of it. Football is in a bubble and maybe it needs to burst.
“If it means wage cuts, that’s how it’s got to be. If we show solidarity, the 91 clubs agree not to buy from each other, none of the players can move and they’ll have to take it or leave it.
“If Gordon Taylor says, ‘You’re in breach of contract, they can all walk free’, let them all walk free and see where they end up. It will be well received by the fans. People will be more comfortable if football goes back to the real world. No-one wants to read about £100million transfers – that’s obscene when people and society are struggling.
“The state-owned fund that owns Manchester City, they’ve not got to give football anything, but why not give a soft loan of £100m to League One or League Two clubs? It’d get us through six months and be a drop in the ocean for them.
“I’m disappointed that something like that has not happened but there are talks between the Premier League, EFL and PFA so I hope something can be sorted.
“There should be a solidarity pot. Championship clubs would be forced to pay 20 per cent of their losses. If a Championship club make a £50m loss, then pay £10m into the pot. That would soon reduce their losses!”
Scally has paid all of his players until the end of March but has sent a letter to them this weekend asking them to readjust during the next three months.
He said: “Deferrals don’t help us. If we defer all the wages, I’ve got to find £600,000 in a few months’ time. Where am I going to find that? We can’t treat staff differently from players.
“Anything is possible if we all come together. In Leagues One or Two, you’re probably talking about 40 or 45 clubs in serious danger.”
Football is in a bubble – it may need to burst