You can’t tell me with Chelsea spending £ 200m there’s no money to help the EFL clubs
SCALLY INSISTS TOO MANY WILL GO BUST
GILLINGHAM chairman Paul Scally fears dozens of EFL clubs will go bust unless the Premier League come to their rescue.
Scally says his League One outfit are losing £ 40,000 a week and will not survive until Christmas after it was announced supporters will not be allowed back into games.
The outspoken Gills supremo believes it will be the same for other teams and insists the mega- rich fat cats in the top flight “must step up and do the right thing”.
Premier League sides have been discussing financial help for EFL clubs with a new bailout, which has become even more important after the Government blocked fans returning from October 1.
Scally, right, said: “You cannot tell me that, with Chelsea spending £ 200million in the transfer market, there is no money in the Premier League to help out the EFL clubs.
“We should be a family in football. We’ve been a family for 125 years and now when a member of the family is struggling badly, it’s time for wealthy big brother to step up and help.
“This latest blow will be devastating for clubs in the EFL. I’ve been worried sick about it. Last night I woke up at 4am because I couldn’t sleep through worry. It’s a day- to- day existence.
“We’ve been told they are going to try to help us, I don’t know in what form, but that can’t come soon enough otherwise clubs will go out of business.
“At the moment, we are surviving purely on what we get from the TV contract but that’s not sustainable. You can’t go on like that for any length of time. We rely on match- day revenue and all the ancillary business that goes with that. We are losing £ 40,000 a week at the moment and would be out of business by Christmas. It’ll be the same for so many others but I can’t worry about them because we have to focus on ourselves.
“Some clubs will be worse off than us, some will have benefactors but this is devastating for all of us. I’ve got to hope the Premier League do the right thing and I’m putting my faith in them, [ chairman] Rick Parry and his EFL to come to the rescue. The Premier League will know the importance of the football pyramid and help the family in our hour of need.”
EFL clubs had been given the go- ahead to start pilot schemes of having 1,000 fans back to try to set up a pathway for larger crowds as the season went on. But that has been put on hold by the Government following a rise in coronavirus cases, leaving football at crisis point and many EFL clubs fearing they will go to the wall.
Scally said: “The reality is that 1,000 fans is not enough and you could even argue it’s not really cost effective to have to look after that number. But the hope was we’d have fans back in sooner rather than later.
“I would even put up with the abuse that I get just to get them back in.
“I went to Wigan on Saturday, drove 400- odd miles there and back, sat with my daughter with a few of their staff, a few journalists and it was a terrible experience. Without fans, football is nothing.”