Gateshead plight, VAR rows and PSR mysteries highlight state of game
So what is it that we really want football to look like in 2024 then?
It is the question we should return to after a Sunday afternoon where football’s news cycle became a typhoon. And I think the story probably starts at Gateshead, a club whose remarkable, expectationdefying season came to an abrupt full stop over the weekend.
In case you’re not familiar with the incredible success story that is the Tynesiders, here’s a brief recap. Gateshead are a club that came within hours of extinction in 2019 after they fell into the sort of ownership you wouldn’t wish on your biggest rivals, only rescued by a fan-led consortium.
Relegated to National League North for breaking financial rules on their former owner’s watch, they climbed back into the National League, securing a play-off spot without the resources other, more high-profile non-league clubs have used to steamroller their way through the pyramid. The Heed have instead done it sustainably: a manageable budget, recruiting brilliantly, a squad of good players and even better people. This season they had two managers in Mike Williamson and his successor Rob Elliot, both former Newcastle United players who are destined for bigger and better things.
Yet on Sunday, Gateshead were kicked out of the National League play-offs for failing to meet the EFL’s criteria for membership. Essentially Gateshead cannot provide a guarantee of 10 years tenancy at their current ground, the council-owned Gateshead International Stadium, so the EFL say they cannot be promoted.
Pick your villain here: is it the intransigence of the local authority or the EFL? The council – pressured by cuts from central government in a story that is repeated around the country – is looking for a “partner operator” to shoulder the cost of their leisure facilities so says it can’t provide the 10-year security of tenure the league needs. But surely they should be moving heaven and earth to support a thriving football club in their area?
The EFL – going against offers from the National League, council and club to come up with a creative solution – referred back to its rigid rules and stuck to a decision that means no Gateshead in this week’s play-offs. It is a scandalous outcome, short-sighted and lacking in the common sense required to support a club who operate within their means and don’t have a budget to fund their own ground.
But it says a lot about the way football is going that by early evening, the simmering Gateshead injustice had been lost in the rubble of a weekend of refereeing rows, social media scandal and VAR calls that surely strengthen the case for tossing the whole technology out of the game.
VAR isn’t even the most troubling acronym in the sport at the moment: instead that accolade falls to PSR, shorthand for the Premier League’s profitability and sustainability regulations that have left an indelible mark on this season.
PSR, like video referees, was cooked up with some good intentions. Sustainability and ridding the game of the sort of owners who put their clubs in danger by gambling the house on success are laudable aims.
But somewhere along the line, the practical application of PSR has become a glass ceiling which threatens ambition and cements the position of a few clubs whose dominance has been self-defeating and self serving. Fans across the game understand that now, and don’t like it.
Seeing Everton hit with an eightpoint deduction while champions Manchester City play out another tilt at a double with 115 charges hanging over them feels unfair. The punishment meted out to those at the bottom feels arbitrary – “making it up as they go along” was the accurate accusation of the Everton Fan Advisory Board – the impact on this season profound.
Football should be settled on the pitch, with moments of euphoria like Coventry’s late, ultimately disallowed winner seared on our collective consciences. Instead we wait: for those sitting in a booth in Stockley Park, or lawyers on an independent commission, to tell us what’s actually happening.
Nottingham Forest were firmly in the wrong with their ridiculous post on X hinting at dark, malign forces undermining a relegation fight that they have brought on themselves.
But the sense of frustration they tapped into when whoever it was tapped out that message? Football’s authorities are kidding themselves if they think it isn’t bubbling away under the surface, ready to erupt.