League One – the basket case of English football
Chaos reigns as the new season approaches and, says Jim White, it is hard to see any hope on horizon
The EFL has too often sat on its hands hoping the mess will clear itself up
It is a pity that League One is not able to offer a sponsor naming rights. If it could – in the manner of the Betvictor Northern Premier League for instance – then Linyi Luckystar Home Products League One would have a more than appropriate ring to it.
Because Linyi is the world’s largest supplier of wicker baskets. And there can be no doubt League One is English football’s basket case division.
Here is how bonkers it is: with just four days left before the grand launch of the 2019-20 season, one of Saturday’s opening fixtures has been suspended, another club are undertaking home matches 21 miles down the road from their base, while another are being
coached by a manager who has been charged with assaulting a rival last season. And that is before we even mention the club whose previous chairman still maintains ownership of the stadium, where he refuses to allow the sale of the beer whose logo is carried on the club shirt.
For Bury, whose opening match has been suspended, and Bolton, who nearly suffered the same fate, the jeopardy extends well beyond what ale is stocked in the club bars. In fairness to League One, neither club were a member last season. Bolton were then in the Championship, in freefall from the glorious Premier League days when Sam Allardyce ran the place as a retirement home for footballing superstars.
Jay-jay Okocha, Youri Djorkaeff and Ivan Campo had long gone as the club sank under the combined weight of debt and directorial incompetence.
Placed in administration, they enter the new season as good as already relegated yet further. As if an automatic 12-point deduction were not enough, at the time of writing the club only have seven senior players on the books, two of whom are goalkeepers.
The manager, Phil Parkinson, who, like his staff, has not been paid for nigh on six months, was obliged to cancel most of his pre-season warm-up games when the few players still contracted refused to turn out until they received some income.
Not that the administrators seem keen to improve the cash flow: they have yet to issue any season tickets to fans.
Meanwhile, Bury, who had been evicted from the division in 2018, somehow engineered a return after triumphing in League Two last season against all the financial odds.
Like Bolton, they too will be facing a 12-point deduction after the owner, Steve Dale, who only took control last December, realised he had bought a pup and put the club into administration in April, just as promotion was achieved.
With Ryan Lowe, the manager who had taken the club up, leaving to seek sanity at Plymouth Argyle, new man Paul Wilkinson has a challenge on his hands.
As the two newcomers to the division flounder, Coventry City remain in a permanent condition of self-destruction.
The despised owner Sisu, after first selling the Ricoh Arena then seeming unable to reach a deal with the new owners, has decided to play home games at Birmingham City’s St Andrew’s.
Quite why Sisu believes this to be an economically sustainable idea, given how few Coventry fans are willing to pay to watch the club in exile, is anybody’s guess.
Still, at least, unlike Fleetwood Town’s Joey Barton, the manager, Mark Robins, has not been charged with assaulting a rival – a charge Barton vehemently denies.
And presumably, unlike at Oxford United’s Kassam Stadium, Singha Beer will be available for those who bother to make the trek.
The English Football League was finally forced to intervene last night by suspending the Bury match. But for too long the response of the game’s rulers to incompetent owners taking control of our critical public institutions has been all too depressing: they have sat on their hands, fingers in ears, humming loudly, hoping somehow the mess will clear itself up.