The Peterborough Evening Telegraph
Fry’s fury: ‘You’ve all failed the football family’
Posh - More fallout from the coronavirus crisis
Peterborough United director of football Barry Fry believes the football family has been failed by the Premier League and the Professional Footballers Association union (PFA).
Fry insists the lockdown caused by the coronavirus pandemic is the biggest crisis he has seen in his 60 years in football.
And he believes the Premier League and PFA are not doing enough to help clubs lower down football’s food chain.
“In 60 years in football this is the biggest crisis I’ve known,” Fry stated.
“When all this is over it won’t just be one club going out of business, others will fold like a pack of cards.
“Unfortunately the Premier League couldn’t give a **** aboutthelowerdivisions.
“It used to be the case that they’d buy our players and that money would be spent on players at other clubs and the money would travel around the lower divisions.
“We were like one big family, but now too much money is spent on players from abroad.
“As for the PFA they have £50 million in the bank and they must know that a lot of their members, the players, will be out of work when this crisis is over. So why aren’t they helping clubs to stay in business? We need to keep the 91 clubs together, but the bottom 47 are going to need a lot of help.”
Posh chairman Darragh MacAnthony has in the past called for the Premier League to loan some of their riches to those less fortunate.
The PFA and their chief executive Gordon Taylor have restricted their input during the current crisis into making sure players don’t accept deferrals of more than 25% of their wages when some clubs, Posh included, wanted 50%.
Many lower division clubs are reluctant to agree to play their remaining fixtures behind closed doors as they would lose their main source of income, i.e gate receipts.
They would prefer the season to be declared null and void now.
Posh might also be concerned about a possible collapse in the transfer market.
Posh could reasonably expect to receive a huge fee for star striker Ivan Toney in normal circumstances if they choose to sell him, but it’s now widely accepted clubs won’t have the same amount of cash to throw around.
This is not a view shared by MacAnthony who believes a depressed market could boost interest in a player like Toney as Premier League clubs would rather spend £10-15 million on homegrown talent than £50 million on overseas players.
If the 2019-20 season is voided Toney’s departure would be pretty much guaranteed as Posh would need cash to cover their expected £1.5 million shortfall in season ticket sales, sponsorship and merchandise sales the lockdown has caused. Posh could also have to refund current season ticket holders who have paid for five matches that might not now take place.
Posh intend to offer Toney the most lucrative contract in the club’s history if they win promotion to the Championship.