"Project Big Picture"

[Innovindil]

10 hours ago, danhaw said:

The "top 6" are just very aware that a lot of "smaller" are starting to catch up on and off the pitch. Just take the start of this season for example. It's been chaos in terms of results and they don't like it. For me, this just an attempt to slow that process down. They have thrown their dummies out of the pram because they're not getting their own way anymore, simple as that.

Spot on. Main problem is the TV money has given enough money to "lesser" teams that they can now play hardball with their own players and not get pillaged every year. And it's not just protection from the top 6 either, a lot of Premier league teams now have more financial backing than a lot of the traditional big European sides. 

 

Eventually it will lead to a more competitive Premier league, but we know that's not what is wanted by these bastards. 

[RowlattsFox]

Seen a couple of EFL clubs league 1 and below coming out in support, no surprise to see Fleetwood one of them. For a small club where challenging for the top leagues unlikely the financial package is enough for them. They don't really care about the rest. 

 

The longer it's talked about the more I can a maybe see a lesser version of it going through. 

[UniFox21]

7 minutes ago, st albans fox said:

The concern shouldn’t be about project big picture but more to do with what will actually come from this (project little picture).  it may well have a strongly negative impact on our ability to compete for european qualification-

 

I suspect what will gain traction is the idea that all prem clubs give up 25% of their tv income to support the pyramid - it’s attractive to the masses and is difficult to argue against from a fairness perspective. But it will have a disproportionate affect on us compared to the big clubs and also those ‘comparable’ clubs with a larger fanbase and commercial revenue.   

we would argue against it but the response of govt and football in general would be that you can’t argue against everything and something has to be done. 

 

Whilst you're right that there's little arguing room against the proposal given the money of the prem, it's true we'd be more impacted than bigger teams.

A fairer way could be using some sort of grading system of overall income or another method dictating how much was required to be given by each club. 

 

[Dahnsouff]

Reading on RAWK, their fans seem intent on doubling down on their clubs proposals. Shameful pseudo-socialist behaviour.

People's club sure, as long as its their people.

Disgusting entitlement.

[st albans fox]

10 minutes ago, UniFox21 said:

Whilst you're right that there's little arguing room against the proposal given the money of the prem, it's true we'd be more impacted than bigger teams.

A fairer way could be using some sort of grading system of overall income or another method dictating how much was required to be given by each club. 

 

I think that misses the whole point of the plan ..... it’s to give the bigger clubs an advantage ..... the endgame of this particular exchange won’t be anything that maintains the status quo re even distribution of monies - the big clubs will come out of this in a better position than they went in. 

[UniFox21]

Just now, st albans fox said:

I think that misses the whole point of the plan ..... it’s to give the bigger clubs an advantage ..... the endgame of this particular exchange won’t be anything that maintains the status quo re even distribution of monies - the big clubs will come out of this in a better position than they went in. 

For sure that was just wishful thinking on my part on what should happen. However, the big clubs hold too much power and influence that as you said, any deal would see the power shuffle change to suit them and them alone.

[Dahnsouff]

The point of providing much needed investment to the EFL is beyond reproach (At least as it appears, and presuming it is not subject to rapid withdrawal or removal) however the underlying, unspoken argument here seems to be that the PL pot should be distributed amongst those who earn it, those who pull in the most viewers, supporters.

However to  mess with the distribution of money is to risk unbalancing the whole product, the very thing that sets the PL aside from La Liga or the Bundesliga, its unpredictability.

 

Seems the Big 6 fans are moving in a similar direction.

 

 

If the PL was made up of the big 6, their B teams, and their youth team, then sure, take all the money and live the dream.

The other 14 teams enable the big 6 to make their money. Show some respect.

[foxy boxing]

The big six basically want to play less domestic football and play more European games and more lucrative friendlies and more foreign tours. They also want less relegation and fewer opportunities for clubs to get into the Premier League. They certainly don’t want another team to do a “Leicester”. They just want more and more money, they want to cream more and more off the top of the game, remember the 39th game they wanted played abroad. They are trying to blackmail the smaller clubs into accepting millions, in the short term it might be good for small clubs but in the long run it won’t be. It’s greed pure and simple by foreign owners who don’t believe in true competitiveness or competition.

[deep blue]

What needs to happen now is that one of the non-big-six clubs, e.g. us, puts forward a counterproposal which retains all the positive parts of this one but without the negative bits, and especially it removes any clause which gives unequal voting rights.

[UHDrive]

17 hours ago, Spudulike said:

Not sure why Southampton will get special voting rights when both Villa and Newcastle are historically ahead of them. https://www.statbunker.com/alltimestats/AllTimeLeagueTable?comp_code=EPL

It should be a case of what you have done since you've been in the PL and not how long you've been in it. It's a no from me. Every team in the country chomps at the bit to reach the pinnacle of their career whether it be golf, tennis, cricket and rugby etc. and the fact that this is in effect allowing the top teams to be financially better off and making a further mockery of FFP rules is beyond comprehension.

[tylesta]

The big 6 should just go and make a league of 6 and play each other 4 times a year!!! 

[UHDrive]

In any case the sports minister Oliver Dowden isn't in any way shape or form going to allow this to happen. The government will end up regulating football so as to stop these breakaway clubs from monopolistic proposals and therefore nipping it in the bud before it gets out of hand. I think these proposals will get dropped before the 'top 6' get very far.

[AndyK]

15 hours ago, st albans fox said:

cant see many premier league clubs being able to hold out for big fees from the big six clubs once this comes into play - would be like the old days -  we want your player - here's what we are prepared to pay - thank you very much …..

Agreed, how is Woodward going to make extravagant signings now?!

 

It's so absurdly one-eyed it's simply amazing that it was still like it after 18 revisions. I am baffled as to how anyone could have thought this was a good way to approach things.

[ealingfox]

Anyone able to copy and paste the Times article from Matt Dickinson? The replies to his accompanying tweet make for very depressing reading.

[Muzzy_Larsson]

14 hours ago, mazarron fox said:

Muzzy if you read what I put earlier most of the players currently in the premier league outside the top six would not get into that elite group in our team for example maybe 2 or 3 at best in teams lower down hardly any. Most of the best players are already at these 6 clubs so the overall standard of the rest wouldn’t drop.

yes commercially not so viable but given a choice of paying for a top European league or a domestic competitive top flight for less who knows what fans outside the big 6 may chose? 

Your missing the whole point, it's not about players getting into the top 6 sides it's being able to pay for them. You currently have a wages to turnover ratio of circa 80%. If these teams left the league, like I said the league would be far less commercially valuable which means it would generate less money from broadcasters, sponsorship and everything else, that means the clubs would get less and they wouldn't be able to pay the players they currently have nor could they then attract the same standard of player with less money. It's not rocket science.

Edited 13 October 2020 by Muzzy_Larsson

[yorkie1999]

Don't understand the point of scrapping the league cup, why not just change the rules so if you don't want to enter it, you don't have to.

[davieG]

7 minutes ago, Muzzy_Larsson said:

Your missing the whole point, it's not about players getting into the top 6 sides it's being able to pay for them. You currently have a wages to turnover ratio of circa 80%. If these teams left the league, like I said the league would be far less commercially valuable which means it would generate less money from broadcasters, sponsorship and everything else, that means the clubs would get less and they wouldn't be able to pay the players they currently have nor could they then attract the same standard of player with less money. It's not rocket science.

Most of the players that are currently in the 11+3. are there because they're not good enough to get in the 6 so within the same argument those players will have less choice of clubs to go to for big money so will have to settle for what the remaining clubs can afford. It will eventually level itself out.

[mozartfox]

This kind of concept has virtually killed F1, so go ahead Big 6 and kill the EPL competition as we know it. Go off and play pointless Tour games and in a European League that will have limited interest outside of the fan bases of those Clubs involved.  

 

I cannot wait to watch Liverpool play Inter Miami at the Giants Stadium next July at a PPV price of UKP 15.99.  Bring it on you greedy bastards.

[Corky]

According to Martyn Ziegler in the Times, the EFL turned down a £375 million investment without putting it to all the clubs.

 

Good job Parry hasn't been saying how desperate they are for money recently.... 

[AndyK]

15 minutes ago, Corky said:

According to Martyn Ziegler in the Times, the EFL turned down a £375 million investment without putting it to all the clubs.

 

Good job Parry hasn't been saying how desperate they are for money recently.... 

 

I just saw that, and Ziegler is usually pretty solid. 375M for 20%, as per the rugby union deal. Would need a really good reason to turn that down, or Parry might be out by the end of the week!

 

Tariq Panja of the NYT is as usual peddling the Liverpool/MU party line from his Parry hotline.

[suffolk fox]

Bottom line is if Man Utd and Liverpool want to sod off and join some sort of European Super League let them do it.  Would our game seriously be any worse off?

I for one am getting sick of Sky, BT and the media bias bum licking the supposed big 6.

 

I, have said from day one the premier league is a unique brand but it is morally wrong, when the premier league gets the ridiculous sums of money it inherits.  Money should always be distributed down the football league not just kept within the premiership.

 

No surprise that Rick Parry is part of this?

 

This is just a scheme whereby the big 6 would gain everything and would be allowed to retain loads of young talent and allow them to pick and choose supposed inferior smaller clubs, us, Burnley, Brighton, etc all of their better players.  In essence they would get considerably better and more wealthier, pure greed.  Sod

anyone else daring to trample on their greatness.  An example being little Leicester daring to win the premiership.

 

This proposal being suggested by Utd and Liverpool shouldnt be allowed to happen.  If it succeeds football as we know it would be doomed to failure.

 

 

[urban.spaceman]

 

Someone help a brother out...

 

 

[davieG]

3 minutes ago, urban.spaceman said:

 

Someone help a brother out...

 

 

FOOTBALL | MATT DICKINSON
Premier League’s ‘big six’ want to kill chance of next Leicester City fairytale
A pandemic, with the game at its most vulnerable, has provided the opportunity to launch a hostile takeover
Matt Dickinson
Tuesday October 13 2020, 12.01am, The Times
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It is 59 years since Tottenham Hotspur won the English league title, only four years since Leicester City pulled off one of the most sensational and inspiring achievements in all of sport.

One club is invited by John W Henry to join him in carving up English football — deciding on the rules, vetoing owners if they so choose, shovelling more cash to the wealthiest — while the other is treated with contempt.

“We don’t want too many Leicester Citys,” an anonymous football executive told The Independent a little while ago. Project Big Picture is the bare-faced embodiment of that jaw-dropping quote.

Never mind the “big six” — Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester City, Manchester United and Tottenham — Leicester would not even qualify as one of three patsies invited to sit with the big boys while they reshape the game. Everton, Southampton and West Ham United are the lucky three offered Special Voting Rights on time served in the top flight (though they could be out-voted by a two-thirds majority, ie the “big six”, so are basically there just to get the coffees in).

Crystal Palace would be next. Leicester have to wait in line like obedient servants.

Those who think this proposal is a financial lifeline for EFL clubs that must be grabbed in desperation need to pause — it should only take a second — and understand why these demands are simply non-negotiable.

It is not only that Henry and his ilk do not want too many Leicester miracles, and want to make it as hard as possible for another as they seek to protect their cartel. Does Henry even see the point of clubs like Leicester?

There was a profile piece about the Liverpool owner yesterday, by a journalist who has dealt with him, which explained how Project Big Picture had started to form in Henry’s mind as far back as 2012, when he fully realised the wealth-sharing system of the Premier League.

This went against all his capitalist instincts. In Henry’s mind, apparently, it was hard to see the point of the likes of, say, Blackburn Rovers and Stoke City and half a dozen other clubs who came and went from the top flight, yo-yoing up and down, scrapping against the odds, taking cash even in the Championship.

For an American, the division was stacked with minor league clubs playing in the majors. And, worst of all, these schmucks got money that could be Liverpool’s by rights given their heritage and popularity in Asia.

Ian Ayre, the former Liverpool chief executive, once clumsily picked on Bolton Wanderers to articulate how these apparently piddling clubs — a founder member of the oldest league in the world, 73 years in the top division, four-times winners of the FA Cup — were such an unattractive proposition for overseas viewers that Liverpool should be able to carve off all their own rights and leave the underclass behind.

His master’s voice, Ayre will have been less surprised than anyone that Henry has now put his master plan down in writing. Liverpool, in particular, have been chipping away at the collective foundations of English football for years.

A pandemic, with the game at its most vulnerable, has provided the opportunity to launch a hostile takeover. That is bad enough but we have to endure the disingenuousness of Rick Parry claiming that the owners of Liverpool and Manchester United care for the pyramid.

There is one simple way to prove it — a rescue package without so many strings attached that it wraps the whole game in their red tape.

Henry’s background in American sport, and a land of closed leagues, is bound to inform his desire for a protected cartel but it is not just the stateside executives who want to enshrine the “big six” in perpetuity. A frequent complaint from Premier League chairmen and senior executives is the way that Ferran Soriano, the chief executive of Manchester City, makes clubs outside the “big six” feel like an inconvenience.

Playing Aston Villa or Crystal Palace is a chore when Soriano, with his grand vision, thinks City should be facing Barcelona and Real Madrid far more often. The point of the lower leagues for him is so that City can have a B-team.

For all the sweeteners being thrown at the EFL clubs, are these seriously the people who are going to be given unprecedented powers in English football? Allowed to change the game for ever?

Their agenda is clear; unequal distribution to increasingly favour the richest clubs; many more games in Europe; no pesky League Cup; games carved off from the main broadcast deal so the biggest can cash in around the world; more money-spinning pre-season tournaments. And those are only the changes they admit to, the thin end of the wedge. How many more steps to a Super League?

Of course none of this opposition is much comfort to those EFL clubs losing money. But given the wealth in the game — more than £1 billion spent by Premier League clubs in the transfer window just gone — is it any wonder that government despairs of football’s inability to muddle through the financial challenges of Covid-19 without tearing itself apart?

Perhaps Henry and Parry, the former Liverpool chief executive, have been smart enough to draw up a Plan B which has most of the good parts of the deal without the demands that would disfigure the game permanently. They have less than 48 hours to come up with an alternative before the top-flight clubs are due to gather.

It would be nice to think that Henry might be at that meeting, to look Leicester, Palace and the rest of the clubs he has treated with such disdain, in the eye — or does Parry have to do all his dirty work, the convenient fall guy?

[Dahnsouff]

So if I read The Athletic article right, this Project Cluster **** means that when the EFL clubs get their 250m they hand over ALL broadcast rights to the EPL too?

 

Edited 13 October 2020 by Dahnsouff

[twister]

15 hours ago, Foxes1 said:

Liverpool fans won't be very keen to accept it when they have to change their name to Liverpool Red Sox.

And they play half there games in dubai or boston

 

This veto gives them the right to basically end relegation at all

 

its disgusting in every way