Money ruins sport.

**Dodds** · 1st February 2011, 02:18 AM

After an exciting day of watching the end of the January transfer window (Football/soccer thing, I think the closest the USA would have to it is the draft day) and seeing the transfer fee for Andy Carrol and Fenado Torres (£35 million and £50 million respectively) I got to thinking how is any team not owned by a billionaire meant to compete with that?

What this is doing is consolidating wealth to a few select clubs who can afford the transfer fees and wage demands of the top players, making the game pretty boring as the same sides win the league, cups etc. It takes the competitiveness out of the game in my view.

If also stifles youth development, an example would be a player called Danny Wilson who played for my team (Glasgow Rangers) and was breaking into the first team at age 17. A good prospect in defense, but due to Rangers current financial situation we had to sell him to Liverpool, and now he is not even a sub there.

I have no problem with players being paid, or even transfers but there should be some kind of wage cap and transfer cap to level the playing field in my view.

Anyone have any differing opinions?

**scholardude** · 1st February 2011, 12:55 PM

I don't follow football/soccer much (though I'm nominally a liverpool fan due to the fact that they and the sox share ownership) but the main core of the issue, I'd imagine, as it is in baseball in the U.S., is the unfettered use of ownership money. The Yanks and my Sox are a couple of a few select teams where premier players are very likely to end up at some point in their careers due to the vast amount of fan and ownership money available for the team's exploitation. The NFL does a better job, in my opinion, of controlling this. Continued team success is generally not about the naked use of vast amounts of money but how shrewdly it is used.

With this news of the Andy Carroll transfer, I see that Werner, Henry et. al. (owners of the Sox and Liverpool) are having a very expensive off-season in both their sports. Hope it pays off.

**Dodds** · 1st February 2011, 09:23 PM

Just to back up my point.

Chelsea the Premier League's biggest spenders with £172m wage bill - Telegraph

If you look at the largest spenders it is the top 4. Only after Man City got taken over by a billionaire did they manage to compete, Spurs spent a shed load too. The games about money now. Its sickening to me.

Although you do have a point about its how you use it, but you can get the best manager and give him no funds and see how well he does in that league.

**Grogybear** · 8th February 2011, 12:50 PM

Quote by: scholardude

With this news of the Andy Carroll transfer, I see that Werner, Henry et. al. (owners of the Sox and Liverpool) are having a very expensive off-season in both their sports. Hope it pays off.

IIRC they spent something like $250,000,000 on 2 players for the Sox (contracts, fees etc). The £60m spent on Andy Carrol and Luis Suarez is small change by comparison, particularly when we recouped £57m on Torres and Babel (i.e £3m nett spend to chelsea's £70m)

Hopefully Dodds, with the new "financial fair play" rules being phased in over the next 5 years or so bullshit like City and Chelsea will come to a stop. Even without spending more on transfers, City's wage bill is probably the same as all the expenditure of all the other clubs outside the top 4 combined and will have to be reined in for them to stay competitive.
There'll still be loopholes but over time things will improve, I think.
Thankfully Liverpool will have next summer to seriously splash the cash

.

As for Danny Wilson; Carra and Kyrgiakos are in the twilight of their careers so I think that Wilson, young Danny Ayala (who is injured at the moment but had a good first half of the season on loan at Hull) and Martin Kelly (who had a fairly epic game against Chelsea) will be backup/rotation and will in time be our starting centre backs

**Dodds** · 8th February 2011, 12:53 PM

Bloody shame he left Rangers IMO. He was fantastic in the SPL. At 17 to show such maturity, a natural replacement for Weir. Again funds ruin the game. If you look at the EPL, a lot of great players are ex Rangers or Celtic, but the money draws them to it. Again I do think it is ruining the game. But I guess I am old fashioned.

**Grogybear** · 8th February 2011, 01:58 PM

Quote by: Dodds

Bloody shame he left Rangers IMO. He was fantastic in the SPL. At 17 to show such maturity, a natural replacement for Weir. Again funds ruin the game. If you look at the EPL, a lot of great players are ex Rangers or Celtic, but the money draws them to it. Again I do think it is ruining the game. But I guess I am old fashioned.

To be fair to the english league, the scottish is far worse overall. Perhaps there should be some sort of playoff system introduced which gives the likes of hearts and so forth a chance to win the league for the first time in about 20 years.
Scottish sport seems to be going backwards.. its a pity.. you were really punching above your weight there for a while..

**Dodds** · 8th February 2011, 02:03 PM

Should the EPL give the likes of Bolton the chance to win the league?

You forget since the EPL was formed there have been 4 winners of it. Man Utd, rich, Chelsea, nuff said, Arsenal rich and Blackburn who bought the title.

Its twice the size of the SPL so mathematically it has had just as many winners over the past 20 years.

But I agree with you, Hearts, Hibs, Aberdeen, Dundee Utd should be up there and challenging. Again the problem is money.

**Grogybear** · 9th February 2011, 02:21 PM

Fair point.

If you look at major leagues around europe, there seems to be far more fluctuation in teams positions in the league than in britain.
Germany France have had a great deal of different teams doing well since the domination of Lyon and Bayern Munich have stopped. Apart from the big 2 in spain there is alot of movement in their league - Real Mallorca very nearly finished in a Champions League spot last year, a team with no money at all.

For whatever reason the SPL and EPL seem far more rigid although I have to say the EPL is far more competetive this season.
Bolton, Sunderland and Spurs are all doing well, the Mancs are only top of the league through luck and if they had fewer favours done for them by refs and the FA there might well be 5 teams with a real chance of winning the title this year.

**Dodds** · 9th February 2011, 02:31 PM

And the SPL has 3 teams who are in with a shout of winning it. But the top of the EPL is again dominated by money, Man City is just a joke, its like someone has found a cheat for LMA manager and made them Man City.

Spurs again have spent their way to the top. Sunderland are a mid table side, always will be. Bolton are playing well. The team I would really like to see up there are Blackpool. I love their style. Flat front 10 and a goal keeper. So entertaining.

**Grogybear** · 10th February 2011, 08:31 AM

Quote by: Dodds

And the SPL has 3 teams who are in with a shout of winning it. But the top of the EPL is again dominated by money, Man City is just a joke, its like someone has found a cheat for LMA manager and made them Man City.

Spurs again have spent their way to the top. Sunderland are a mid table side, always will be. Bolton are playing well. The team I would really like to see up there are Blackpool. I love their style. Flat front 10 and a goal keeper. So entertaining.

Yup.. guess so. Daniel Levy is a multi-billionaire as far as I am aware.. Spurs' tactic seems to be to buy everyone else's players so nobody else can have any.

United's commercial and matchday revenue was so far ahead of everybody else's that huge injections of cash were the only way to catch them up. If they hadn't been bought by the Glazers who've saddled them with a shit-ton of debt (about £900m) they'd have casually strolled away with every league within the last ten years. They're totally broke now so its a golden opportunity for others to catch up.

They could do it in a sustainable way like liverpool are hopefully going to do (our commercial revenue is the highest in the league and, I think, the 3rd in the world after Real Madrid and Barca) or they could, as you mentioned, use the money cheat like Chelsea and City.

As much as I hate Utd, I respect them in a way that i'll never respect Chelsea or City. Utd basically earned their way to the top, to their privileged position.

Pity about blackpool now. They took a few by surprise at the start of the season but now their general lack of quality is starting to show. They'll probably get relegated. I just hope Holloway isn't sacked... he's a character and a half.