PART 2 of 2Champions’ League winning managers coming and going.
Players “who could really go places” coming and going.
'The story’s the same, only the names change…'
All football clubs have a present.
Some a glorious past. Others a bright future.
We all have wish lists for what we hope the latter will bring.
Two factors that I mentioned many times here, and on Twitter & Facebook, provoke much thought in how moving forwards as a club can – AND SHOULD – be possible in the 21st century.
To remind all:
1.
The long-awaited
2022 UEFA review of its 2011 Financial Fair Play (
FFP) protocol regulations, and
2.
The new stadium being built.
A 52,888 stadium capacity may only be a 32% upgrade on Goodison Park, but there are many other clubs already with a superior seating total than our current home, besides our rivals around England’s footballing cities. With no European fixtures involving Everton since 2017 and counting; FFP transfer budget allowances are far from the only reason we need to move on. More media interest in the sport of football, like just about anything still relevant and interesting to as much as know about in these times, comes from all around the world. As do the athletes, coaching, sponsors and owners. Football had evolved into a global market, with two lifebloods:
People and
Material Currency.
Like in just about all fields of society, the present tense is the all-important one. It’s what directors are judged by. It’s what defines the future tense and is a notion being affirmed more-and-more by the day.
Whether you and I like the thought of quick-fixes being popular with shareholders, keeping everyone within an organisation on its toes through words AND actions has led to a Premier League managerial dismissal within the space of just FOUR League fixtures as recently as August 2020. That very club’s new manager was among the bookies’ favourites to go first this season, given Palace’s opening seven fixtures in 2021-22. On that evidence, praise must be given to Patrick Vieira – just for surviving a whole season with his position intact.
But to sum up how the new stadium affects our future; being a present day-relevant Premier League club in 2024 – one way or/and another – gives us a greater media relevance and market draw. It presumably gives us more ticket sales, more appeal to the player market considering joining our club, more lucrative sponsorship deal potential: all equating to a larger FFP spending allowance on player personnel transfer muscle.
So whether Frank Lampard turns out to be a long-term solution for the club’s path forwards (and the young coach’s own long-term career progression), or further quick-fixes are to be the way, there’s plenty of responsibilities on Farhad Moshiri’s office desk to sort out.
This much we’ve known for some time now.
The other factor – the UEFA review of Foxtrot Foxtrot [you-know-what] – would reveal, in part, the true colours of an organisation hell bent on funnelling an influx of constant financial quick-fixes in just about any guise it believed it can get away with.
We could spend the second part of this 2021-22 season’s review condemning the European Super League being scrapped in all but name, or lamenting how backdoor, historical re-entries into European qualification were being plotted. Yes, some of the detail was quite sickening, to say the very least.
Instead;
I prefer to be a man of SOLUTIONS. And solutions for ALL.
Solutions of EQUALTY.
But solutions that DO NOT stand in the path of progress either.Loyal readers of the
LoveEvertonForum message board may have noticed the odd proposal for reforming the Champions’ League or the Premier League-to-Championship relegation-promotion mechanisms.
This past season has only echoed in greater velocity calls for far more consideration for top-class athletes’ career length duration (i.e. they’re going to burn out sooner, rather than later – at a much younger age, if constantly-increasing workloads are not balanced by lower fixture lists).
At the same time, criticism over too many unnecessary ‘
dead-rubber’ fixtures – especially in Autumn European competitions and internationals, have intensified.
Of course, European and international competition is a reservation for those who achieve best. Consideration of all other clubs – and their fans – have become hot debate too.
Then throw-in the interests of grass roots participants, beit men, women, the youth of tomorrow; and far from football being the only sport of participation in taking part, in officiating, in the provision of adequate funding, facilities and security arrangements.
There’s a lot that’s evolving in sport across the planet. Many organisations can’t – or simply aren’t trying hard enough – to keep pace.
The thought of lockdown periods being used by heavyweight political animals playing world statesmen/women over policing and reforming world sport may in real time have sent shivers down many spines. In retrospect, however, it could have been a golden opportunity to realign obscene sporting athlete salaries spiralling way out of control – in a flexible, controlled but forward-thinking approach to protecting young people’s career welfare. All at the same time addressing many concerns in the 21st century workplace ill-prepared men and women in their thirties, twenties and for some: teens; exposed to ever-increasing monumental opportunities – and exceptional dangers.
It may take the intervention of some third-party bodies to bring about reforms of the radical thinking requirements in football. Working together as a team; in transparency and with a collective goal, will inevitably make reaching desired solutions an easier and quicker process – in theory.
But enough about vision.
What are the solutions on the table?Well, IF we wish football, like all sports, to be taken and acknowledged as seriously as they all warrant and deserve to be; WORKING TOGETHER to fit all levels of the game, with all participants appropriately acknowledged by media interest and seen by as large a sporting audience market in united success for viewing figures AND satisfaction, is essential.
The gulf in income being generated between all levels of Men’s football is ever increasing.
The general performance levels of Women’s football is only rocketing at an all-time-high speed of progression. UK television is finally getting the message.
How therefore, do we keep ALL football participation and viewership relevant AND high in performance content at all times, to the best of everyone’s abilities?
Working together to eliminate ‘
dead-rubber’ fixtures, of course, is practical at all levels.
IF, for example, a 50% progression rate for 4-party, Champions’ League group phase participants, with a further 25% safety net for Europa League 3rd-placed teams in 4-team pools, is way too generous for the meaning of a six-fixture phase – something has to change. UEFA and everyone else would appear to agree with this (one way or another).
The principle of rewarding Champions’ League ‘quarter-finalists’ with six guaranteed fixtures may or may not have won everyone over in 1992-93 (remember Glasgow Rangers and Olympique Marseille battling Club Bruges and CSKA Moscow in one pool for one direct place in the Grand Final, against AC Milan?).
‘
Four-becomes-One’
then quickly turned into ‘
Four-becomes-Two’. Very different.
The ‘
trapdoor’/
booby prize of what was the UEFA Cup added on top; yes – all too much.
But only in practice.
The balance of eliminating ALL Champions’ League ‘
dead-rubbers’ must offer realistic opportunities of progression for all, as well as rewarding only the highest of achievement with the best path forwards.
The UEFA Cup/Europa League 5-party pools, with just FOUR fixtures (two home opponents, two away; a fifth gameweek sat out) reduces unnecessary fixtures, yet also offers far more in terms of working together in promotion of not only the Europa League (2nd-placed teams who fail to qualify for the Champions’ League knockout phase), but 3rd-placed teams entering the Europa Conference (on the condition the Conference winners – unlike the Europa League winners –
NEVER earn Champions’ League berths for the following season).
BOTH 4th AND 5th-placed teams are then completely eliminated from
ALL European action for that given season, and must therefore turn to domestic fronts for future seasons’ participation in Europe.
So, in turning the ‘
top table’ back to Champions’-only action, streamlining 57 clubs to 30 in one single one-off play-off game in an August/September fixture; before six group phase pools of 5 clubs, with group winners only allowed directly into quarter-finals, joined by two of the four best runners-up, play-offing in an extra gameweek (one single match – an extra incentive to win the group phase pool outright).
Realistic chances to progress to some form of European Winter action, but harder to actually win ‘
the big one’ – without taking it VERY seriously, from-start-to-finish.
No ‘
Last 16 knockout round’, meaning only 11/12 fixtures for ALL Champions’ League participants.
More equality. Fewer fixtures, but far fewer ‘
dead-rubbers’ (if any at all).
I’ve documented ‘
Premier League-to-Championship’ relegation-promotion reform on the thread:
“
A solution of trust”
loveevertonforum.com/thread/14765/solution-trustMercifully, it wouldn’t have touched on us this season in how 2021-22 ended – well, just about anyway!?!
But another reform could be to do something that has happened successfully in Scotland for some time now: splitting the League in half, mid-season.
In relevance of the English Premier League, splitting after 19 fixtures (half-season) and top-half 10 teams playing each other again (9 more fixtures), the same process for the bottom-half 10 teams (9 further fixtures).
A 38-fixture Premier League season cut to just 28 games – WITHOUT shrinking the League to less than its current twenty clubs.
(I’m soon going to be researching the internet for video presentation producers, keen to collaborate on alternative proposals to what’s being dubbed “
The Swiss Model” - something not looking too good (were you to ask Ralf Hutter & co. right now).)
BUT HAVE I FIXED THE CHAMPIONS’ LEAGUE?
OR JUST CREATED NEW PROBLEMS IN FIXING OLD ONES?AND HOW ABOUT UK TV FOR CHAMPIONSHIP CLUBS-DOWNWARDS?
Please get the discussions going!