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The Premiership has become a cancer
By Tony Kleanthous
Last Updated: 11:20am BST 30/05/2007


I bought Barnet Football Club in December 1994 and, at 28, became the then youngest chairman in the Football League. I was fortunate enough to have had a successful business career and when my telecoms company bought Ryman, the stationers, I started to look around for a fresh challenge - and buying a football club seemed a good idea at the time!


Tony Kleanthous: 'Everything is disproportionate'
Barnet FC had come into the Football League just a couple of years earlier and, after going into administration and being told all their players could leave on free transfers - something which has never been forced on any other League club - they had reached breaking point.

There were some much bigger clubs for sale requiring less time and money, but when I saw the sorry state Barnet were in I felt I had to do something. I relished the challenge of turning this little club around but I now know that I was foolish not to take into account the changing landscape of the industry and the vested interests that lie behind our national pastime.

I love football as a sport but, after 13 years' experience at the sharp end, I have some serious reservations about the future of the game. Have no doubt, the Premiership clubs now control everything in football but I have yet to see them take any decision that can be construed as being for the good of the game as a whole. The small clubs are just there to prop up the football pyramid and are considered as no more than an irrelevance.

It is not so long since Oldham and Notts County were in the old First Division and, on any given Saturday, no result was a foregone conclusion. Sadly, I don't think we can say that any longer about the top tier.

In my opinion, the Premiership has become a cancer, slowly devouring the purists in the game and seeking to consume everything in its path by wielding a huge wallet which divides its clubs from the rest of football.

Do we really want to see the same four clubs competing for the title each year? Do we really want to measure a successful season by a club's ability to stay up? Do we want clubs going bankrupt and losing all their players the moment they get relegated?

The competition now benefits a privileged few while the rest of football wait for scraps off their table. In the boardrooms of the Football League and Conference I find some of the most dedicated football supporters, chairmen and directors who, week after week, put a fortune of their own money into the coffers. But we are now all tainted by the adverse publicity generated by those at the top and some of their ridiculously highly-paid staff, so when things go wrong we get the grief.

Until 1992, the relatively small amount of TV money the game received was shared equally among the 92 clubs by the Football League. Today, the Premiership gets about 90 per cent, seven per cent goes to the Championship and the remaining three per cent is shared between Leagues One and Two.

Everything is disproportionate and a good example of this is the introduction of parachute payments. If ever there was a case of two wrongs failing to make a right, it was when they came up with this silly idea.

Now, if a club drop out of the Premiership they receive £20 million, over two years, as compensation. How are their Championship rivals, who are earning £1 million a year from television, meant to compete? It's no accident that the clubs that are relegated generally get promoted again, maintaining the yo-yo effect between the divisions.

Of course, this payment was devised so that the public would not have to witness misfortunes such as the one which befell Leeds United, who could not sustain their cost base in the Championship when their TV income fell of the side of a cliff. A sensible solution to this would be to ensure a more equitable share of income through the Leagues.

This is all a recipe for disaster for an industry that has survived for over a hundred years, and which now has more income than anyone could have imagined, yet is in danger of failing in the long-term.

The Premiership clubs have a duty, as the new guardians of our national game, to protect its long-term future, but by taking advantage of the quick buck offered by TV they are behaving like spivs.

So come on chaps: next year you will have an extra few hundred million to spend, so help the sport, help the industry and do something good for a change.

Because of the money involved at the highest level, the fear factor is strangling the entertainment out of the game - witness the FA Cup final - and unless somebody does something about it soon, the game I fell in love with will die.

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