MNF Gary Neville On Big Picture and trying to Save Football

deary

deary

Well-known member
Interesting debate on Sky Monday Night Football about project Big Picture and the future of the game & plight of lower league clubs.
Neville spoke a lot of sense. Lets all hope something akin to his proposals come into fruition & quickly 🤞 .

www.skysports.com

In full: Nev, Carra on the future of football

In an in-depth, passionate discussion on MNF, Gary Neville and Jamie Carragher analysed the Project Big Pitcure and Our Beautiful Game proposals and how football can be positively restructured.
www.skysports.com
 
watched it last night after the match. Was a really good debate with both Carragher and Neville making a lot of excellent points especially Neville although I did disagree with one of his points. Carragher also got his points across well too. Especially with regards to making the point re the PL clubs. He said the rest of the PL vetoed the big six but were more than happy for the PL finishing early last season to protect their own PL status.
 
Funny you post this I watched this just half an hour ago.

I thought Neville, who I hated as a player is one of the most intelligent people in the game currently.

For me 95% of what he says is bang on the money, and it actually seems crazy how some of the more obvious solutions have never been acted on.

The only thing I disagree with him on would be the independent regulatory body. I can just see that solving some of the problems we have now but bringing it’s own issues down the road.

He touches on a real solution and demonstrates it when he explains about his voting habits with Salford, each owner needs to really see the big picture, and act in a self interested way which is far more rational than now, the further you go up the pyramid self interest becomes increasingly irrational.

You have to have a degree of self interest to give the pyramid it’s essence of competition, a regulatory body would completely kill this, but currently the owners don’t realise their self interest will eventually kill the product as is.

I wonder if it’s ever going to be feasible to have a reset to the pre 1992 structure with one over all body governing English football.
 
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deary said:
Interesting debate on Sky Monday Night Football about project Big Picture and the future of the game & plight of lower league clubs.
Neville spoke a lot of sense. Lets all hope something akin to his proposals come into fruition & quickly 🤞 .

www.skysports.com

In full: Nev, Carra on the future of football

In an in-depth, passionate discussion on MNF, Gary Neville and Jamie Carragher analysed the Project Big Pitcure and Our Beautiful Game proposals and how football can be positively restructured.
www.skysports.com
Click to expand...
Neville spoke a lot of sense in talking about something something that supporters groups have been advocating for a number of years.
An independent regulatory body running football is surely the way forward, stop these big Clubs dominating football and rogue owners buying Clubs stripping our Community assets.
Something that football fans are passionate about especially in the lower leagues.
 
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BFC59 said:
Neville spoke a lot of sense in talking about something something that supporters groups have been advocating for a number of years.
An independent regulatory body running football is surely the way forward, stop these big Clubs dominating football and rogue owners buying Clubs stripping our Community assets.
Something that football fans are passionate about especially in the lower leagues.
Click to expand...
I think there is a strong argument for an independent organisation to act for all of football.
I see that Rekt disagrees.
Im not saying it should replace what we have but there should imo be an overseeing body to ensure some kind of checks & balances.
As GN points out, the Premier League, EFL &, FA, are all primarily concerned with their own agendas.
There needs to be more cross platform cooperation.
Same could even be said for something like the PFA who i understand are a union for players & certainly started with the best of intentions. They have lots of money swishing around mosty through increased revenue generated by the prem so could imho certainly do more . Surely a trade union should not exist to get rich? It seems Gordon Taylor has just become the archetypical fat cat boss on a huge salary.
 
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Rektseasider said:
Funny you post this I watched this just half an hour ago.

I thought Neville, who I hated as a player is one of the most intelligent people in the game currently.

For me 95% of what he says is bang on the money, and it actually seems crazy how some of the more obvious solutions have never been acted on.

The only thing I disagree with him on would be the independent regulatory body. I can just see that solving some of the problems we have now but bringing it’s own issues down the road.
Click to expand...
I think it may work to oversee what we have?
Rektseasider said:
He touches on a real solution and demonstrates it when he explains about his voting habits with Salford, each owner needs to really see the big picture, and act in a self interested way which is far more rational than now, the further you go up the pyramid self interest becomes increasingly irrational.

You have to have a degree of self interest to give the pyramid it’s essence of competition, a regulatory body would completely kill this, but currently the owners don’t realise their self interest will eventually kill the product as is.

I wonder if it’s ever going to be feasible to have a reset to the pre 1992 structure with one over all body governing English football.
Click to expand...
I cant see that happening. Too many people feeding at the trough to want to give up their positions, I guess in theory a merger of the FA/PL & EFL would be good for the overall game but doubt it will happen.
 
deary said:
I think there is a strong argument for an independent organisation to act for all of football.
I see that Rekt disagrees.
Click to expand...
Purely on the basis that it might sort some of the initial problems with the distribution of wealth now, but it will only dampen these issues until a point 5,10 or 20 years into the future.

Neville slightly contradicts himself ( not a criticism as he was delivering an impromptu impassioned monologue), by offering the regulatory body as the solution while then stating that real change will only come from the clubs and owners themselves.

Like I say a regulatory body would just decide winners and losers it fancies at the time. Much like the big 6 tried recently, I can see it being open to pressure or worse and as we’ve seen with football I’m not sure the leadership in these issues has been anything other than awful.

It really needs owners, clubs and the league to realise that rational self interest in the form of financial support for the lower leagues and more accessibility to the product is really the only way the structure can currently continue given the wealth that has now been generated.

If the ambitions and desires of a few are not self controlled then maybe there’s an argument that they need to suffer the consequences of their poor decisions.

For example 6 teams breaking away to a European league which doesn’t take off Leaving them miles behind where they would have been in the premier league, where as the remaining Premier League teams in chasing glory force 6 of the biggest earners away leaving them all the poorer for it.

The solution to modern football’s dilemmas are symbiotic, it shouldn’t be dictated by 6 clubs or a regulator.
Edit @deary sorry had started this before I saw your last message. I agree a merger of them all might be a start but also agree it’s never going to happen. Which makes me think they need to suffer the consequences of poor decisions.
 
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One of the things they need to do is to ban any ownership or majority ownership from abroad. All should be UK registered compsnies and have at least majority ownership in the UK. It was notable that the Big Project proposals came directly from a couple of the foriegn families Foreign owners rarely have any affinity with the community roots and history of English football
 
deary said:
I think it may work to oversee what we have?

I cant see that happening. Too many people feeding at the trough to want to give up their positions, I guess in theory a merger of the FA/PL & EFL would be good for the overall game but doubt it will happen.
Click to expand...
The whole ethos of the FA/PL was to get away from the EFL to line their own pockets. Why would they consider a reunion?
 
That was fantastic, really insightful. As many of us have believed for years these big owners have absolutely no interest in football and grass roots football it is all about power and increasing profit. What do they care if many clubs have to fold , why is it not more reasonable to distribute the wealth a little more.
 
I suppose the key question in all of this is what a regulator actually does.

I am in favour of having one - for a number of reasons :

  • there is a huge moral vacuum at the heart of the game. It grew out of amorality at the very top of the sport, has permeated far and wide and if left unchecked will eat the sport from within
  • there is also a cultural scleroticism that affects all of the various ruling bodies - FA, EPL, EFL - to varying degrees. The first offers no leadership, the second wants to widen the scope of the iniquity, rather than limit it, and the third lacks the internal culture or the moral courage to act
  • the direction of travel is towards greater inequity, poorer behaviour, a de facto stifling of competition which in its wake will create hugely more dissatisfaction amongst the paying public that actually funds the whole rotten enterprise. At the moment, that dissatisfaction is mainly confined to the game-attending public. But the subscription audience will not be far behind if the domestic market implodes

So there is a de facto case for regulation, but in my mind it should not be merely about sanctions for the worst offenders. What the game badly needs is :

  • a culture whereby problems are identified early and acted upon
  • consistency in the way cases are handled
  • a mixture of diagnostic and remedial action to make sure that the right problems are identified and addressed
  • a range of intervention powers (and tools to do the job) that makes the "punishment" fit the crime
  • a regulatory body drawn from outside the conflicted bodies responsible for the current mess
  • a greater "customer ethic" that views football clubs as being just as much community assets as commercial ones
  • an ability to identify excellence as well as bad practice, and an ability to do set-piece reporting of various kinds in much the same way as an orthodox Ombudsman does to Parliament
  • proper, customer-led challenge mechanisms, vested in the Supporters Trusts and the FSA

A lot has to change. Otherwise I think the game will lose relevance, lose appeal and ultimately, will completely lose its pre-eminence in the sporting world.
 
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Good comments from Neville, perhaps an initial bail out to stave off many clubs in the lower leagues going bust, done quickly. Then that buys time to debate how we go forward. Time is of the essence though.
 
bfcpete said:
One of the things they need to do is to ban any ownership or majority ownership from abroad. All should be UK registered compsnies and have at least majority ownership in the UK. It was notable that the Big Project proposals came directly from a couple of the foriegn families Foreign owners rarely have any affinity with the community roots and history of English football
Click to expand...
I do think that is unattainable. There are good & bad foreign owners as there are UK ones.
However i think its fair to say that the whole landscape of the English game changed as soon as Abramovitch took control at Chelski.
 
basilrobbie said:
  • there is a huge moral vacuum at the heart of the game. It grew out of amorality at the very top of the sport, has permeated far and wide and if left unchecked will eat the sport from within

A lot has to change. Otherwise I think the game will lose relevance, lose appeal and ultimately, will completely lose its pre-eminence in the sporting world.
Click to expand...
Excellent Post & points Robbie. I worry that certain owners would liked a closed shop at the top of the game as is largely the case with US Sports.
Franchise Soccer UK/Europe?
 
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