td, there is a definite view amongst football fans that an owner who is a benefactor is great and perfect for their club. However, when other clubs get in trouble from loosely the same, then it's a case of football's all wrong. Look at the Soton thread and lower league clubs. And when the owner turns sour, god forbid.
My own view has always been that any takeover/new owner/whoever should have to deposit a bond large enough to ensure the FC can carry on for a season in the event of wrong doing. Vague, I know and lacking in working detail, but the principle is spot on. Football Clubs need protection.
On Sadler, it must be a mare running a club from HK. Even the foot soldiers gave us a fractured arm. Is it sustainable? I'm not sure it will be.
I think on the first point that's probably down to the fact that it's the only viable way to run a successful club (in the sense of a club that can win stuff). And whilst it's an individual owners fault in the individual cases where a club goes tits up, it's sort of football's fault as well for creating the circumstances by which only those clubs with benefactors can really succeed which means, therefore, everyone wants one.
It's up to football itself to create the terms of the business environment and it's singularly uninterested in doing so. We see the salary caps but it's half arsed so it doesn't change the broad rules. We just want to get out this league so we're free of it. So does everyone else. It doesn't change the rush for big spending ownership unless it applies to everyone.
Supporter owned clubs 'don't work' but that's a lot down to the context of other clubs. Why would you want BST and a life of subsistence when you are competing against clubs spending big cos they've got a benefactor.
It feels to me like the FA, EPL and EFL sort of just shrug and go 'oh, well more bad owners, what a to do' a bit like a teacher who has let their class go to seed goes 'oh, bad kids' as if their behaviour is nothing at all to do with them.
It's the rules you set and the regularity and fairness with which you apply them that dictates how the class behave so to speak and the financial governance of football has been distinctly lassaiz faire and also half heartedly applied with little consistency.
Fans kind of expect their clubs to compete. That's the point, but when the competition is essentially a 'who has the most money' cup, I think it's more than fans who need to look at themselves though doubtless, supporters need to be part of any change and thus probably as whole, we do need to question what we expect and what it contributes to
Sorry, I'm off on one again. I bore myself if that's any consolation.
Sadler's been and I'm sure will continue to be an absolute dream owner. In fact he's been beyond that so far. There's no criticism of him implied here. It's a comment on how football as a whole works and I think is one shared to an extent by some good owners in football who would much rather manage a business than need to constantly underwrite it to merely stay afloat.
If we ever go back.
