To no one's great surprise, it seems that the accursed Phoenix League has not been put out of its misery. Following Monday's meeting of First Division club Chairmen and Chief Executives, hosted by arch failures Coventry City, rumours abound that Division One clubs are about to resign from the Football League, with the aim of starting a new competition next season.
At the moment, everyone seems to have gone quiet, apart from Walsall FC, who appear to have blown the lid off this latest messy can of worms
with a story on their excessively red official website. Click here to view what they say.
It seems that, under League rules, if clubs want to resign, they're going to have to be quick about it, as any provisional resignations must take place by Friday 21 December, to be later confirmed by the all too appropriate date of 1 April, if any new competition is going to start next season. It won't have escaped your notice that there are a few ifs in there, but there seems to be a real feeling around that this is a serious proposal. If it does happen, it's the biggest change in football for years.
My personal view is that it would be a deplorable move. Football has serious problems, particularly excessive player wages and transfer fees, and the skewed distribution of income, which means that very few clubs can aspire to more than survival in the Premier League. I cannot see how a breakaway league will stop any of them. It will be the lower divisions that First Division clubs will be breaking away from, perhaps decisively.
There is, sadly, no indication that Burnley will do anything other than follow the lead of other clubs and join a mass resignation from the League, if it comes to pass. I know that for all of us, Burnley must come first, and if a break away happens then for our sake we have to be in it, but why can't we do more to resist it? It depresses me profoundly that a handful of allegedly big clubs can push for this and the rest of the First Division are so scared on missing out that they join the stampede. It seems to be the case that, if a few people who have no feeling for football - the sort of people you get at Birmingham, Bradford and Coventry - push for something loudly enough, everyone else is so scared of not being a part of what they propose that they fall into line. Even Walsall, while breaking the story, admit that they dare not be left out if it happens.
It is my view that lower division football is about to be shafted, finally. Can Burnley not remember where we come from? We were a lower division club ourselves not so long ago, and have been for most of the last couple of decades. If the balance of power had shifted then, could we have got where we are now? Are we about to accept this wretched greed league as a fait accompli, and in doing so turn our back on the rest of football?
What a sad, pathetic, greedy, grubby game this is these days.
