Well, surprise surprise, the League have lost their court action against Carlton and Granada. Who'd have thought it, eh?
So what should happen next? For a start, Keith Harris, Chairman of the League, and David Burns, its Chief Executive, should resign. They have, basically, fucked up. I think that's the right word. The buck stops with them. The court case was their last throw of the dice. It failed. So go.
Second, let's have no appeals. Let's not appeal against the decision. Let's not have the unedifying sight of the League taking its advisers to court either. No one has stomach for the fight. No one expects to win anything. It's over. We lost. Carlton and Granada won. We're not going to get the money. Let's draw a line under it.
In passing, please take a moment to reflect on your own contribution. Our best hope of getting something was to put pressure on Carlton and Granada, so that the bad publicity would encourage them to seek an out of court settlement. Well, we didn't do that. The League, of course, as documented elsewhere, showed a woeful lack of imagination and energy in attempting to mobilise a protest against Carlton and Granada. The attempted protest was a flop, and only Andrew Watson (in public) and Cambridge supporters (who presumably don't get out much) seemed to think otherwise. But what did you do? Did you contact Carlton and Granada? Did you write to your MP? At the London Clarets AGM a couple of weeks ago, Peter Pike said he'd had hardly any letters from his constituents on the subject. As an issue, it never got off the ground. What did you do to build momentum? Think about this before you start whinging about what Burnley FC might have to do now to make up the shortfall.
The sporting establishment also let us down badly. In a sane world, Carlton and Granada would be pariahs, shunned by sport. They left League football for dead. But who was that getting quite close to the Queen's arse at the opening of the Commonwealth Games last week? Why, Charles Allen, Chairman of Granada. Then the other day I read that ITV are likely to keep the rights to screen Champions League football when they next come up. Presumably UEFA will take the money. They're going to get away with it, you know.
And so to Burnley. Both Stan and Barry K have prepared the ground for the sale of players. They are right to do so. We're four million quid down, and that's a lot of money for us. We're still new to the division, our turnover is lower than many and the team has enabled us to punch above our weight. Now there's a bloody big gap, and it has to be filled.
And how do we fill it? The club has to look at all ways of cutting costs and raising revenue, and obviously one way of doing both is by selling players. This will be a hard one to take, but I can't see that other options will take us far. As a club in a poor area, they're not going to make much more money from commercial activities than they're already making - and they do try to shake every penny out of us. Ticket prices are already high enough to have an impact on attendance and must not go higher.
It would be nice to think there might be a new director out there ready to bring a fresh wallet to the board, and of course the supporters can still buy shares, but we've pursued both those options already, and there's a limit to how often this works and how much spare money is out there. Doubtless the club will continue to explore these avenues. It's also unrealistic to ask the directors to keep putting their money in, and unsustainable. The lamest, easiest thing to shout in football is 'get your chequebook out'. Remember that Barry K isn't rich in football terms, and has already invested substantially in the early days. (I do, however, wonder whatever happened to Ray Ingleby. I'm glad now that he didn't take over.)
Assuming a Fulham / Portsmouth style sugar daddy is not going to come along - and if they did, it wouldn't necessarily be a good thing - then we must stick with the present regime. Given that, we can't expect someone to write a cheque for £4,000,000 so that we can carry on as we did before.
You may feel that, with so many clubs in a weak position, this would be the time to gamble. Perhaps, but there's no guarantee that a gamble would pay off and give us a Premier League pay day. We gambled at the end of last season, and unfortunately it didn't work then. Before this all blew up, I was one of those on the sidelines urging the club to spend and go for it. Hindsight is unforgiving. As it happens we did, albeit belatedly, go for it. We bought Robbie Blake and brought in the high earners of Paul Gascoigne and David Johnson - in Johnson's case, agreeing to pay his wages until long after the end of the season. It was the right thing to do and I didn't hear too many people criticising these moves at the time, but as it happened we failed, and from where we are today, we'd have been better off keeping hold of our money. Yes, we budgeted on the basis that we would receive ITV Digital money and were wrong to do so, but show me a First Division club that didn't work on that assumption.
I didn't hear anyone criticising the awarding of new contracts to players such as Arthur Gnohere and Glen Little either. Robbie Blake also came in a long contract. That was taken as a sign of the club's ambition. It also accorded with the post-Bosman wisdom that you should tie players to long contracts to protect your investment. Now the paradigm has changed, and in these cashless times it's better to agree short contracts so you can trim your wage bill when required.
These are new times, and it will take time to adjust. Yet on the internet, the infantile wish lists of players we should sign continue unabated. Even though we can't afford a new contract for Dean West, or sign either of the Marlons, apparently, people don't seem to think this is serious. It's serious. That we must face the prospect of selling players to fill a hole in our finances brings a sober dose of reality, but anyone who listened to Barry K at the London Clarets AGM the other week will have had that already. The ITV Digital fiasco was not a sideshow. It was the most serious thing to have happened to English football since the Bosman ruling.
To fill the gap, player sales are a more palatable option than some really questionable practices other clubs have pursued when up against it, such as sale and lease back of the ground. That's what Bournemouth are doing right now, and I'm glad I'm not a Bournemouth supporter.
The next question, of course, is whether in a collapsed market we have anyone worth much money. Only Premier League clubs have money and I wonder if we have anyone they would deem good enough. Premier League clubs hardly ever sign from the lower divisions in any case. They look abroad first. Only Portsmouth are making cash signings in our division, and even they can't buy everyone.
In the long term, player wages will have to come down, and that's ultimately not a bad thing. But that takes time, and only as contracts expire will we be able to offer less. In the meantime, it will be a bumpy ride, and we may have to be expedient. Let's hang on in there, and let's do it together. Following the court defeat, we may now have to scale down our dreams a bit, and be happy that we are at least not facing the loss of our club, as Bradford supporters have spent the summer doing.
Looking on the optimistic side of things, there are clubs worse off, most of us are in the same boat, no one has any money, and most clubs will settle for a nothing season. Someone has to do well. Beyond this, and more than anything, we have Stan, a manager who is at his best in a tight spot with no cash, and who enjoys working to improve the players he has. Things could be, and have been, a lot worse.
