Of course, a professional football club is a business. How can you argue with a tautology? But football is not like most commodities. Its attraction is enhanced by its unpredictability. If the prospect of triumph is balanced by the risk of failure, the competition, and therefore the spectacle, has greater edge. So, if a club is indemnified against relegation, the interest is likely to diminish. In their desperation to save their businesses, the Phoenix conspirators have apparently overlooked or ignored this. They would do well to reflect upon the recent Old Trafford experience. Look at how the United supporters seemed to lose their passion as they became increasingly bloated by success. But look at how their hunger was restored by a series of league setbacks this year. As a consequence, they bayed their club to victory against Boavista. Moving much nearer to home, our successful rearguard actions in 1997/98 and 1998/99 triggered a huge collective passion, reviving something of the ‘Orient spirit’ of ’87. I was at the Scunthorpe game in May 2000 and also at the Plymouth game two years earlier. I would be hard pressed to distinguish them emotionally. The results mattered equally. The fight against relegation was as important as the fight for promotion.
The Phoenix crew might point out that the US baseball leagues operate as cartels and that this hasn’t diminished the competitive interest. I would challenge this view. Firstly, it seems to me that the real interest is confined to action at the top. More fundamentally, since there is no prospect of relegation, how can we really compare? As an aside, the US league structure surely mocks the ‘American Dream’. Whilst a talented individual might graduate from obscurity to fame, a club cannot. Over here, we should protect for all we’re worth real freedom of opportunity, for clubs as well as for individuals. For much as the odds appear to be lengthening, non-league clubs are entitled to their Premiership ambitions. It is unlikely that Wimbledon’s rise will ever be emulated but the prospect should not be blocked. And lest we become too despondent about the gaps opening up between the divisions, look at how Ipswich fared in the Premiership last year and how Preston and we have fared in the First Division. Whilst the concentration of wealth at the top has weakened football’s freedom of opportunity, this principle has not been entirely obliterated, and with the prospect of TV revenue receding, there might yet be some correction to the playing field’s inclining slant. Stan has shown what good coaching and astute stewardship can achieve on limited means. Let us make sure that we have a competition that allows frugal talent of this kind to flourish and doesn’t just protect the commercial interests of spent up, arrogant ‘has beens’ or ‘never had beens’.
