Greed & football

Given we are living through difficult economic times the naked consumerism of certain clubs this transfer winow gives a true image of how clubs & the average fan drift further apart.When a club can announce that it has £70M in a years lose's but then spend £75M on 2 players beggars belief when the average fan is struggling to pay ever increasing living costs. When another club, purportedly in debt, can spend £63M on 2 players one of whom is injured, unable to train or play at present and obviously unable to pass the stringent medicals clubs insist on while the average fans worries about downsizing in the NHS due to Government cuts. When footballers themselves haggle like desperate pimps over a few thousand pounds a week, yes a week not a year; a weeek 7 days, pay increases yet cannot get regular game time from their existing club who reward them handsomely enough as it is yet still drive around in top-of-the range vehicles while the average fan suffers yet ever higher tax burdens & costs on petrol it proves one thing. Football is so far divorced from the average fan that it may as well be from another planet. Copy & pasted below an article by Ian Chadband, Chief Sports Correspondent of the Daily Telegraph that touches on the money madness of modern football . . . . . .


Premier League transfer window deadline day presented us with a new version of austerity Britain
Hour after hour, it became more surreal. A raw, promising kid with potential but about as many off-field misdemeanours as Premier League goals suddenly becomes one of the most expensive footballers of all-time.
Then, remember that top striker who has not hit his straps for a year and cannot seem to stop sulking? Well, who cares? Fifty million quid says he’s worth it.

And his new club? Let’s have one more massive signing to take their spending for the day to over £70m. Yes, and hope no-one remembers that two hours ago they announced a loss on the year of over £70m.

Utterly shameless but what the hell. Bury the bad news and just roll up, roll up to enjoy the carnival! The recession is officially over.

Wasn’t it only on this equivalent deadline day last year that the English game was congratulating itself for its supposed restraint in mirroring the harsh realities of the wider economy by making these same 24 hours pass off with ne’er a whimper?

That’s pre-history. Through the rest of Europe on Monday, the biggest fee paid anywhere was, as of writing, £12m.

But here there seemed only evidence that English football has shed any pretence at sobriety and is back to its Bacchanalian best. Or worst. Fitting then that a new Roman orgy of cash should launch it.

If we are now to know Liverpool's new strike force of Luis Suarez and Andy Carroll as Luis/Carroll then it would be pretty fitting after this day in which English football entertained itself in its own mad-hatted wonderland.

A wonderland where you can pocket £50 million and then go out and instantly squander it without barely a thought to the logic of paying £36 million for a player who despite his promise, by any other realistic judgment could only have been seriously valued at a third of that fee.

And you thought £24m for Darren Bent was barking.

It actually felt a little shocking, perhaps obscene enough even for the unshockable Rio Ferdinand to tweet to his followers during the day: “Carroll has huge potential no doubt. Is 35m still not a hefty sum of money in this recession we r meant to be in!”

Hefty? Try super-sized lunacy. And, of course, it was, as Rio noted, all hugely entertaining during the day as the twists and turns of the myriad deals seemed merely to be an extension of the Premier League's on field hoopla.

The gauntlet has been chucked. In the royal blue corner, Roman has come out flinging the cash; in the light blue, Mansour did not throw a punch. But you wouldn’t bet against the next window deadline being on pay per view.