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Your support makes all the difference.If real clubs employing really expensive players on unreal wages took a tip from Fantasy Football the game could face a less threatening future, according to Gerry Boon of the accountants Deloitte and Touche, who last week brought out yet another report showing that football is living far beyond its means. Boon says that a step in the right direction might be to insist that the amount of money clubs are allowed to pay their players is directly related to the club's income.
At the moment several clubs are paying out more in wages than they receive in total income. Boon says that high wages, which are the main reason for English football's spiralling pre-tax losses (at present running at more than pounds 100m a year), could be brought under control if clubs, first became more disciplined in all of their financial affairs and then considered a plan that Rugby League has on the table.
In effect Rugby League's idea is to employ a broadly similar principle to Fantasy Football, all clubs being stopped from spending on players more than a certain proportion of their income. Nothing has yet been decided in Rugby League - and if a similar experiment in Australia is anything to go by it never will. There the idea lasted for two years before being abandoned after clubs bent the rules almost in full circle. Even so, Boon said: "Rugby League has looked at the health of their sport and wages.
They've said that they must help their clubs do something about it. You can't cap individual wages because that would be illegal, but what Rugby League has said is that each club will have a wages cap of a percentage of their income.
"If a club wants to spend a third of that on one player, that's up to them, but then it's only got two-thirds left to pay the whole of the rest of the squad. If they breach that then they are in trouble with the governing body." The proposal in Rugby League is for a figure of 40 per cent of income. Boon says that football's income is now healthier than it has ever been (pounds 517.2m in 1995-96 and about to be increased by new television contracts and pay-per-view) but that huge wages, especially among the better-known foreign players, are a big drain. Only last week Arsenal, one of football's financially better organised clubs, admitted that their wage bill to March of this year had reached pounds 13.3m compared with pounds 8.7m the previous year.
Boon believes that eventually more club chairmen will stand up against absurdly high wage demands but it could be that the players themselves gradually accept that long-term contracts are worth more than short-term fortunes. "Maybe that will stop them pushing for that last five per cent, or whatever, in wages." To some extent it could also reduce the effect of the Bosman ruling which allows players out of contract to move without transfer fees.
Surprisingly in view of the continuing growth of the Champions' League, Boon does not believe that the biggest clubs will see a future European super league as one of the answers to maintaining their necessary high income. "I don't think there will be a situation in which clubs leave their domestic leagues entirely. I can't see that happening because if you talk to clubs around Europe, their strength is their domestic competition."
Manchester United, who Boon says have pointed the way in financial control, no longer base their expectations on success in Europe, or even domestic competitions, although obviously a succession of poor seasons would damage even their solid base. Last season their projected income was based on finishing high in the league but not necessarily winning a domestic competition or getting past two rounds in Europe. Boon says such realism is the answer.
Less well-organised big clubs, particularly those who are now listed on the stock market, can be badly blown off course by a single season of indifferent results. "United's business success is not entirely dependent upon on-the-field success. Theirs is a more mature business where financial fortunes are now partially insulated from the effect of 11 guys' performance with a football. As football as a business matures, I would expect more clubs to pursue this strategy." He is unlikely to be holding his breath.
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