Any Topic Going formerly Transfer Rumour s

As we are already producing a printed programme, a virtual one should be almost ready to go, as well, at very little cost to the Club.

 

You mean no cost at all. The programme will almost certainly be produced using something like Adobe InDesign. It's how I produce the lineup graphics and the match event graphics and it really is just a case of clicking export once to output the copy for the printers and then clicking export again to create one ready for digital distribution. The hardest thing in getting a digital version ready is putting the purchase system in place. They could most likely do it via the club store, although that would mean giving JustSport between 30-60% of the price depending on what the deal lays out so they may want a direct option for doing that so they keep 100% of it

 

With the EFL wanting PL bail out the clubs really didn't help themselves with iFollow. IMHO they should have gone with something like a 50/30 split in favour of the home side with the other 20% going into a collective pool that would be distributed evenly. As it is the likes of Bolton are making good money on away matches having sold way over 500 but in most home matches are not having to hand over any money as the away side at this level often isn't selling 500 passes. Would have spread the money better, helping clubs survival while also giving out the message 'We are helping ourselves but we still need more help' rather than 'we only care about ourselves until it means getting money from the PL where we will cry collective poverty'

They also should have cut the price seeing as they are now showing all games for the foreseeable future. £10 for a match, while cheap compared to many physical tickets, is too high for casual fans imho. Make it £5 and I'm sure everyone would sell more, £5 is around a price where you can sit there and think I'll pick a random match and buy it but £10 is starting to get to the more considered purchase point.

Or maybe even better the EFL should have put together a goals package, either in the form of something like Soccer Saturday where you have pundits keeping you informed and then they will show every goal and incident or not even having the pundits and just switching between games showing the major incidents as they happen. Could either be for the whole of the EFL with the money being split evenly or could be league specific. After all it was always somewhat of a pipe dream that we would get fans back in stadiums and still have them in stadiums until the end of the season. Even if we had it was always likely at some point it would have to stop as we were going to have additional waves until a vaccine is ready

 

I'm not against the PL giving more money to the lower leagues but I think it needs to come with some real changes in the lower leagues. The PL gets nowhere near the benefit from the lower leagues these days as they used to and imho if more money is going to be plowed into the lower league by the PL (especially when the PL has already had to repay several million and with the different kick off times there is talk foreign broadcasters are demanding another £500mill is returned as they are now not at times that are good for their viewers) there needs to be some quid pro quo. It needs to be a better place for developing talent. As it is a PL club can buy a young player from abroad that had top-level coaching and top-level experience for not much more (and sometimes less). United bough Van de Beek for £35mill who came through the Ajax academy, played 129 domestic games for them and 45 in European competition and has 12 senior caps while Villa paid £28mill for Ollie Watkins who is a year older, hasn't played above the championship and has no caps.

It's not even as if the lower leagues provide a great place for loans. If you send a player on loan at somewhere with worse facilities its to get game time but 1 bad game as you settle and they can be frozen out or if the manager changes they get frozen out. While you get a handful of success stories more players end up gaining very little on loan at lower league clubs than actually gain.

So personally I would like to see some of the money go in improving facilities and staff and also for there to be much more cooperation between lower league and PL clubs. So for example city and a few others (maybe each PL club getting 1 from each league with maybe biggest few with best facilities getting 2 from one of the leagues) may have an agreement with say Man Utd. Man Utd would send coaches for short periods to go and work at these other clubs to help improve coaching standards, coaches from the lower league would go the other way to shadow at United. The whole u23 team might have extended training blocks at Carrington so they get used to the better facilities and be around potential better players. Individuals may go on longer 'trails' at United to help them develop. And young players United release these lower league clubs would have first refusal, maybe with united picking up some of their wages for a period of time in exchange for a buy back at a set price. Better co-operation like that could very well raise the whole lower league level and make the clubs handing over a larger chunk each year more palatable

 

Most loans give absolutely no benefit to the PL clubs though. For every 1 that comes out of a lower league loan better, you have 10 where it derails their development. They will get better development in general sent out to a second division European club as they have better facilities and coaches and are more likely to give the player a chance rather than giving them a match and discarding them than you will in any of the EFL leagues. Unless the standards get raised and clubs become more patient with loan players the idea of loans being a reason to just give lower leagues money doesn't really have merit