European Super league

I'm not convinced that the PL has any way currently to legally enforce a points deduction or any other sanction on the Big 6 for doing what they did.

The irony of this is that if any of the owners or directors of the Big 6 were to get involved in buying another PL or EFL club, those people would still pass the Owners & Directors test and wouldn't be barred from buying another club. This fiasco should be a wakeup call to the PL, the EFL and probably the FA as well that the governance of such an important sport is pitiful. The regulations of who can buy and more importantly control what clubs can do needs a serious overhaul. And I wouldn't exclude the lower league clubs, including our own from this.

 

I am not sure any formal 'punishment' is required.

There are already signs of a power shift in the Premier League with the 'Other 14' clubs having already met. I believe moves are already being made to make sure that representatives from the 6 'breakaway' clubs don't sit on certain working groups, that may have access to 'sensitive' information.

At best, it's going to be a long time, if ever, before the '6' clubs are going to be trusted again by the rest of football, if they were ever really trusted in the first place.

And the government may deliver more bad news for the '6' with a review into football's governance under way and the strong possibility that fans will get a bigger say in the big issues.

 

I suspect it's less about whether any formal punishment is required but more about whether any punishment can be applied to the 6 ... whatever we fans might want. As you suggest, trust between the 6 and the 14 (and probably the rest of the pyramid) will have broken down and it will take a long time for that trust to be rebuilt.

I look forward to the outcome of the Govt's review into the governance of the sport. There's been few if any examples of where Govt has wanted to get involved in the regulation of football over the years. Only last year, they turned down a request from the EFL for some short term 'Covid' funding as was provided to RL, RFU and some cricker clubs and a whole plethora of arts and music venues. Their belief at the time was football was big enough to sort itself out!

It will be very interesting to see whether they adopt the German system of 50+1 (as they've already mentioned and others are trumpeting) which puts power in the hands of the 'members' of the clubs which in most cases means the fans. The issue for the Govt will be that will potentially cost the Govt money, and lots of it, to compensate owners of the clubs for losing control of their own businesses. I have a suspicion that the 50+1 idea will get lost before we hear about the outcome of the Govt review. And really that's the one thing which will guarantee placing control of clubs in the hands of fans.

 

Again though people keep making out it was purely greed but the timing tells you it's more than that. It's as much about wanting listened to. Again the WHOLE ECA are against almost all the aspects of the reforms of the CL that they have suggested as the feeling even from smaller teams is it devalues the competition.

We have a system, already lets THREE Russian teams in, two of them who get straight into the group stages while Ajax despite winning their league most years have to go through a qualifying round or two most years. Ajax got more points on their own than the two Russian teams who got automatically into the group stages. In fact with Krasnodar the 3 Russian Teams got a combined point score of 9 compared to Ajax getting 7. And Krasnodar lost their first Europa Match while Ajax got to Quarters and only narrowly lost to Roma. So not only are Ajax a team with a name that means something and people want to see but they are also a much better team than any of the Russians BUT Zenit get put in Pot A despite coming bottom of their group. Now fine you would expect them to be below Dortmund, maybe for it to be close with Lazio BUT to be 7 points behind 3rd placed Brugge! It makes a mockery of things. And its not just this season, last season bottom again despite being the Pot A team, this time against Leipzig, Lyon and Benfica. Season before that they didn't even qualify for it but apparently, the 6th strongest league in Europe saw its 3rd best team lose to Greece's (14th best league in Europe) 2nd placed team while Lokamotive and CSKA came bottom of their groups

In fact their best recent season was the year before that when their league was deemed weaker and they only got 2 places where both Spartak and CSKA came 3rd in their groups. Admittedly pretty weak groups, CSKA were in United group along with Basel and what was a woeful Benfica that season (1 goal scored, 14 conceded. Lost every game) and Spartak were in a group with Liverpool and Sevilla so 3rd was probably the best they could hope for but it was only a 5-1 win vs Sevilla (It was played in October so I'm guessing it was that thing where teams sometimes struggle playing in Russia in October/November due to how cold it is that kept them above that European giant Maribor.

Based on current standings Arsenal, Liverpool, Spurs who all won't make it would offer more than the Russian champions both on performance and appeal level. Hell even Leeds, Villa, Newcastle have more European pedigree and name recognition and would most likely put up more of a fight. There are teams in Spain, France, Italy and Germany the same. Giving some Dutch and Belgium clubs direct group stage entry would make for a better product. Hell they may struggle but Forest would probably draw more eyeballs to the games.

But no all UEFA care about is being able to go from 192 group games to their preferred 448 games when they eventually get their so they can make bank off the big names in Europe despite it being a worse product, a product that's likely to kill itself from poor quality.

 

Mass protests still on-going. No idea how the Man Utd fans managed to get into Old Trafford but it's doubtful their game with Liverpool will go ahead now.