Own Goal

First of all, take a bunch of vanity businesses that collectively generate billions in losses, add militant workers who are vastly, grossly overpaid and then add bad management and judgement and the need to depend on outside bodies for support.

Is this the miners in the eighties ?

Or the bankers now ?

Or am I blogging about footballers ?

British people are usually good at spotting when things are unfair (or, at least, we became good at this once we stopped trying to rule most of the world), but we seem to be blind to the inequities of bankers and footballers, now that miners are largely coughing their ways to early deaths over a barely affordable pint at their local social...

Actually, yes, I am referring to football and how someone who is paid hundreds of thousands a month can, apparently, refuse to play. How the manager of the UK's biggest cash cow club can moan about money, and how another leading club want to leave the, er.. club that makes them so much money.

In the background to all of this is the ECJ ruling that is going to knock the stuffing out of football rights in the UK.

Why should BSkyB pay £1.4bn when there are no competitors ? WIll ESPN stump up ? The BBC and ITV are too poor. And rights are now going to be sold in bulk because of the ECJ ruling, so the European rights are out of the window.

The next round, I reckon, will be worth 30% less than the last, at the least. Now that's a haircut (what a good idea) for every Premiership footballer.

UEFA already has rules requiring for all clubs to be 'profitable' in a couple of years, so some kind of level playing field is coming anyway, but this places UK clubs at a disadvantage against Spanish clubs, some of which negotiate their own rights, hence the Liverpool move to separate their rights...

Football clubs need to start believing that they cannot buy success and start to invest in talent on a far more modest basis. The likes of Tavez need to be banished from the sport forever (or let him play in the Argentinian third division, where not earning millions and being with his family will resolve his conflicts). Owners like Abramovich need to be made to see that they shouldn't squander money, and should be punished for sacking managers every season.

So, that's what we should do with the bankers, ..er.. I mean, the footballers....