“You see Germany with the way they’ve looked at their balance sheets and the way they’ve developed youngsters. Financial Fair Play is a move in the right direction. I hope we can evolve. I don’t see why the Premier League can’t do some tweaking and make sure clubs play a certain number of those who have been in a youth-development programme, irrespective of nationality, 16 to 21. Not just in the squad - that’s not the cutting edge - but actually starting a game.

We need managers to stay and youth-team coaches to stay. You see the benefits of security of tenure. Alex Ferguson was a shining example. I’ve lost count of how many managers and chief execs Blackburn have had. How anybody can expect to achieve success with constant instability is beyond me.â€

. Gordon Taylor, Professional Footballers’ Association chief executive (29.7.2013)

Make any sense to you? Nope, me neither. Admittedly, it is only part of ‘a broad critique of modern football‘, as Henry Winter of the Daily Telegraph describes it, but, having trawled through umpteen paragraphs and been, quite literally, pinged-off in all directions, like the silver ball around a pinball machine, I can vouch for the fact that it doesn’t much matter where Taylor makes his points, more important is just how often he makes valid ones or has a ’critique’ of any kind whatsoever to espouse at this precise moment in time.

Enmeshed in this diatribe, which is focussed on the ’tribe’ of professional footballers he purports to represent, we are treated to sympathetic references, from Gary Parkinson, who played for a number of league clubs and suffered a stroke three years ago, to Fabrice Mamba’s [more publicised] heart attack, the early gist of Taylor’s words of disenchantment seemingly directed towards football’s current soulless persona, compared to the cheap-and-cheerful innocence of those Good Old Days of Tom Finney and Jimmy Armfield when, would you believe and heaven forefend, they had much lower salaries and counted their blessings instead of cash. No, really, well who knew?

Of course, this nostalgic ramble then needed cobbling into some kind of modern day shoe with which to kick the current crop of players that are either earning vast sums of money, or about to be doing so, and it is at this point that Gordon goes 'off on one', launching himself into as many topical football minefields as he can find in the space of three final paragraphs that are reproduced above. By this stage, Taylor’s messenger boy, the similarly disenchanted Henry Winter, must have realised that the premise of the PFA exec’s piece was going every-which-way, becoming so loose it needed to be pulled together in a hurry. Hence this opening gambit, his own preamble to the article, which reads as follows:-

“English football is “in danger of losing its soul†because of selfish players, avaricious owners and managers obsessed with the short term, according to one of the game’s leading power brokers…

The summer has seen player power writ large again in the behaviour of Luis Suarez, Wayne Rooney, Gareth Bale and Papiss Cisse. Clubs tour the world chasing the baht, yen, and dollar. Assorted troubles continue to bedevil the game from racism to fleecing the fans to England’s latest stumble. No wonder [Gordon] Taylor’s mood on the eve of the new season strayed into the dark and mournful.â€

Make any sense to you? Nope, me neither. Quite frankly, after a valiant joint effort at cognitive thought process, dutifully put to print, I’m still struggling to understand what these two individuals were trying to achieve with their collaboration, other than to have a go at [perceived] gross avarice in the game in this country compared to elsewhere (my shot in the dark would be Germany), in itself a dreadful situation which is also, apparently, being fuelled by Premier League apathy when it comes to helping England out (ever thought the FA must be responsible for something and it’s not Richard Scudamore’s fault English players aren’t good enough?) and the scurrilous desire of owners of Premier League clubs to take money out of football (as opposed to preventing great dollops of the nasty stuff coming in by advocating and embracing prohibitive Financial Fair Play rules?)

Gordon Taylor may be mournful, while Henry Winter is nothing if not compliant, but the truth of this matter is that there really is nothing to see here and they should both move on. Forget those fond memories of leather footballs and the accompanying forelock-tugging subservience towards owners, who took more out of the game then than they ever take out nowadays. Stop deluding yourselves too - mere mention of Suarez, Rooney, Bale and Cisse in the same breath as millions in cash doesn’t hack it anymore if you’re wanting to engender feelings of envy in a readership that’s gone way beyond the acceptance that money, or an ever-increasing amount of it, is THE ruling factor for these players.

Let’s face it, Suarez wants Champions League football and he’s not going to get it with Liverpool. Rooney wants out of a club [he believes] is in decline and he wants to play for one [he knows] is on the up…and up. On the other hand, Bale has a pay rise on the way, whether he stays or goes, but he wont do either just for the money. And Cisse’s haul into society’s morality dock is entirely unwarranted, being for obvious reasons other than greed. Wonga or no Wonga, the righteous likes of Taylor and Winter should at least be giving him some credit for a moral stance on extortionate rates of interest - and yes, the pun is intended.

No, agenda-driven and about as scattergun as it gets, this contrivance of an article has missed its intended target by miles, because it fails to appreciate one important fact of life - there is a certain amount of ambition in all of us and it is no bad thing. Suarez, Rooney, Bale and even Cisse (in a religious context) are ambitious enough to want more, no matter what they have at present. Suarez is not content to stay at Liverpool, Rooney doesn’t want to sit on a bench at Old Trafford. Bale sees the chance to become the best player in the world and Cisse has strong religious beliefs that are far from beggarly, but none the less laudable for being so.

Moreover, I’ll wager Winter wants a bigger job than he’s got at the moment too, probably at the FA, if he plays his cards right, and Taylor will always tell you he wants the best for all his PFA members, so I trust that means he wants the best for himself as well, eh Gordon?

 

You see the benefits of security of tenure. Alex Ferguson was a shining example.

 

 

This one always gets me.

 

Did security of tenure = constant success or did constant success = security of tenure?

 

 

The media only ever go on like one of those is a possibility when the opposite is more likely true.

Benefits of security of tenure, like Alex Ferguson and

 

and

 

and

 

well only Ferguson really.

Edited July 30, 201312 yr by Stim

I could never understand why Crewe Alexandra haven't been in the Champions League since its inception.