Entertainment For Lively Minds
The (relative) sanity of Blackpool FC
Blackpool, the only reason to even glance at the Premiership table, have announced the lowest figure to be spent by the Premiership teams on the cancer of football.....namely: agents' fees.
They spent £45,000.
£45,000 too much, I grant you, but a full £9,000,000 less than Chelsea (hold on, I thought Chelsea were.....oh, never mind) and the hapless Liverpool.
If I was anything to do with marketing at Blackpool, I'd quickly get advertisements around the pitch alerting people of this and printing up some T-shirts to the same effect.
As an aside, an agent on Sky Sports said that to get the best players you need an agent's involvement and then, genuinely, quoted three.....erm.....'world class' players as his example.
I give you Frank Lampard, Rio Ferdinand and David Beckham.
Didn't look 'world class' in 2006 or 2010.
- More from ranger.
- Login or register to post comments
-
Just like
the blessed Peter Ridsdale at Leeds United then ! I do honestly hope this starts to spread as I see little justification for the use of agents but I doubt it somehow, far too many vested interests and it's only the smaller clubs who can afford to make a stand. If you were to ask Chelsea fans whether they would accept to pay exorbitant fees in order to sign Messi, there would only be the one answer. If this happens with the best players, it will also apply to the no hopers as well. Still, all power to Blackpool - they have been a revelation and the fans have been great as well. Met up with a few around my manor prior to the play off final and a really nice bunch.good bunch.
Take your point
but don't think Brett Omerod has been world class in any year
Try looking for a fan last year
Until about October, you'd have been hard pushed to find one. I'm sceptical about whole banks of crowds wearing this season's kit. If they go straight back down, will they turn up for Crystal Palace and Coventry? They're also sponsored by purveyors of 'free' money for desperate people, Wonga (typical APR 2689%) - ethical, huh?
Don't mind me, I'm just bitter. We could have been Blackpool. When the little Bristolian gollum reject went back on his word and left us, Argyle were 7th. He left, the best players got sold (partly thanks to 'Ollie' telling other managers about our release clauses) and were replaced with expensive pap.
Now we face a choice, it seems, between oblivion and Peter Ridsdale. There isn't a supping spoon long enough to persuade me to sup with this devil.
Wasn't their
ground being developed the past few years which may account for the low crowds ? Of course success brings in new wave fans, happens to every club, but it's hard to begrudge fans trips to grounds they may not get to all that often.
Speaking as a Leicester fan...
I'd have been happier if Hollowhead had never left Plymouth too.
fellow Argyle fan
I was spitting blood when Holloway left us, but over the last couple of years I've swung more towards his version of events. The various boards since then have been little short of disastrous, haven't they? Reappointing Sturrock and letting him blow money on crap was probably the single biggest contributory factor to our current predicament.
Every time I watch Blackpool on MOTD I think "that could have been us".
Agents' fees
A nice big lump of the transfer money paid to a third party, normally based offshore. (ever wondered why foreign-based agents are so popular for big transfers?) He divvies it up and pays back to the chairmen and managers, via intermediaries, the cut they used to receive prior to the nasty adjudicators getting involved. Can go into offshore accounts or be classified as "consultancy fees" should the authorities - such as they are in the woefully corrupt world of footie - come knocking.
Do you honestly think hard-nosed chairmen and managers would happily see such large sums of revenue go dancing off forever over the horizon stuffed into the pockets of a procession of scheming shysters?
Football. Rotten from top to bottom.
Blackpool are a strange and curious phenomenon...
Many of their players are well kent "journeymen" professionals who've never been thuoght of befopre as Premiership level (Crainey, Gilks etc) and many others I have never heard of. Their best player - Charlie Adam - was an undistinguished plodder in an anonymous Rangers team in a terrible Scottish league. Thats maybe why they have very low agents fees - few of their players would have been seen as lucrative options for an agent to represent? In that respect they could just be a freak - average players all having their "one brilliant season" together
Unlike other similar teams in the English Premiership - Stoke City spring immediately to mind - they are playing with style and adventure. So more power to them I say. If they manage to survive in the Premirship,then the next audit of agents fees might make for more interesting reading.
Holloway Credit
He should get some, shouldn't he? Could he be the Clough of the 21st Century? I hope so and most football fans will think the same. He has welded a group of very average players in to a unit and as Capello would say "play with out fear". We need them more than any thing in the Premiership. Problems have occured for new boys when the other teams suss how they play. Holloway has the knack of knowing that and fine tuning his team to make it surprising. More power to his elbow I say.