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Premier League Offering EFL Clubs Grant of Less Than £50m
Tuesday, 6th Oct 2020 11:04

The Premier League is reported to have offered lower league clubs a grant of less than £50 million - a fifth of the sum EFL chairman Rick Parry says is required to cover the loss of income caused by the coronavirus crisis - with any further cash forthcoming a loan.

Parry said last week: “We’ve consistently said that we need up to £250 million - that figure hasn’t changed, we’ve been saying it since May.

“To be honest, that was based on the losses from last season and the assumption we’d play the whole of this season without crowds, which we thought was pessimistic at the time.

“So we’re not saying we now have to recalculate and come up with a completely different figure, it just means we’ll be getting onto the upper end of that figure.

“It’s something we’ve been working night and day on, we’re in dialogue with the Premier League, which is constructive, but we’re exploring other sources as well.

“It might take a package of different measures, we’re still hopeful we can get some support from the government.”

According to The Times, the Premier League, whose clubs spent more than £1 billion during the transfer window, is only willing to offer a grant approaching £50 million plus a repayable loan totalling just under £100 million with interest charged at a similar rate to banks.

It’s reported that the Premier League will earn around the £50 million figure via an £8.4 million pandemic-related charge to the three promoted clubs in the next two seasons.

Other conditions tied to the bailout are understood to include the EFL supporting the Premier League in a dispute with the FA over a free market for the recruitment of 18-to-21-year-olds from overseas following Brexit.

EFL clubs are said to view this as a gun to their head, while Premier League sources refute that there is a non-negotiable offer of that type.

A week ago on Sunday, Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden said the top flight needs to "start looking after the football family as a whole” and expressed his expectation that a deal would be agreed last week.

However, given the distance between the two parties, an agreement still seems some way off and a meeting of Premier League chairmen which was scheduled for today has been put back to next week.

Meanwhile, some clubs in Leagues One and Two are concerned whether they will be in a position to pay wages at the end of October.

Crystal Palace chairman Steve Parish outlined what’s understood to be a view held by a number of Premier League clubs that it’s not their responsibility to help out lower leagues sides, especially Championship clubs.

“Not one company in any other industry, to my knowledge, is being asked to bail out its competitors,” he told the Sunday Times.

“The supermarkets aren’t instructed to help the corner shops. Premier League clubs, while they may have some wealthy shareholders, are not awash with cash.”

Town could be as much as £10 million down by the end of the season and owner Marcus Evans said late last month that the situation has illustrated the financial disparities in the game and that EFL clubs desperately need assistance from the top flight, and soon."

“There is a substantial imbalance in the game,” he said. “I have always had that opinion and have long campaigned for a more level playing field, whether it be in the distribution of parachute payments or Financial Fair Play.

“I know the EFL and the Premier League have been in discussions for months about securing the future of clubs and hopefully there will be some movement on that very quickly. There needs to be some help from somewhere or there will be an inevitable conclusion.”"


Photo: Matchday Images



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dominiciawful added 11:10 - Oct 6
Football is fūcked.
7

Gilesy added 11:12 - Oct 6
I agree that football clubs need to live within their means, but this smacks of the Premier League securing their position and keeping other clubs firmly in their place. Short-term if you ask me because, domestically at least, without the clubs beneath them, English football loses its very essence.
5

ArnieM added 11:20 - Oct 6
Sky's prostitutes the PL fails to delivery for the good of the game shocker!

PL and Sky Rot in hell
8

cooper4england added 11:21 - Oct 6
Helping out their competitors? Since when did my local corner shop develop their paper boys to become future managers of the local Tescos? if the premier league big boys don't support the lower leagues we risk a whole industry going under and the loss of the conveyor belt of young British players not developing and strengthing our national teams. Sad days.
10

ParisBlue added 11:25 - Oct 6
Fulham were due another £34m parachute payments this season but because they were promoted this was distributed across the other premier league teams.
6

BlueNomad added 11:30 - Oct 6
The PL is killing the game.

Parish is wrong and knows it. He says no company would help out a competitor. Without a competition football would have no meaning. It would be wrong for the PL to become a closed shop with the bigger clubs having the same cannon fodder every year. Football is about hope.
10

Europablue added 11:31 - Oct 6
I don't know of any other industry that manipulates loyalty based on generations of support and markets itself so deeply as part of the fabric of society and the community and expects to take money out when times are good and leave market forces to act when the bad times come round.

This is an opportune time for the Government to make English clubs like their German counterparts and make them half supporter owned. They can sweeten the deal with a bail out.
1

brazil1982 added 11:32 - Oct 6
I admit to being torn about this issue. I loathe the PL and how awash with money it is, and how false it has now become to the football community.

However, I struggle with why they should support badly run football clubs. We don't see Pizza Hut supporting the local independent pizza shops. Should they? This is a wake up call for football clubs and the ridiculous wages paid at all levels.

Having said that I really fear for the security of many clubs in the lower leagues now. I don't know what the answer is, apart from allowing paying spectators in.
4

ArnieM added 11:34 - Oct 6
SKY is killing the game . How many on here have a sky contract? If people really want to change the ridiculous funding of football to only one sector if the game perhaps we all need to review our contracts with Sky sport?
12

Razor added 11:38 - Oct 6
Greedy selfish uncaring Premier League, but we knew this anyway.

When clubs go ,as they inevitably will, that will be it, like the Dodo.

I am no clever guy or accountant but my first suggestion was every Premier club paying 0.5% of turnover to a SAVE OUR FOOTBALL FUND but then what do I know----just a thought.
5

Pippin1970 added 11:49 - Oct 6
Personally if Ipswich went under I'd give up on football after that. Similar to our country the rich get richer the poorer get poorer.
13

a_las_barricadas added 12:02 - Oct 6
Some have tried to use the furlough scheme. Tottenham have used the government business rescue scheme to borrow £175 million at low interest rate! Source: the Athletic
0

Pencilpete added 12:03 - Oct 6
Football clubs should live within their means - simple as that

Players could not demand the ridiculous wages they do if nobody was paying them ... FFP, salary caps etc have all come in because you have the likes of Derby and Sheffield Wednesday spending money they haven't got. if thats the case they should go under, start from the bottom of the pyramid and have to work their way back up again and the owners held to account for the mess because running a football club should be no different to any other business and while i agree sky and the premier league has ruined football with the ridiculous money being put around they have no obligation to share it

Football as whole needs to have a good look at itself
13

Northstandveteran added 12:06 - Oct 6
There were many clubs spending more on players wages than their income before the pandemic.
Please correct me if I'm wrong but weren't we one of those?
Football, like the vast majority of businesses now needs to reassess.
What were our top earners on last season?
£10k a week in the second tier?
It couldn't continue.
And I know Ipswich weren't paying but wasn't Garbutt on £30+k a week?!
It just simply isn't sustainable.
And yes, agree with the comments about sky.
But then I wouldn't pay for it.
Football ceased to be the working man's game many years ago.
Far too expensive to attend just to pay average third division players thousands of pounds a week.
Football outside of the premier league will just have to pay players what it can sensibly afford.
7

Northstandveteran added 12:07 - Oct 6
You must have been typing at the same time as me Pete 😂
0

Northstandveteran added 12:09 - Oct 6
Season before the season before!
0

RobITFC added 12:13 - Oct 6
So glad I cancelled my sky sports subscription!
3

patrickswell added 12:16 - Oct 6
You can only look at the comments of Sean Dyche and Steve Parish and laugh or you'd cry. Burnley and Crystal Palace are both clubs which are one bad decision away from getting relegated back into the structure they're both now trying to shut the door on. It's human nature, I suppose that they're trying to be protectionist but disappointing to see how far they've become removed from where they came from.

6

Gilesy added 12:18 - Oct 6
Brazil - fair point but I think lots of lower-league clubs are actually well-run but have simply had their income-stream taken away from them!
7

BlueandTruesince82 added 12:21 - Oct 6
PL owners trying to kill the pyramid system so they dont have to pay the price for their mistakes
1

brazil1982 added 12:37 - Oct 6
Gilesy - I agree, it's a terrible situation for many small clubs. I don't know what the answer is. See also: theatres, music venues.
0

TimmyH added 12:42 - Oct 6
Anybody know how much the Premiership clubs owners net worth?...I know they didn't want to fork out to the Championship due to this...it must run into the billions. £50M is nothing to them.

How did football get so unbalanced?...well we know partly SKY is to blame (as mentioned by posters above) but the Football Association has to take the blame for not laying down stringent laws on expenditure and transfer fees, you can only think they're taking a cut of the pie (which isn't going to grass roots football) but going to silly asses like PFA union man Gordon Taylor who pis%es thousands up the wall on gambling.
2

Plums added 12:44 - Oct 6
‘Premier League clubs not being awash with cash' Is laughable when EFL clubs are surviving on a shoestring. The game is dead.
5

MickMillsTash added 12:46 - Oct 6
Footballs a total mess
The EFL cannot become beholdent to the Premier League - the solution has to come from Government and the PFA.
Clubs cannot generate income until fans are allowed back in to watch and until track and trace improves that's a long way off- given lower incomes the players have got to be paid less.
4

BlueMachines added 12:55 - Oct 6
I wonder how much was spent on agents fee this transfer window. Those greedy football killing leaches are taking much need money away from the lower league clubs. Football can thrive without agents. It'll be dead without the EFL
2


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