Yep, the FA and others are just as self interested as anyone else and would sell their souls to keep their own snouts in their trough.

The more that I read of the situation the worse it seems. We’ll end up with 12 Harlem Globetrotters teams.

Yes. I don’t know if others feel like this but I no longer care about the Europa Cup and wouldn’t blame anyone if they immediately disqualified both us and Man U from it. Similar with those left in the CL who are leaving next year.

The founding members are just a start there will be more clubs eventually as if munich, Dortmund and Galatasaray see these club’s are making 100s of millions they will want to join too and they will be allowed as the ESL would be crazy not to let them in.

At the moment they need to force the breakaway through which is the difficult part.

I saw a comment on twitter from the author Irvine Welsh that the ultimate goal is to capitalise on market interest in football overseas in Asia and elsewhere and so on and remove the geographical dependency of the clubs ultimately so Arsenal could play home games in China or the Middle East in a true franchise type model.

People keep saying that the Superleague will not happen but these clubs have not done this on a whim, they have spent two years planning the move, no doubt investigating the legalities of it all thoroughly, and have signed binding contracts.

As I said yesterday, Sky, BT and Uefa are just up in arms because they risk losing their cash cows. These organisations were at the forefront of monetising football in the first place, they started the ball rolling so to speak, and now someone else has come along with deeper pockets and they don't like it. Just seems a little hypocritical to me.

Yes. The Arsenal that I grew up loving has gone. I’ve been in denial for some time now and have been pretending that it’s not so.

Reading that the owners of the breakaway clubs don’t understand the concept of relegation, nor care about PR, is simply appalling.

Absolutely, it’s not a tactic to renegotiate the champions league contract as that means nothing to Arsenal. This will run and run, I can’t see how they can ban the respective clubs until the new season. The key is how premier league and la Liga deal with it and if they allow the clubs to participate in the respective leagues

Hi ltg,

English football sold its soul a long time ago with the inception of the PL and working class fans being priced out of attending. Add to that the biggest clubs being sold to billionaire foreign investors as investments rather than for sporting reasons and its not hard to see how we arrived where we are.

Hi TG,

They can't kick the 12 clubs out of their respective leagues because they are the biggest attractions for worldwide tv audiences. If they disappear then the potential income streams from tv deals and advertising are massively diminished. It would be like cutting off their nose to spite their face. The clubs know this hence they are relaxed about the threats being made.

Players will not be banned from international games either for the same reasons, they are the ones who attract the huge audiences and the big money tv and advertising deals.

It definitely puts the premier league in a difficult position, depending on how the clubs contracts with the league are written they may have to accept it if it doesn't mean they are not allowed to enter new competitions. Then you have a legal battle which the clubs backed by HUGE money lawyers would fight.

Its literally a no brainer for Arsenal. I'm massively behind it now. Don't like its being delivered by an American cartel but there you go.

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Arseblog made the point yesterday that the club we all love is owned by vultures. It doesnt neccesarily mean the club is inherantly rotten just that we have a rotten owner who is trying to destroy English football as we know it for profit. The silver lining might be that it forces a reset of football in this country like bringing in the German model of ownership. The more I think about it the government have to get involved because this is about more than football, its about 150+ years of culture. I mean if this actually happens then whats next step? Playing Arsenal home games in Asia or the USA?

I agree, like it or lump it Arsenal would be one of the biggest beneficiaries from this development.

Hello Socrates. I completely agree with your point and its a massive stain on the game in this country. The super league proposals go even further by advocating the corruption of actual sporting competition.

The fact that Arsenal would be one of the biggest beneficiaries of the Super League is hardly a consolation if the sporting value and culture is massively devalued.

Hi Bored,

I hear what you are saying but the sporting integrity of the competition was already compromised. 4 teams from England get to qualify for the CL whereas loads of league winners from other countries are placed much further back. Then the group stages are seeded. The new proposal takes it a step further, obviously. FFP turned out to be a fraud.

Also, cheating is absolutely endemic in football. If you step back and look at it objectively you have the participants cheating in every game and managers lying in interviews. The game lost its sporting integrity a long time ago.

BTW, I still don't like this proposal.

So Oligarchs are allowed to pump as much money into their club playthings as they want without ANY resistance from the footballing world but if Arsenal want to strike a perfectly legal agreement to participate in a competition to earn them extra cash they can't? After years in the footballing wilderness

Wenger says it won't happen, so it won't.

Football wilderness - oh please

But have any of you seen this, comments please:
https://www.sportbible.com/football/new ... n-20210419

As I understand it Premier League Rule L9 forbids clubs from entering competitions that don't have approval. Expect money to take care of that but I don't think too many other clubs will be that happy.

By the way for those who think SK will plow all that money into the club, think again. Other than the LA Rams he is happy to just turn up season after season in other sports.

I think the whole thing is done and dusted. It is just what brown envelopes, stacked with cash, the EPL need to allow us to stay.

I'll preface this by saying Kroenke is a *%^@ that shouldn't be anywhere near the club, but not sure what this means? The revenue generated by Arsenal entering the Super League will not go into Kroenke's personal bank account, just like money generated by selling players doesn't. Kroenke owns a few other teams that are very competitive so it's not like it's some law of nature that his teams can't improve.

I agree football's integrity has been slipping away for ages now, but this could potentially destroy the whole fabric of English football. I think this is bigger than football and it requires govenment intervention.

In some ways it would make sense to have the UEFA league and Europa League running alongside the Superleague, giving the lesser sides an opportunity to participate in european competition. Clearly tv revenues and sponsorships etc would be substantially lower so I doubt UEFA would even consider it but it would be exciting for the fans of the lesser clubs who never ordinarily play in europe.

The way I see it, this isn’t about wresting the ownership and control of the game from the leagues, the clubs or the fans. It’s about American-dominated sports businesses going after UEFA and FIFA who effectively stole the game a couple of generations ago. The campaign against Blatter and FIFA was largely orchestrated by the American Government who saw a bloated and institutionally corrupt organisation that was nonetheless awash with money. You can bet your life that the Glazers, Kroenkes and Henrys were all whispering in the appropriate ears. UEFA are in the crosshairs currently.

Despite some shuffling of the personnel, FIFA continue to grow even fatter off world football and UEFA currently take billions out of the European game. This grates on a lot of people but particularly on these super-rich American Owners since they see all that surplus dosh as being generated by their players and their clubs.

We need a return of hooliganism inside the grounds.

LOL

We haven’t been involved in a genuine title chase for a decade and a half.

Do you think things are going well

No, things haven't been great. I'm certainly looking forward to finishing in the bottom four of the ESL every year for the next couple of decades as a bit of a pick-me-up.

We were in it in 2008 and 2011 and the year Leicester won it we were probably favourites after our late winner against them. It hasn't been great but it is not a wilderness when you are winning all those FA Cups.

Whilst competing at the top of the premiership due to the increased revenue ?

If it came to that I don't think it is too arrogant to suggest that the viewing figures, TV money and sponsorship money would drop like a stone.
All the other companies who use football as a vehicle to run or supplement their own business would pull out pretty quickly if those 12 teams we're involved. The global reach of fans of those 12 teams must be huge compared to even the next 50 most supported teams

Let’s be honest if we were in the champions league anyway we would be getting hammered and embarrassed the moment we come up against anyone good (or not in some cases) what’s the difference ?

The difference is we would have got into the Champions League by merit unlike the proposed scenario where we would be guaranteed to be in the $UP£R L£AGU£ every year regardless of how crap we were.
I'm not even that excited by the prospect of Champions League qualification anyway as we generally are pretty rubbish.

Interesting to read DHD's comments. Even with the corruption surrounding football's governing bodies surely the new proposals are even worse, as it shafts every other team in Europe who aren't involved in the super league?

I am opposed to the so-called European Super League for one reason only.

If it fails, then I think Kroenke will eff off out of it.

#kroenkeout

I believe he’s never sold a share in any of his sporting ventures (please correct me if I’m wrong but I believe that’s true)

In addition to this he’s made about 1 billion dollars off Arsenal and the increase in value of the club and therefore his own shareholding. This will continue to increase

Do you really think he’s walking away anytime soon ?

It's hard to put into words the stupidity of this post.

https://www.goal.com/en/news/super-leag ... tie2tubmhz

The Premier League should follow suit.Sure they'll appeal but that takes time and losses will mount up.

What as opposed to suggesting we stop campaigning against racism because it won’t stop there being racists !

Ah. Doing it to save football. That’s alright then.

http://www.skysports.com/share/12280860

I disagree completely as I have already pointed out what I think should happen. Imo things could greatly improve given the impetus of the SL. If the Government wants to do something positive change the law, don't ask me how, so our league clubs are run the way they are in Germany where I would remind you that they can watch a Bundesliga game for £12 or thereabouts, unless it has shot up since.

It needs some sort of intervention and some shuffling of accounts and monies but the end result would be football as a sport not a business run for the youth of tomorrow by the youth of today.