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.

I am after 60 years of supporting and going to matches, home, away and in Europe a "Legacy Fan"

The issue here

Season Ticket holder. 26 home games for £1300
You might get more game which you subsequently pay for.
You might get less games and be refunded.

With the ESL which will be two groups of ten teams you will have nine home matches, plus 19 PL matches if still allowed to play in PL. That's 28 matches. (I'm not even including the FA Cup). An "A" match at the Emirates is £97 a ticket. You will still have the "A" matches in the PL v the other five English ESL teams and then another nine home "A" matches v the rest of your group. However, should you progress to final you then have another two matches. A season ticket will costs a lot more. Then the away matches. PPV. What's the going rate today. £15-20, maybe more.

Where's the Jeopardy?

This is not good for football and quite frankly I am ashamed of our owners, not Arsenal football club.

Will be interesting to hear the players views on this.

https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/european-soccer-embraced-big-money-040017565.html

Persevere with this if you have the time. It's a Bloomberg piece with a slightly wider perspective that some of our nationals.

With just a 77m euro debt, we're one of the better-off clubs. Spurs owe 685 billion euro! This makes the point that the top 20 clubs have suffered a 2 billion euro hit due to the pandemic and clearly see the Super League as an instant fix. Having said that, something like this has been bubbling away for some time by the sound of it.

If I have read it right the ESL is not looking to destroy any national league - the 12 members have made it clear they want to retain their memberships of said leagues, but also have the right to do their own thing too. There is a lot of hyperbole at the moment - not least from UEFA, whose control over the money in the game is being challenged in a way they can't handle. Resorting to threats is not going to help them. Also, lets be honest, the current English football gravy train doesn't call at too many stops outside the top leagues. If the toilets at Dartford are made of gold I must have missed them...

So true. Memories must be short if people now see UEFA and FIFA as the great egalitarians and saviours of the game.

Tend to agree Old Man. It's a bit rich to hear UEFA talk about a "shameless money grab" and "wanting to sell the TV rights on their own platform" when that's what UEFA have been doing for years since they inveigled themselves into their position of control.

Hi H, welcome back.

The counter to what you’ve said here (which is interesting) is that you are watching better quality football and the club are being given more money to invest in the team. I’e let’s keep playing crap teams category b teams then.

I don’t think ticket pricing is the real issue here the club will need to find a realistic compromise for its fans on that. Real issue for me is the fact global and European football would be controlled essentially by a cartel with a massively American influence.

Ignoring the gross nature of the play for ESL that’s being made what’s the actual reality?

It’s just a new midweek European competition replacing the champions league that may mean you would need to ditch the league cup and possibly the fa cup right ?

Correct me if I’m wrong but that doesn’t seem such a drastic change to me?

The glamour of a top class European tie will be completely lost. Fixtures we've had in our history against Benfica, PSG, Parma, Real Madrid, Juventus, Barcelona, Bayern, Fiorentina, Athletico Madrid - these were special because our domestic achievements earned us the right to play at this level but also because they were rare events which generated excitement. When we drew Barca or Bayern or Olympiakos years in a row, it's just not the same. It's not them again, and I'm not just saying that as we lost most of those!!

People will get bored of it extremely quickly and there's no real rivalry between the sides that is a fundamental part of domestic football.

Bin it.

Hi OMOH,

Totally agree, there is an incredible amount of hypocrisy going on here.

The govt would act to prevent 6 teams legitimately participating in their own midweek superleague instead of the CL whilst allowing foreign owners with questionable human rights and business practices to own our clubs.

Sky, BT and Uefa are not up in arms because they fear for the integrity of the game, they fear that their own gravy train might be about to hit the buffers that's all they fear.

UEFA could continue with their Champions League or something similar - their choice. It could be an opportunity to go back to the founding principles of the European Cup - only champions competing - which football fans used to enjoy and would bring back that competitions USP. UEFA's idea though is very different - a 36 team Champions League runnng alongside a Europa Cup of interminable length. That is yawn inducing, and validates the ESL founders' view that UEFA is happy to oversee many very ordinary fixtures just so long as the money rolls in.

It would be dreadful to do away with the FA Cup - it is a great English institution and wonderfully egalitarian competition which pre-dates the leagues. It must be protected. In all the noise about the dangers to English football it is worth remembering that the FA Cup was being watered down by the English clubs long before the ESL was thought of. Unbelievably it was weakened when the biggest club in the country refused to take part, and the FA did nothing about it.

The Sky hypocrisy question was addressed on the MNF last night.

Who here believes that the subscription model has improved football?

I thought they had some very strong arguments in favour of Sky's overall contribution (stadiums, lack of hooliganism; quality of the Premier League and Champions League, families going to the games).

The Champions League and Premier League have been fantastic over the years.

The problems started when they allowed in the venture capitalists. No one said a word and this is the end result.

685 billion? Is that figure right?

I mean FFS, I know Newcastle fans here (not many obviously) absolutely gutted when the Saudi's weren't allowed in.