By Albatross
January 26 2005

Remember Hartlepool United's best result of last season? Well our opponents, Grimsby Town, are the latest club to be plunged into a financial crisis. How come so many clubs seem to be struggling when it seems there's more money in the game than ever before?

Grimsby are the latest club to be in danger of going into administration, with a bill from the Taxman for 750K threatening the future of a club that a couple of seasons ago was in Division 1. In some ways this may be part of the problem - while they were in that division, they were potentially going to receive more TV Revenue, until of course ITV Digital went bust. The unpaid tax bill is being linked by the Mariners to the contracts they agreed with players at that time and threatens the existence of a club that seems to have spent most of the last three seasons in a headlong plummet.

Of course, until the season many clubs reaching this point would already have taken the Administration option. Now though the ten point deduction means that it is truly a measure of last resort - perhaps giving some indication of how serious Wrexham's situation is for example, when they consider the fact that they're now in a relegation battle a price that has to be paid to try and save the club.

What did Grimsby do wrong? To be honest the only crime of the board seems to have been not taking the club into Admin before the points deduction took effect. They'd budgeted carefully, but when the ITV Digital money turned up they did what many other clubs have done - agreed more lucrative contracts with players on the basis that they'd be getting more income. When the deal that looked too good to be true turned out to be precisely that, they were left with a number of players on wages that they simply couldn't afford. Even then they took action to try and limit the damage - Player of the Year Danny Coyne was allowed to leave on a free transfer following their relegation to Division 2 to ease the wage bill, and Alan Pouton and Mickey Boulding were sold for what many Mariners fans feel was well below their market value simply to try and make the books balance. The fact that another player Grimsby let go - Phil Jevons - is now amongst the top scorers in their division must be an even more bitter pill to swallow but again there must be suspicion that it's because the board were trying to cover the gaping hole left in their finances. With contracts having ended the club is apparently paying it's way now - but like the Sword of Damocles, the debt from the ITV Digital days is hanging over them and threatening their existence.

Part of the irony is of course that the amount owed is tiny compared to the money floating around in football as a whole. Craig Bellamy has apparently been fined the sum of 80K - two week's wages - for his outburst against Souness; that's almost a fifth of what the Grimsby Town Supporters Trust is trying to raise to save the club; one week's wage bill from one of the top clubs would probably cover all of the debt with money left over.

The problem is that the money is getting concentrated in the Premiership - and I get the feeling that in Boardrooms at that level you are starting to get more and more people that aren't really what you'd call "Football People". I don't necessarily mean that they're not interested in their club, more that they don't really think about what is good for the game as a whole and instead think only about the multi-million pound businesses that they're now running. These are now powerful people in the FA Setup, and in a position to influence more than just the Premiership - and I can't help but find that worrying. There are signs that some people are thinking about kicking away the ladder and casting the less glamourous Football League clubs adrift; Freddy Shepherd's comment "the last thing we are worried about is clubs in the third division" has been one of the highest-profile recent examples, but there have been plenty of others, including Peter Kenyon's comments a while back about expecting the number of profesisonal clubs to drop.

The irony is that the people running the teams (as opposed to the clubs) seem to recognise the role played by the smaller clubs more than their masters. The FA Cup 3rd round saw Alex Ferguson being complimentary about Exeter, and Jose Mourinho commissioning a dossier on Scunthorpe that he later passed on to his opposite number Brian Laws and then suggesting that top level teams should always play away when drawn against lower division opponents.

Another sign of the lack of interest in the sport as a whole at board level is the attitude towards the National Side and the changes that some (certainly Sven Goran Erikssen) would like to see. The argument runs that a smaller Premiership would mean fewer games - leading to fresher players and more chance for the England Manager to get his squad together; however it doesn't cut much ice in Premiership Boardrooms where the prospect of a couple of home games less each season means a serious loss of revenue. What's good for the Premiership isn't necessarily what's good for football, but it is good for the business of the increasing number of PLCs at the top.

You could almost argue that the Premiership is rapidly approaching stagnation anyway. Chelsea are running away with the title, and assuming they keep up their current form will be only the fourth team to win the title since the formation of the league twelve years ago. Already it looks certain that Arsenal and Man Utd will be in the Champions League again, and for some reason it's hard to get excited about a battle for fourth place unless your team is involved. Meanwhile at the other end more and more often it's a case of at least two of the previous year's promoted teams going back down and certain "usual suspects" being in the struggle as well - it's all very predictable, as the Bookies have recently been complaining. There's frequently talk of how the Scottish Premier is stagnant and dominated by just two sides - well it's looking to me that we're getting close to the situation on a slightly larger scale down here in England too.

Meanwhile clubs lower down continue to struggle and unlike past years increasingly find that the top clubs aren't interested in buying their star players unless they really are exceptional; and so teams like Grimsby find the gaps that bit harder to plug. "I'm all right, Jack" say many in the Premiership; and so at a time when there's more money in the game than ever before, we find more and more clubs edging closer to the trapdoor of not just administration but liquidation. Unfortunatley it may not be until a couple of clubs go to the wall that the problem is taken seriously.

If you'd like to give to Grimsby Town Supporter's Trust, visit their website.