Time to breathe in the air of the English Championship, regarded in many quarters as the best league in the world, but is it a league built on sand? The league is haemorrhaging money as fast as those piles that hit the pan, with clubs’ losses attached to the Championship exceeding three billion pounds, which makes the league an unsustainable model, but clubs keep dodging the bullets. A vibrant model on the field of play, with a high standard of football played out in a gallery of large crowds and does not apply the dreaded VAR.

The parachute payments afforded to the relegated Premiership clubs have no grounding of a fair sporting concept, to bring into context, the 2108-19 season oversaw the relegation of Huddersfield Town on a meagre sixteen points to the Championship, and to receive a 93 million pound jackpot for abject failure, while the Champions of the Championship Norwich City received 8 million pounds having amassed 94 points. The money is distribution from the termed, the central funding pot, the staggering 85 million payment differential is astonishing, does it pay to be relegated?

The inception of the Premier League in 1992 to split from the pyramid, but is that the case? To lay the stamp right now, the Premier League is dependent on the pyramid system to sustain its stature as the world’s number one league, link to article 23 October ‘The Magnificent Pyramid Part 1 and Part 2’. The so called elite like to play the charm offensive to negotiate the broadcasting deals to end game and lock down all of the revenues for their inhouse shit housery, but that is being diluted the current climate details out with 130 million pounds paid out in solidarity payments with the same figure being distributed from the Football League to their own members’ clubs. To reiterate, the monies are cycled by media rights, broadcasting and sponsorship.

As stated, the pyramid system is English football’s Rock of Gibraltar, forget the Spanish with many players kick starting their careers in the pyramid system at different levels to seek out their ambitions to play at the highest of levels and into the Premiership. The reverse effect sees Premiership clubs loaning players out to clubs below the Prem to gain experience with the traction to return to their clubs at the loan terms end to progress to the first team. The current Football League chairman, Rick Parry, was in another guise the first chief executive of the Premier League and now goes head-to-head with his former work origin. To revisit the parachute payments to relegated Premiersip clubs needs to be fairly regulated to equate to the rest of the Championship clubs, to be distributed in an even manner. The parachute payments have now been rephrased to the termed sustainability payments with the Football League lobbying for the payments to be scrapped due to the unfair advantage to transpire to make the Championship predictable. The Premiership clubs would have to muster fourteen votes to make the change. Sky Sports have stepped up to the plate with a five year deal to pump 895 million pounds into the Football League over that period, it has to be said that solidarity payments will rise to 460 million pounds to suction pipe from the top flight. The Championship continues to trail away to add stability to the castles of sand in a league that’s being strangled by debt, clubs need to adhere to their incoming revenues and not to stretch beyond their means in their quest for football’s golden ticket, Premiership status.

To Feature in November’s Edition

Early sightings the Prem (Part 2)
The Copa America and the ‘Sinned’ Jannick Sinner Tennis