Don’t get me wrong: I love the Beatles. John Cooper Clarke is a very clever man. I adore Jodie Comer from Killing Eve. But there’s something about Liverpudlians…

They can be very demanding. They have a sense of entitlement which creates the necessity to whinge a lot, which accounts for the accent, which is essentially, one big whinge. Even now, as Covid rips through their City, rather than appreciate the need based on the fact that half of Liverpool will die at the current rate, the Scouse reply is always “da’s typichal, da’ is; we get da pubs closed. Iss persechution!” Not accepting that their need may be greater, but that they are being singled out for punishment.

And now we have Premiership-gate. The latest shit-storm to engulf our beautiful game. Which started as a plea from the English Football League. Save our clubs. The ‘lower divisions’, starved of match attendance by the crisis, is on the brink of total financial collapse. Can’t the Premiership, with its obscene levels of wealth and expenditure, help out? The annual salary of one single Manchester City player could keep afloat the entire Division 2 clubs for 10 years. Well, something along those lines. So they asked for money, for help.

Because although the Premiership is a stand alone thing of joy and wonderment, it is still part of the league system. And really, an aspiration for the whole thing. So Bournemouth can come up and play for a few years. Watford can come and go, come and go, come and go. West Ham can hang on and hang on and, unfortunately, hang on. Leicester can come up and win the bloody title.

But that’s all romance. And this is business. John Henry is the owner of Liverpool and a man whose whole life is entrenched in football. Unfortunately, in American Football, which is less about romance, nothing about history, everything about money. And for years he has had a plan, ‘Project Big Picture’, which would see the biggest of the Premier clubs basically take control of the whole thing, doing their own deals, particularly with tv rights, where the big money comes from.

So John Henry, along with those other… other… what’s it called when you make shit loads of money and everyone else loses the shirts off their backs but its vaguely legal? Oh yeah, along with those other clever Americans at Manchester United, put up a plan to ‘save English football!!!’ in a magnanimous way. Giving 250 million quid to the lower league teams. Awww, that’s kind.

Is it? In return these two, along with the other 4 ‘big’ clubs, take control of all the money in the Premier League and ‘redistribute’ it along lines of… of… of… of ‘we get the lion’s share and the other teams can scavenge for the rest’, sort of thing. Less vague. More totally fucking air-tight and sealed in law forevermore, amen.

Reduce the size of the Premiership. Less matches. Get rid of the League Cup. Then with all that extra time and energy, the big six can devote the time to playing big sixes from other European countries. Not like ‘Serbia’ and ‘Russia’, but proper Europe. Like Spain. Where they only really have a big 3, possibly just a big 2, because their league already runs on the lines proposed by Henry & Glazer. Neither of whom is even Liverpudlian. Yet still feel the need to bemoan the system and demand their entitlement, as if they were.

I don’t like this one bit. Damned Yanks…

Happy Tuesday night. Even City boys get busy sometimes.

A xxxx