Saturday's walkout by Liverpool fans rocked English football to its core but the biggest obstacle to fair ticket prices isn't owners, it's players' obscene wages
Just a battle, not the war: Saturday's protest cannot be the end of the fans' fight
The cynics had said all week that the Anfield walk-out was futile and would achieve nothing.And considering the limp failure of most protests against the treatment of fans, who could blame them?
But that mass downing of supporters' tools was such a deep, knowing reaction to blatant exploitation that it rocked English football to its core.
It said to all of those living off the life-blood of our national sport “You’ve been sussed.”
Fair play to Fenway Sports for getting the message that enough definitely was enough, but the Battle of Anfield is just one victory.
When Premier League CEOs can share £8.3 billion in TV revenues over the next three years, yet still refuse to cut ticket prices for away fans to £30, the war is far from won.
Besides, owners aren’t even the biggest problem here.
The real obstacle to fans getting a fair deal is the obscene amounts of money being sucked out of the game by players.
Isn’t it strange that the world’s highest paid trade-union leader , PFA chairman Gordon Taylor (annual salary: £3.36million), looked at those 10,000 fans streaming out of Anfield in protest at ticket prices which make his rich members even richer and didn’t feel the urge to speak out?
A debate raged about the poorest fans being priced out of grounds, which even the Prime Minister joined in at PMQs, but Taylor, a trade union leader, felt no need to intervene. Despite his members being the prime beneficiaries of this never-ending quest to see how high clubs can push their prices.
How many times do we hear of his members blackmailing clubs into doubling their wages after a couple of months’ worth of rave reviews?
Or leaking news that they’re “unsettled” because they’ve only 18 months left on their contract and they haven’t been begged to sign a new one with a hefty pay rise.
But it’s the players who employ them.
Blaming agents for gorging on the TV riches is like blaming a rat for ransacking a bin bag you’ve left out on your path.
It’s what they do.
Of course, elite footballers deserve the same rewards as their equivalents in other sports. But when half of many squads are filled with bang-average players who wouldn’t earn anything like their Premier League salary in other leagues, where is the justice in clubs forcing fans to cough up for their exorbitant wages?
Where is the morality in the PFA turning a blind eye to this when it sees trade unionists in low-paid jobs priced out of football grounds by the greed of their own members?
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This era of uncontrollable player power has left football with an unsustainable business model.
Only the staunch loyalty of fans, and the ease with which that loyalty can be exploited, keeps that model intact. But it’s reaching breaking point.
So Gordon, why don’t you, as a British trade unionist take a lead from those American capitalists, and do something about it?
I know the PFA is kept going by the £17.5m-a-year you receive from the Premier League TV deals, and you’d hate to rock the platinum-plated super-yacht, but isn’t it time you asked your members to give something back to those who go to the match?
You remember Going To The Match.
It’s the Lowry painting you paid £2m for, which depicts a huddled mass of working-class folk heading into a northern ground in the 1950s.
How many of their grandkids can still afford to do the same?
Think about it.
Then think about reminding your members that without those huddled masses the game from which they earn untold riches is nothing.
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