These are very hard times and a lot of people are in unimaginable hardship. I would have loved to see our beloved club standing by those hardest hit. It wouldn’t have been too much to support some low-paid employees.
Not related to our club necessarily but if you subscribe to The Athletic I highly recommend this article published over the weekend. It is an extremely fascinating, at times simply surreal, read.
So, you’re filthy rich and want to buy a football club? by Adam Crafton.
An excerpt:
Across English football, chief executives and owners all have their tales of near misses and lucky escapes when it comes to takeovers. In the Premier League now, only five clubs are majority owned by British investors. There are six American regimes, plus three Chinese, a British-Iranian, a Russian, an Abu Dhabi group, a Thai, an Italian and a Saudi. In the Championship, 12 clubs are majority-owned by foreign investors, while even outside of the top two divisions, a Singaporean businessman is a major investor at Salford City and American owners are in place at Dagenham and Redbridge, with Hollywood stars Rob McElhenney and Canadian Ryan Reynolds looking to repeat the trick at Wrexham.
Along the way, sellers meet hoaxers and hoodwinkers, tyre kickers and time wasters, as well as the bonkers and bizarre, such as a Chinese investor who wanted to implement a state-sponsored education regime at a stadium and a 22-year-old holiday rep for a travel company who secured private information from several Football League clubs.
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The reality is that if we were to look after all the employees we probably shouldn’t have bought Jota. That was £4m upfront (even if the fee was reduced) and would have helped a lot of people.
There is probably a need to cut costs somewhere. And generally speaking, most cost cuts will affect someone - direct employee or not. There are probably cuts in more places than we know of and to not make any cost cuts would be pure folly. Lack of communication, however, is a bit unforgiveable.
On the other hand, I’m sure the club is also paying salaries of people they don’t need as well. What is the balance? To what extent should it be the club’s responsibility? Perhaps zero hour and temporary workers are the easiest place to cut because some will rightfully/wrongfully conclude that they are the ones with the smallest link to the club.
LFC is probably going to hemorage money this season with the added testing and safety costs plus existing high player salary costs.
Players? Not so much. I can’t recall if they even agreed to a reduced salary. In either case, they won’t lose money as they will still make tonnes even if there is a 20% or 30% reduction.
Everyone is hurting except them. I’m hurting financially, but if there was a Gofundme page, I’d still be happy to donate a little bit as I’m sure there are worse off.
Apparently the club is not allowed to take government assistance money and not allowed to make cuts? That’s rough. I’m sure (or at least hope) they are doing their part somewhere - but to bear the burden for all staff?
I don’t know if we can expect that. Personally, I would have applauded and been fully supportive if the club sold one of our top players and donated the proceeds (even if it was detrimental to our season). But that was never going to happen.
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This is the key point. If the club has to reduce costs, it has to be by cutting off the players’ wages. Take off two-three percent of the monthly sum LFC pay their players, and it could go a long way to support the less privileged ones.
The players really need to take their responsibilities.
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We don’t know players have or haven’t taken pay cuts. There has been rumours of senior staff doing so and coaching staff but doubt there will ever be full confirmation. Meanwhile the players are also involved in the NHS support Henderson arranged. The club is doing a lot to support school meals, local food banks and fully paying the contracted wages of all staff. Regardless of coronavirus there’s a moral discussion regarding zero hour contract staff but what are the club supposed to do? Make up a number of hours these staff may have worked if this wasn’t going on? Pretty much guarantee there would still be controversy over that too as some would get paid more than they would have worked and some less still. Meanwhile there’s still the demands to run and to he successful on the pitch etc and commitments to meet. Club will never be able to please everyone on all accounts it’s just not possible. I do however think it’s one of the club’s doing the best.
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Without hard evidence that the players have not taken pay cuts… Surely as a group they could could have been more pro-active in the general plight of the personnel laid-off if these people come directly under the umbrella of LFC safeguards…
As a group I am sure they could have engineered some lucrative advertising type work to compensate any wages shortfall…
Just throwing it out there is all…
As far as I’m aware LFC have not laid off any staff. The controversy is the staff who are on zero hour contract work (mostly revolving around matchday) currently not having work. But how do you fix that? Give them all a set number of hours work even if there’s no guarantee they’d have done that work even without Covid? What happens if some people who regularly only did about 10 hour a week get paid the same as staff regularly paid for 30 hours a week? The problem is the zero hour contracts and that we probably shouldn’t be a club that has staff on them anymore. But we do and probably most/all other clubs do too.
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If I get a Liverpool game on PPV can I get them to come round and bring me beers, throw out the rubbish, direct me to my seat, then shout at me if I’m standing throughout the game?
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I don’t like zero hours contracts. It is a casual sort of working relationship, but very much one I can understand LFC using, given the need for additional employees at particular times.
If the work isn’t there, what is the mechanism for assistance?
It should be the government. I would have thought covid should add impetus for a universal basic income, so people aren’t in dire poverty.
In general I’m uncomfortable with looking at the players and seeing them as a solution to zero hours workers. Charity is a personal thing, a good thing definitely, but it should never be something that takes the place of sensible and compassionate government policy.
That’s where the issue is.
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Some more ‘news’
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Did anybody say “feeder club”?
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They’re buying Southampton and Roma??
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But, but…
Where’s the money, John?
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We will need to revamp the management of both the clubs. Look how they have wasted all the money we spent on them.
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This is great news, hopefully the season ticket list will open up!
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I’m so used to seeing threads bumped due to injuries or Covid I was wondering who was off to sickbay before I even clicked on the thread!
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The only positive I can see now is that even if we get nothing from this shit absurd season, we have the right people in place who are interested and keep planning for long term success.
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We do have good people at the helm… and yes, we are going to win the league too. It will be a battle of attrition, but with everything that is going wrong, it just lets a few others get close, but the mighty reds will do it again.
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We are palpably the best team but are we going to be held back by the refs? They have already robbed us of four points; how many more dubious decisions are we going to suffer?
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