, Future Forecast Part 3 :- football doesn’t feel like it should do anymore

Future Forecast Part 3 :- football doesn’t feel like it should do anymore

The beautiful game has been back for over three months, and in the main, it has been good. OK, it’s not without the occasional hiccup but it is, at the very least, football.

Failure to confirm specific parts of the fixture list before the season brought up a few problems. Lineker’s FA had only set leagues and fixtures. Apart from the first day, no logistics had been applied. Even ‘Derby Day’ hadn’t worked perfectly. Norwich had been handed a ‘local’ match away at Newcastle, whilst the FA had seemingly disregarded most of the third-tier, even forgetting to name it.

What made the oversight of League Three worse was the 60th team and its wardrobe of skeletons.

St George’s Park, a team formed at the Staffordshire headquarters of the FA had taken the last spot pipping AFC Man-citizens who, by all accounts looked the favourites. However, the consortium behind the St Georg’s team were connected.

The excitement surrounding the new football league was invigorating. The bitterness to rivalry had been replaced with camaraderie. The ‘survivors’ of football were no longer hate-filled, there was still the comic chanting, the ‘we are better than you; level of to-and-fro but no negativity and certainly no abuse.

No definite dominance was showing in the top two divisions. Southampton leading the pack in the Phoenix, and a three-way tussle developing in the Ashes league between Blackburn, Middlesbrough and popular-with-the-neutrals Coventry Wanderers. However tier three, unofficially christened ‘the Conference’, was much more straight-forward. St Georges Park had not lost a game, not conceded a goal, and not dropped a point.

Every player at St George’s was also in the international set-up. Everyone in the international set-up was at St George’s! It was widely accepted that the promising talent across the other 59 teams, regardless of league, would be ‘signed’ by St George’s in the transfer window. The only part of the speculation no one could guarantee?

Well, no one knew how the new transfer system would work. Money hadn’t really taken hold on the game like it previously grasped it, this was a new era. Would transfers really make sense? Players didn’t have contracts in the old sense, in fact, players had signed up to their clubs as though they were in the regular workforce. Nothing was in place to prevent players from handing in their notice and leaving in four weeks.

Burton Albion, who narrowly missed out on being in the Ashes league were finding the contractual matters to be a big problem.  Four players in their squad had already been publicly shamed, constantly pub-crawling the Burton breweries on a Friday night, hardly the professional attitude you would usually expect from footballers. One of the four, the aptly named Danny Carling had even been hospitalised once, and arrested twice.

The St George’s Park controversy was drawing unwanted attention. Manager Anton Ferdinand was under pressure to address the international status. However, as yet, the world had not resumed the international calendar with many of the countries outside of Europe yet to restart major sport at all.

Heading into the Christmas break, the FA were under pressure to commit to the regulations around the transfer window. Gary Lineker was hesitant to confirm anything. On 28th December, a statement was released:- “Due to the non-contract way in which clubs filled their playing staff, we feel it is necessary to outline the transfer obligations”

Nothing more featured on the statement, and as it was released on Twitter, people expected a link or multiple tweets, but for 27 hours, nothing more appeared.

Then, Covfefe.

A hastily deleted statement of lunacy was replaced with a detailed screenshot from an iPhone notes app.

“If a club wishes to sign a contracted player from another club, they must issue a statement of intent, which, in turn, gives the club receiving the statement two options. Acceptance of the statement will allow the player to talk to the approaching club, the player has the right to accept or deny the approach. Denial of the statement will result in the FA deciding whether it is in the League’s interest to allow the approach or not. If the league sides with the players current club, no more action can be taken. However, if the league sides with the approaching club, then the player is free to walk away from his current employer, regardless of the players’ decision to join, or not join the approaching club.  If the Player chooses to leave his club but decides not to sign for the approaching club, the player must sign for another club within 48 hours, or not play again that season”

A second ruling was also published on what was obviously another screenshot.

“Players wishing to leave their club, must signal intent and serve two weeks notice, Clubs wishing to terminate contracts can do so at will, but all clubs must trim their squads to a maximum of 25 players. However, any player who featured in the football pyramid does not need to be included in the 25, on the loyalty of football scheme”

No one knew what the ‘Loyalty of Football Scheme’  was, and furthermore these rules offered no real clarity to the situation, no one seemed to understand what was happening. One thing was certain though, the League Club’s Whatsapp group was receiving an awful lot of approaches, all of them from St Georges Park!

To Be Continued…

Previous Article
, Leeds United – four standout games from the 2019/20 campaign so far

Leeds United - four standout games from the 2019/20 campaign so far

Next Article
, Middlesbrough transfer archive – string bag of balls bought future England defender

Middlesbrough transfer archive - string bag of balls bought future England defender

Related Posts