Oh so rotten

Football as we know it has been dying for some time. This is further proof.

Basically, Portsmouth FC has debts "estimated" at around £60 million. Quite whether this figure is accurate, I can't say, especially if it includes a possible £28 million to previous owner but one.

However, included in the creditors will be a large number of small business. However, within football, other football clubs get preferred creditor status. Consequently, the whole bloated mess can carry on whilst others can go to the wall. Portsmouth's television money will be diverted to other football clubs rather than the businesses that really need it.

Further proof of the obscene nature of being a football creditor can be found in the galling site of a relatively healthy Leeds United defeating Man United on Sunday. The chairman, Ken Bates, took the club into administration and bought it straight back off the administrators. This magically wiped out millions of pounds in debt. I would write something further here but why should I when David Conn of The Guardian expresses it so much better:

Leeds owed HM Revenue and Customs £7m, West Yorkshire ambulance service £8,997, St John Ambulance £165, and Bates's backers' first offer, accepted by the administrator, KPMG, was to pay those creditors 1p in the pound. The former players still owed money from Peter Ridsdale's dream time all had to be paid in full, including, for example, Danny Mills, owed £217,000 on a contract which had ended three years earlier.

Non-football creditors got 1p in the pound. Football creditors were paid in full.

Football is once again confused by it's own sense of self-importance. It pains me to say it but it's probably time one of these clubs went out of business altogether. There's an outside chance that the others might start to sit up and take notice. The pathetic ego driven desire to have the best league with the most expensive well paid players is driving the game into the dirt.

Let it go. Let the players go abroad if they want, if someone else can pay them similar amounts of money. Anyway, it's about time clubs stopped buying and started coaching.