Yes - let's have another post about John Henry not being a good enough scout or Tom Werner getting the tactics wrong in the cup or Mike Gordon not showing Benteke how to do keepie-uppies.
Those horrible, nasty owners!
Here you go this post will be just for you and a standpoint you probably totally agree with!!
Matthew Syed - of the Times offers the following wisdom....
There were allegations of intimidation at Anfield on Saturday as fans staged a walkout in the 77th minute in protest at high ticket prices. It had been proposed by the club that season tickets in the main stand will go up, while other season and match-day tickets will come down. Not everyone backed the walkout, but many were made to feel uneasy for staying in their seats.
āWhat did the walkout achieve?ā one fan asked on a website. āIt turned Liverpool supporters against each other, people being bullied to leave, abused that they didnāt, in a highly divisive stunt that left those of us loyally supporting our team and our club, saddened and vilified.ā Similar sentiments were expressed on fan forums (albeit in less measured tones).
In a blog for ESPN, Steven Kelly, a Liverpool fan who joined the walkout, insinuated that fans who stayed in their seats were somehow disloyal, the ultimate slur on Merseyside. āThose who left early would probably still watch Liverpool if they were relegated, while those who get so angry about the very idea of a walkout probably wouldnāt,ā he said. He had not a shred of evidence for this claim, but it captured the ill feeling.
The irony, of course, is that this kind of intimidation would most likely intensify if prices are reduced significantly. The reason for this will become clear as we go along, but it is underpinned by a statistic rarely acknowledged by campaigners, namely that stadium utilisation is near 100 per cent. At Arsenal, who have the highest season-ticket prices, the waiting list is measured in thousands. Nobody doubts that they could put up the prices and still sell out.
What this tells us is that prices are not too high. How could they be when they are being purchased in their entirety by willing buyers? It tells us something else too: if prices were lowered, the number of people attending games would be precisely the same as today. The only difference is that waiting lists would grow. This is what happens at every club, whether on the Continent or elsewhere, when prices are reduced below the market rate. After all, prices are a rationing mechanism. If you do not ration by price, you have to do it some other way.
And this brings us to intimidation. You see, when fan groups ask for lower prices, there is always a caveat. It is never spoken, never expressed, but it is always lurking in the background. What they really mean is that prices should be reduced for them. They want official fan groups to have privileged access to cheaper seats or those who already own season tickets. They want to exploit incumbency advantage, a closed shop in all but name, thus denying those eager to attend games but who are less well connected.
This is why the assertion that cheaper tickets represent a redistribution from greedy owners to hard-working fans is so intellectually disreputable. In fact, it is a redistribution from fans who bank the subsidy from those who are shut out. Given that almost all revenue raised by clubs is spent (few clubs ā with obvious exceptions ā make serious profits, despite what fans think), mainly on player wages and transfers, it would also affect the capacity of clubs to attract top talent.
In many instances, the unintended consequences of price-fixing are more troubling. In South America, black markets are rife, with thugs and ultras snaffling the subsidised seats. In Germany, ticket prices are cheaper than the Premier League, but this is partly because of spare capacity after a taxpayer-funded stadium redevelopment programme costing ā¬1.4 billion (about Ā£1.1 billion). We could do the same here, and fans would doubtless love it, but it is hard to see why taxpayers should subsidise football attendance rather than, say, hospitals or schools.
Take a step back for a moment. In the halcyon days before the āawfulā Premier League, attendances were far lower than today. In 1988-89, the total attendance was 7.8 million. In the opening year of the Premier League (with 22 clubs), it was 9.8 million. Today, with modernised stadiums, the number is 13.9 million and rising. This isnāt greed; it is dynamism.
Many of the new fans are from ethnic minorities, who have fallen in love with the game, and there are more younger fans too. In 2014-15, 58,000 junior season tickets were sold across the top flight, 10,000 more than a decade earlier. Some poorer fans have undoubtedly been priced out, but the question campaigners rarely answer is how to ensure that subsidised tickets would go to those in genuine need rather than incumbents and the well connected, which is not the same thing at all. Do they want a means test, with yet more perverse consequences?
It is at this point that fan groups typically perform an about-turn. Confronted with the difficulties with their argument, they offer a new perspective. Instead of arguing for cheaper prices on moral grounds, they do so on grounds of long-term profitability. They say that poorer supporters are more vocal, adding to the atmosphere. They talk about how treating fans with respect (ie, offering tickets to lobbying groups below the market rate) would assist with community relations.
But we should be cautious of this kind of motivated reasoning, where arguments are cobbled together to reach a prejudged conclusion. Besides, you canāt have it both ways: you canāt say that clubs are greedily exploiting fans to maximise revenues in one breath and then claim that they are failing to maximise revenues in the next.
There are, of course, things that clubs could do better. I would love to see unused corporate boxes given to local kids. It would be great, too, to have further debate on safe standing. The issue of away fans also needs enlightened handling. A number of initiatives have led to a 6 per cent rise in away fan attendance, but the executive committee of the Premier League has promised to do more. It will be interesting to see its proposals in the coming months.
But the wider point is clear. While it would be popular to call for lower prices for home fans, it would also be dishonest. The arguments amount to little more than a series of well-manicured nonsequiturs. The latest doing the rounds, namely that an enhanced television deal provides scope for dramatic price reductions, is a case in point. It is like lobbying a large supermarket that has just made healthy profits to make massive cuts to food prices. Without any increase in supply, it would simply lead to painfully long queues, black markets, racketeering and, possibly, violence.
We should have learnt by now that the best way to alleviate poverty, a vital issue, is by creating wealth or redistributing it via the tax system. Trying to address poverty by rigging prices is the kind of incoherence that got the nation into trouble in the 1970s, and that should have been discredited for good. Nobody is forcing fans to go to games. Nobody is holding a gun to their heads. It is a voluntary transaction and, given that demand outstrips supply, there is only one conclusion: it represents good value for money
