Quote Originally Posted by jardi View Post
Captain I like your style and your thinking, - which is logical and sustainable in a normal business setting. However, the problem with football is that it is not a normal business, and the paying public are not willing to wait for 4- 5 years to see players being nurtured in the way they should, - especially as they will then be simply cherry-picked by the bigger clubs.

Until or unless football at the highest level realises that without grass roots clubs, they are nothing, and that ultimately they will die out quicker than the dinosaurs in a cataclysmic catastrophe.

An agreement must be set that a decent percentage of any deal from a major sponsor is set aside to support grass roots clubs across the country, - finding and nurturing talent, who are then able to progress through a pyramid system, - with each successive club benefiting from their input. That is the only way to ensure that football survives.

The 'dog eat dog' system is all very well, but we are already witnessing cannibalism on a massive scale, and eventually like all models of capitalism, the top dog will have no alternative but to eat itself.
Excellent post Jardi which hits the nail on the head on precisely why the game at our lower level struggles so much. However can you ever see the situation improving with some of the much needed money filtering down to the lower levels or will the upper echelon simply greedily grab as much as they can without any consideration of the game at our level?
It's not even worth asking the question as we all know the answer to that one.