SOMETIMES I’m astounded at the reasoning, or lack of it, spilling from the mouths of Premier League managers – but Sir Alex Ferguson takes the biscuit this week.
I actually get on quite well with Fergie, we’ve had the odd run-in in the past, and it’s not often I see him these days, but when we do meet there’s a firm handshake and the passing of pleasantries.
But I’m sorry Sir Alex you’re way off beam in complaining that TV companies don’t pay enough money for the right to televise football.
His club earned £60.4m from Premier League broadcasting rights in 2010-11, that’s £15m more than ITV paid the whole of the Football League for TV rights in 1988 – Fergie was Old Trafford boss in those days too.
Some clubs would have been dead and buried years ago but for the money they bank from television deals, and it’s not the TV companies’ fault if clubs choose to fritter it away on ridiculously inflated wages.
Look at the ITV digital farce a few years ago. Typically, several clubs lashed out millions of pounds before the venture collapsed, based on what they were expecting to receive. They didn’t have the cash in hand but bought the entire sweet shop before finding out the funds weren’t there after all.
For a club like United, of course, it doesn’t end with just Premier League money. There are Champions League and overseas rights, and in total last season they were paid £146m in broadcast income.
That should be enough to fill the weekly pay packets of Rooney, Ferdinand, Giggs et al for a year or two yet.
Sir Alex said: “When you shake hands with the devil you have to pay the price. Television is God. They can pick and choose whenever they want the top teams on television.”
We do find common ground when he complains that clubs playing aChampions League match away from home on a Wednesday shouldn’t be required to fulfil a Premier League fixture the following Saturday.
My recollection is, however, that those clubs are usually accommodated on a Sunday, but I do recognise that Stoke recently got thrashed 4-0 by Sunderland less than 72 hours after a gruelling flight from Kiev.
Clubs earn an average of £4.3m from each screening of a live game and I reckon that’s fairly generous.
After all, there is the occasional dross, and in any case it’s a free advertisement for the clubs involved.
He who pays the piper calls the tune, that’s a fact of life, so far from getting football on the cheap, TV is providing clubs with an income they wouldn’t otherwise have, and the opportunity to go out and buy the best players in the world.