Most people believe the six English Premier League football clubs involved in the proposed European Super League should be punished as supporters’ fury over the failed breakaway continues to simmer.
According to a new Opinium poll for the Observer, 60% of respondents want Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester City, Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur penalised: more than a quarter would like to see the clubs heavily fined, while a fifth advocate a points deduction. A majority of fans of the “big six” backed calls for their own clubs to be punished.
With distrust and anger towards the owners of the failed breakaway clubs showing little sign of abating, the poll also found that a third of people support the introduction of a “50+1” ownership rule, where fans own at least 51% of a club.
Many German clubs operate on this ownership model, and several pundits have pointed out that no Bundesliga team was involved in last week’s audacious – and ultimately doomed – attempt to form a new European league.
Despite the project’s defeat, feelings are still running high in England, with Saturday’s opening Premier League fixtures all seeing what have become familiar protests outside the stadiums of the six breakaway clubs.
Outside Anfield, around 150 Liverpool fans gathered to vent their anger towards the club’s owner, Fenway Sports Group (FSG). Banners displaying messages such as “Spirit of Shanks, Not Greedy Yanks” – referring to the club’s most revered former manager Bill Shankly and its current American owners – and “FSG rats” were placed where the Liverpool players would see them from their coach as they approached the ground.
But this protest was considerably smaller than the one outside Arsenal’s Emirates ground in north London on Friday night, where more than 1,000 protesters gathered and players arriving for the match against Everton could hear their displeasure.
Elsewhere, criticism of the attempted breakaway emerged from several quarters, including former prime minister Gordon Brown, who on Saturday called for wide-ranging new governance rules for football.
Brown urged several key changes, including a formal fans’ representative operating at a national level, a new formula for distributing money down the pyramid and a review of clubs’ board structures.
“If people haven’t woken up before this week, they’ve woken up now,” he said. “I don’t think some of these leaders in football can survive the next two years.”
His comments came shortly after West Ham United’s vice-chairman, Karren Brady, revealed the six breakaway clubs were called “worse than snakes” at a meeting of the other 14 Premier League clubs last Tuesday.
