Dire landscape facing EFL clubs after latest fan blow amid calls for PL help
[ad_1]
Gillingham chairman Paul Scally fears dozens of EFL clubs will go bust unless the Premier League comes to their rescue.
Scally says his club is currently losing £40,000-a-week and will not survive until Christmas after the latest blow on fans not being allowed back into games.
The outspoken Gills supremo fears it will be exactly the same for other clubs and insists the mega-rich fat cats in the top flight “must step up and do the right thing.”
Premier League clubs have been discussing financial help for EFL clubs with a new bail out which has become even more important after the Government blocked fans returning from October 1.
Scally told Mirror Sport: “You cannot tell me that with Chelsea spending £200m in the transfer market there is no money in the Premier League to help out the EFL clubs.
“We should be a family in football. We’ve been a family for 125 years and now when a member of the family is struggling badly it’s time for wealthy big brother to step up and help the family. It’s as simple as that.
(Image: 2020 Getty Images)
“This latest blow will be devastating for all clubs in the EFL. I’ve already been worried sick about it. Last night I woke up at 4am because I couldn’t sleep through worry, it’s a day-to-day existence and it will be the same for all clubs.
“We’ve been told they are going to try to help us, I don’t know in what form, but that can’t come soon enough otherwise clubs will go out of business.
“At the moment, we are surviving purely on what we get from the TV contract but that’s not sustainable. You can’t go on like that for any length of time.
“We rely on match day revenue and all the ancillary business that goes with that. We are losing £40,000-a-week at the moment and would be out of business by Christmas.
“It’ll be the same for so many others but I can’t worry about them because we have to focus on ourselves. Some clubs will be worse off than us, some will have benefactors but this is devastating for all of us.
“I’ve just got to hope that the Premier League do the right thing and I’m putting my faith in them, Rick Parry and the EFL to come to the rescue. The Premier League will know the importance of the football pyramid and help the family in our hour of need.”
(Image: NurPhoto/PA Images)
EFL clubs had been given the go-ahead to start pilot schemes of having 1,000 fans back in to try and set up a pathway to have bigger numbers in stadiums as the season went on.
But now that has been put on hold by the Government leaving football at crisis point and many EFL clubs fearing they will go to the wall.
Scally added: “The reality is that 1,000 fans is not enough and you could even argue it’s not really cost effective to have to look after that number. But the hope was we’d have fans back in sooner rather than later.
“This is a huge disappointment because what is football without fans? I would even put up with the abuse that I get just to get them back in!
It has been a hectic and unique transfer window so far – so make sure you don’t miss a single thing by signing up for the brilliant new Mirror Football newsletter!
You’ll been clued up on Jadon Sancho, Declan Rice and more as clubs buy their way through the summer. All the latest transfer news and big stories will land straight into your inbox. You won’t miss out.
To sign up, put your email at the top of this article or follow the instructions on this link.
“I went to Wigan on Saturday, drove 400 odd miles there and back, sat with my daughter with a few of their staff, a few journalists and it was a terrible experience. Without fans, football is nothing.
“You have no feeling at all for the game, you feel like you are living on the edge of the game, you can’t get into it and I can barely watch it on TV.
“Never mind the financial implications, football without fans is just so wrong.”
Sign up to the Mirror Football email here for the latest news and transfer gossip.
[ad_2]
Source link