Manchester City Urged To Help Bury FC by Local MP

Manchester City are undoubtedly one of the power houses in the Premier League and European football, so it is no surprise there are calls for them to help a neighbour.

Ivan Lewis, the local Bury Member of Parliament, has called on Manchester City to help Bury FC who sit on the verge of expulsion from the English Football League. The whole saga has been a sad indictment of the problems deeply inherent in the modern football game.

Bury FC have a rich and illustrious history. In the same year that Manchester City formed – 1894 – Bury were elected to the Football League and in their early years they won the FA Cup twice. For the last 60 years they have spent the majority of their time in the lower reaches of the Football League structure.

Like many clubs they have suffered from financial mismanagement in an era of both untold wealth and escalating costs. Currently the Club are in conflict with the English Football League. Their current owner has allegedly not passed the existing fit and proper person’s test as the sale was completed before the League had ruled.

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There are unpaid wages, huge debts secured on the club and the suspicion the club owner may actually benefit from the club collapsing through having bought debt. The League have postponed all of Bury’s fixtures so far believing they are not capable of carrying them out. A lack of players, staff and safety certificates are all real issues. This is an increasingly complex picture.

City have helped local clubs – including Bury before. The old Manchester City training complex was used by Bury on the proviso they maintained it. Unfortunately City have now gone to Court to seek possession of the training ground after Bury have failed to adhere to the terms of the lease.

So, the Local MP has called upon Manchester City to intervene and save Bury. But why should they?

No one wants to see a proud and historic club go out of business but there are instances where clubs have crashed and been resurrected phoenix like under new ownership models. The bottom line is that at the current time any rescue package may only serve to prop up the current ownership model of the club. So there is an argument that letting the Club fail may be the best thing in the long term.

Yet, that argument ignores the emotional value of football and I feel resonance with those fans at Bury, who have done nothing to deserve the mess the club are in. I am also acutely aware how close City were to going out of business when we slipped down the divisions.

Ultimately, what this plight illustrates is not the moral ambiguity around the financial distribution models in the football industry but rather that the English Football League needs to speedily re-strategize it’s business or otherwise Bury will just be the tip of the iceberg. Other clubs will crash and burn too.

The football league pyramid is unique pretty much to the English game in terms of the crowds it can attract and the fact the players are full time professionals. It is my view that the League should ensure the pyramid model survives and that there are only 2 options for doing this.

Either ownership rules are relaxed to allow Premier League Clubs to own and maintain feeder clubs in the Lower Leagues out right with consequent barriers to promotion in place or the League should allow the admission of the Premier League 2 Elite Development Squads to compete.

Again such an approach would require a ceiling to be in place for the clubs affected, preventing them from rising to the Premier League in an echo of the arrangements in Spanish Football.

Both approaches allow investment by the Premier League in the lower divisions and should achieve a long term boost in TV revenue money with the prospect of even more exciting players featuring regularly. The return on this investment for the Premier League clubs is a guaranteed system of blooding and exposing and developing their talent in competitive fixtures.

Until such a time as the English Football League address the underlying issues any rescue package for stricken Bury is nothing more than a handout, prolonging the death throes of a once famous club.