The furloughing debate - a thread...

So, EPL clubs are getting flak from people about putting staff on furlough while also making profits and paying players a ridiculous amount of money a week. Lots of clubs are doing it but likely the actions of Liverpool et al will tar others with the same brush...

There’s already a good thread on the EPL side of things and the choices Coronavirus has left them with https://twitter.com/sportingintel/status/1246553580393332738

This, instead, is just about furloughing in general. So, for my many non-UK followers, a quick explanation of what that is in the first place. The government announced that employees can be furloughed (so sent home as if laid off) but that the government would pay...

...80% of their wages up to £2.5k so that firms keep them on while Coronavirus causes disruption. The rather large hole in that plan is that there aren’t really any conditions tied to it. So Spurs, who made over £180m profit in the past 2yrs, could use it and so they have...

This, ethically, is a bit repugnant. After all, players should be taking a big wage cut before clubs are cutting their cloth to take public funds. And that’s what most have focussed on so far. Ultimately, clubs are extremely easy targets - high public profile...

..., swimming in cash, with funding that’s massively increased in recent years and, of course, in no way shape or form actually vital to the economy or anything like that. Like I say, easy targets at the intersection of high profile and low importance...

But it’s important to note that clubs aren’t doing anything wrong. Whatever your view on the ethics of the whole thing, they are operating the scheme as it is intended to be used. Why are Spurs more of a target than, say, Waterstones?

Which is where we get to the real problem. Many clubs need to use this scheme as we’ve seen in Scotland (eg Montrose, Inverness) but the mega rich clubs threaten to spoil it for those clubs because players aren’t playing ball...

Now, to be entirely fair, no-one is under any compulsion to, say, take a pay cut of £30k a week when you’re on £100k per week- more than a nurse gets a year. But it’s exceptionally tone deaf to not make that sacrifice at this present time.

At the same time, it’s not exactly simple to get everyone together to make such a call. You have players in lockdown in different areas, players sent home and will have left the UK. You have players on loan. You have, bluntly, complications...

As an example, I was reading about a player at Mouscron who is currently in quarantine in a village outside Zadar, Croatia as he went back to visit family. If, out of a squad of 25, 5-10 have done similar, getting them all on at one time to even discuss a collective pay deal...

...becomes a pain in the ass. Especially if you have someone like, say, Son Heung-Min who has gone back to Korea to do a spell of national service. That’s a big time difference to overcome. Again, now play that out across 20 EPL clubs and many championship clubs.

Clubs should be furloughing. Of course they should. They should also be getting players to take a wage cut to fund it, or to fund the NHS or to do, you know, anything other than just earn a bit more interest. And clubs should make sure players do the latter before they furlough.

Yet it’s a horribly complicated thing to organise. Clubs and the PFA should have been on this far, far sooner than they were. They are, eventually, going to have done the right thing both legally and morally. Yes, even Liverpool and Spurs.

The time it takes to get to that point, however. Well, by that time the court of public opinion may already have handed down their verdict. And that verdict will judge the Accringtons and Arbroaths alongside the Liverpools.