Simon Jordan: PL sides should forfeit £80m windfall
talkSPORT pundit Simon Jordan has said that Premier League clubs such as Leeds United should agree to leave parachute payments that are no longer required with the football pyramid.
He added that the £80m the Premier League is currently set to save with Watford and Norwich coming straight back up, could become £100m if Bournemouth follow them into the Premier League.
All three clubs would be due parachute payments if they stay in the Championship.
Football finance expert Kieran Maguire has said that this money will be shared by clubs in the Premier League, with Leeds set to bank at least £4m.
Talking on talkSPORT on Tuesday morning (11.30am), Jordan said this wasn’t right.
“If these clubs go straight back up again then those parachute payments are returned to the Premier League even though the Premier League has signed them off as costs,” Jordan said.
“What we’ve got now is possibly £100m, this is the ideal time, they’ll say it isn’t as everyone’s losing money… Really and truly you could kick down this £80m to the EFL in the blink of an eye if you wanted to.
“Of course, what they’ll say now is, ‘Hold on a second, we’re losing a fortune, great that it’s a windfall, great that two of our member clubs that went down last year don’t need parachute payments, but we’ll have that money back for the teams in the Premier League’.
“That’s £4m each for every club in the Premier League. From a moral standpoint… here is a classic case of how redistribution should be worked without a cost implication in real terms.
“If we believe the Premier League is a force for good and that the other 14 clubs inside the Premier League who cried foul over the top six revolting individuals who wanted to breakaway and form a European Super League, then they should be saying ‘We didn’t budget for this money, surely we want to help our lesser cousins, surely we want to help the pyramid’.
“Yeah, sure, and the moon’s made of cheese. If they can get away with it…”
Good of the game
This is a tricky one for us.
We know how tough things are in the Championship. We know that Leeds would have been in trouble if we weren’t promoted this year.
We also know that all clubs are suffering because of the Covid pandemic – and the further you go down the pyramid the worse it gets.
Would Leeds benefit from a £4m windfall? No doubt and Leeds need all the money they can get at the moment as they look to break into the top half of the Premier League.
So, should the £80m be given to the EFL?
In all honesty, it probably should for the good of the game.
But Leeds United have spent a lot to get to where they are now and they’ve lost a lot of money from Elland Road being closed for a year.
It would be fascinating to see what Andrea Radrizzani thinks both as a business owner and a person who has been very vocal about the European Super League and the greed of the big six clubs.
We imagine it would be something he’d have to think about for a bit.
In other Leeds United news, Dermot Gallagher delivers definitive verdict on controversial Leeds incident in 0-0 v Man Utd