Boss says all clubs will be hit hard by the Covid-19 crisis and that the sport will have to reset itself and live within its means a lot more.
David Artell believes that the Covid-19 pandemic will give football in the lower leagues the necessary wakeup call it needs when it comes to finances. The Crewe Alexandra boss believes that in the aftermath of the economic crisis, clubs will have to reset accordingly and live much more within their means.
A salary cap has been suggested by an EFL working group as part of a later solution to help clubs balance the books a lot more.
Crewe Alexandra continue to work within their means and Artell feels that the future of football outside of the Premier League and the top end of the Championship will see the majority of clubs move closer together in terms of resources and money spent on transfer fees and player wages.
Artell told crewealex.net via video link: “Our club is in good hands. It is run by good people, who have the best interests of the club at the forefront of their thinking. We don’t operate beyond our means and gamble with the finances.
“What we have had is a number of Championship and some of the bigger clubs who now find themselves in League One and Two, who have had a taste of the Premier League and the rewards on offer at that level and they go for broke. They overspent to get back there and if they don’t then their finances become critical. You only have to see what has happened to Bolton.
“A salary cap has been mentioned as a future regulation and that although that is a good idea in principle, when you have a club in League One spending £34 million on player wages then to get down to £2-3 million within a couple of seasons will be an immense struggle.
“On one hand there is the argument that they shouldn’t have got themselves in that position in the first place, but they were chasing the promise land of the Premier League and they haven’t been the only ones by a long way.
“We cannot underestimate how this crisis is going to affect football and the community clubs. What we have to avoid is more cases like Bury where they town no longer has a football club after 140, 150 years.
The boss added: “I know there is a lot of work being done behind the scenes by the EFL to make sure that this doesn’t happen and in the future the finances are more regulated.”