You Paid For Rolex, Bentley and Louis Vuitton And Got Leicester

There is a lot of anger about.

Our form in the league has been dire.  We know the statistics.  Most of the country knows about us being the only side without a league win in 2016.

The first draft of Ian Duncan Smith’s resignation speech blamed George Osbourne for Palace’s loss of form.

Even the joy of the cup run has been tempered by fears of not getting tickets for Wembley on April 24.

I cannot promise any solutions in this column, nor am I going to waste time analysing our match day tactics.  You have probably read plenty of articles or posts about that.

Instead, I am going to try to re-direct your anger.

Here is why.

As a football fan and a follower of the Premier League, you have been part of an enormous con job.

If you have paid money for a ticket for a game, especially an away game, you have been scammed.

If you have taken a Sky Sports subscription because you wanted to watch football, you might like to see if you have a case under the Trades Descriptions Act to try to get some of your money back.

The Premier League this season has been brought to you by crooks, liars and cheats.

Here is an uncomfortable truth.

The whole point of the Premier League is that you pay a premium to watch Chelsea, Arsenal, Manchester City or Manchester United win the thing. Ideally, the league stays exciting right up to injury time of the final Sunday, but one of those four will win.

The deal is that those clubs attract the wealthy billionaire owners, who in turn can afford to sign some of the best international talent available.

They can also invest in academies and training facilities to enable them to attract and bring on the best youth talent. Those facilities at the top clubs are magnificent, no question.

You have the wealthy owners, you have the great players. You have a product that clubs can charge high prices to watch, and Sky Sports and BT can charge a fair old whack to make us watch.

If Leicester City are top, deservedly or otherwise, Tottenham Hotspur are second and West Ham United are on the verge of the top four, then the Premier League pricing model has failed and as ‘customers’ we should demand some of our money back.

And who should be responsible for the reimbursement?

Surely the fines should be paid by the ‘big four’ clubs. They have so many advantages over the rest of the league – the richest owners, the best players, the Champions League money, and magnificent grounds with supporters paying top dollar.

And what have they done with all these advantages?

Well, some of the money has been wasted on excessive transfer fees and wages, some on retaining club legends way past their best, some on paying off failing managers and their large coaching staff.

And at every stage that wasted money is compounded by the extra percentages that are paid to agents.

I accept that whinging about excess payments to agents is an tired old argument. I also accept that players are absolutely entitled to employ agents to maximise their income in what can be a relatively short working life. It is the relationship between clubs and agents that has gone wrong.

The biggest agents have a pool of players and excellent links with the biggest clubs. In turn, these agents seem to be able to take advantage of the ‘big four’ at their time of weakness, offering them players who might, just might, be the answer to all the clubs players, for that little bit extra, you understand.

In the case of Chelsea and Pato, that relationship has gone to the most bizarre lengths. The extraordinary transfer £25m fee for Ramirez was announced in the same week that former AC Milan legend Pato was signed on loan from obscurity in Brazil.

Pato’s loan spell has now become something of a joke, mocked by both James Richardson on the Guardian podcast and in BBC1’s FA Cup coverage of Chelsea’s defeat at Everton.  A recent contributor to Richardson’s podcast, Jonathan Wilson, a highly regarded expert on global football made a less flippant point than Richardson, noting that Pato and Ramirez shared an agent.

It seems that for Chelsea, playing games with agents is more important than playing games on the pitch at the moment.

Anthony Martial is a very good player and one who might serve Manchester United proud in future years. But he cost Manchester United £39 million more than Marcus Rashford did.

James Scowcroft, the ex-Palace forward, Ipswich Town academy coach and Manchester United fan has noted that Rashford is the last graduate United fans will see for a while from a failing academy system that is now being over-hauled by Nicky Butt.

Less intellectually, Manchester City have wasted £32m on Nicolas Ottamendi.

Meanwhile Arsenal are sitting on a huge pile of cash that they will not waste on rubbish or risk on someone that might help them finish higher than fourth.

Leicester and West Ham have proved that scouting, and a little bit of luck, is far more important than having the phone number of super-agents at a time when the pool of super-players is thin.

The ‘big’ clubs have let us down and it is time for payback.

I would suggest fines of £25million for Chelsea, £32million for Man City, £39million for United and an undisclosed fine of at least £30million for Arsenal to start up the Football Fans Compensation Fund.

That £126million should be paid back to us punters at the end of the season if Leicester win the league.

No need for a cut for any agents either.

That will make a change.