Could you defend the Albion if they furlough staff?

An increasing number of Premier League clubs are controversially seeking government money to pay wages. Brighton & Hove Albion deputy chairman Paul Barber said on Friday that furlough was a route the Albion would be likely to take, which leaves the question of how can anyone defend a club with nine figure revenue taking taxpayers money?

Liverpool became the latest Premier League outfit to place its staff on furlough at the weekend, a move roundly criticised by the majority of the the footballing world.

Even the biggest supporters of the Redmen turned on their club following the announcement. Jamie Carragher criticising his beloved Liverpool is rarer than rocking horse shit, yet he led the way in putting the boot into the suits at Anfield who had taken the decision.

It isn’t hard to see why. Liverpool’s turnover for the 2018-19 season was £533 million. Their owners, Fenway Sports Group, are worth $2.7 billion. The European Champions and runaway Premier League leaders aren’t short of cash.

And yet here they are asking for government money to pay the wages of non playing staff. How can a football club – or any business for that matter – with billionaire owners and who brought in over £500 million in revenue last year be comfortable taking funds to pay its staff which could go towards the NHS?

Liverpool’s case of course is shrouded in hypocrisy, which makes it doubly sickening. Only in October, Reds CEO Peter Moore said, “We had this historical figure, Bill Shankly, a Scottish socialist. Today when we speak about business questions, we ask ourselves: what would Shankly do?”

Well, he wouldn’t let hardworking taxpayers pay the wages of a football club who made a £42 million profit. Liverpool’s claims to be a left wing, socialist club have gone up in smoke; the irony of their “We’re Scouse, not English” mantra being deeply exposed.

They’re now merrily taking money from an English government led by the Tories they supposedly despise at a time of unprecedented national crisis to cover costs that the club could easily pay themselves .

Liverpool of course aren’t the only ones. Their Champions League final opponents from back in June, Tottenham Hotspur have placed 550 non playing staff on furlough while Daniel Levy continues to pocket a £4 million annual salary.

Spurs’ owner Joe Lewis obviously couldn’t pay the wages out of his own pocket, what with him only being worth £4.358 billion.

Bournemouth, Norwich City and Newcastle United have also put staff on furlough, taking the number of Premier League clubs to abuse the scheme onto five – a quarter of the richest top flight in the world.

At the same time, these five clubs continue to pay players anywhere between £40,000 and £150,000 a week. As soon as the next transfer window opens, they’ll no doubt magically find millions of pounds for a new striker.

Which brings us onto Brighton & Hove Albion and furlough. You probably don’t need reminding about the Albion’s excellent response the corona pandemic so far, but sod it, we’re going to remind you anyway.

The club committed to paying all matchday staff for the final five home games of the season, despite the fact they may never take place.

They then donated hospitality food from the cancelled Arsenal fixture to charities for the homeless in Brighton. Season ticket payments have been put on hold for three months to help struggling fans who may have been placed in furlough or lost their jobs.

The Albion have committed to giving away 1,000 free tickets to NHS Staff once football recommences. And only last week, Graham Potter, Paul Barber and Dan Ashworth took voluntary pay cuts to ensure that other staff members could continue to keep their jobs on full pay.

Yet all of that excellent work could be undone in one fell swoop if the club start taking government money to pay staff, as Barber has suggested on Friday that they might.

Andy Naylor has already begun to defend the Albion taking this course of action on Twitter, saying that he doesn’t agree with all Premier League clubs being tarred with the same brush.

Naylor’s argument is presumably that Liverpool should be treated differently for placing staff on furlough when their revenue is £533 million compared to Brighton & Hove Albion, who ‘only’ raked in £143 million last season.

But it doesn’t matter whether it is Liverpool, Spurs, Brighton or Bournemouth – any business which makes nine figures in revenue shouldn’t be seeking government aid to pay its wages.

Brighton’s football wage bill in 2018-19 was £101.6 million with the average take home of our highly paid, millionaire players being £47,205 per week.

Those players could agree to take a 20-30% wage cut over the coming months to stop their fellow Brighton & Hove Albion employees being placed on furlough.

They could give up £10,000 a week to stop the Seagulls taking money from the state. If Potter, Barber and Ashworth can do it, then why not the players?

Much of the ire from fans and media directed towards clubs who are already furloughing staff has been saved for rich owners taking advantage of the scheme.

Tony Bloom himself could find himself in danger should the Albion furlough staff. Although Bloom does a very good job at hiding his wealth, he isn’t short of a few pennies as his funding of the building of the Amex Stadium, the training ground and the club’s rise from League One to Premier League shows.

According to the ever reliable Wikipedia’s list of owners of English football clubs, Bloom is worth an estimated $1.7 billion. Billionaire owner wants government to pay his staff’s wages isn’t exactly a good look, as Fenway Sports and Spurs chairman Lewis are finding out.

Not that the wages of non playing staff should need to come out of Bloom’s pocket anyway. We cannot reiterate enough that Brighton’s revenue was £143 million last season. One hundred and forty three million.

That figure doesn’t take into account the new sponsorship deal signed with American Express in August either.

Barber and the club were very keen to pat themselves on the back and trumpet how it was the biggest deal ever signed by Brighton & Hove Albion, worth in excess of £100 million – and yet here we are, eight months later and possibly about to ask for state aid to pay wages because we apparently can’t afford them ourselves.

When the government announced furloughing, it was a scheme designed to help small business owners keep on employees who they might otherwise have had to let go due to revenue streams disappearing overnight thanks to coronavirus and all the measures since taken to stop its spread.

The government can’t have imagined that Premier League football clubs – with their hundreds of millions of pounds in the bank – would have the nerve to start seeking taxpayers money to pay the wages of their staff, as if they were a family owned business company who can no longer work or a local pub that has been forced to shut.

Brighton & Hove Albion are yet to furlough any staff, but the day may not be far away. Should it come, then it will undermine all the good that the club has done so far.

How could any of us take #Together seriously again when our mega rich football club couldn’t even find a way to pay its own staff, instead relying on a government handout at a time when every penny is needed by the NHS and other front line services?

What about when football finally does resume and the Albion are parading their new £20 million winger just months after they were using public money to pay wages that they apparently couldn’t afford?

Furloughing staff when you’ve got many millions in the bank is everything wrong with modern football and the Premier League.

We really, really hope that the Albion don’t resort to furloughing staff – because at the end of the day, it’s indefensible. And Brighton should be better than that.