English football has a wealth distribution problem of such magnitude that it is having a profoundly disturbing effect on the very fabric of the game.

League One Bury, a community club entrenched in the heart of the town it represents, were kicked out of the Football League last week, bringing an abrupt and tearful end to their 125-year history.

No pomp, no ceremony, no fond farewells.

After months of turmoil, and with the club yet to play a match this season, the league asked them for the hundredth time to prove they were able to fulfil their financial and football commitments. When they couldn’t do that, and a proposed takeover collapsed, their league membership was revoked.

And that’s that. A club with two FA Cups to its name, thousands of passionate supporters and fine history of producing talented players vanished off the face of the footballing earth.

Tragic.

Another League One club, Bolton Wanderers, faced a similar fate. On the same day Bury died, the team where Sam Allardyce made his managerial name were given two extra weeks to find a solution to their own financial woes.

Luckily for Bolton a proposed takeover was completed the following day, and they survived. For how long remains to be seen, but at least they live to fight another day.

How is it possible that two very old and long-standing clubs like these are incapable of surviving in an era when clubs at the top of the pyramid think nothing of spending £300,000 a week on a single player’s wage?

Of course, a lot of Bury and Bolton’s problems are of their own making. Both clubs have been mismanaged over the years, spending big and gambling on success. And that is an unforgivable act of betrayal by their owners who let greed and ambition cloud their judgement.

But no matter what they may have done wrong in the past, no matter how self-inflicted their failings may be, the fact that the Premier League is awash with cash yet so little filters down to the lower divisions is a fundamental problem.

I’m not suggesting top-flight clubs should be forced to cover the expenses of lower league clubs, because that would be silly. But there has to be a way more of the money in the Premier League can be kept in the English game where it is evidently desperately needed.

For example, I find it very disturbing that these mega-rich super-clubs stood by and watched Bury disappear when you think the very same clubs had no problem with the concept of a £250,000-a-head whip around last season to give departing Premier League chief executive Richard Scudamore a £5 million golden handshake.

Couldn’t they have done something similar for Bury in the form of an interest-free, repay-it-when-you-can loan? At least buy them a season to find their feet and restructure the club’s finances?

Every club in the Premier League should pay a percentage of their television revenue into an emergency fund which clubs in danger of going bust could apply to use

But even that, if they had shown even the tiniest inkling to do it, would not be much of a long-term solution.

I am not against Premier League teams having the lion’s share of the money in the game. For the most part they have earned (or bought) their success, and fact that they are the best at what they do justifies their riches.

Yet sparing a bit more thought for teams less fortunate than themselves is essential if the entire football pyramid is not going to come crashing down.

Because if it does, if more and more smaller teams start to go out of business, then the top ones will suffer too. Their supply of talented players will dry up, advertisers will become more reluctant to be associated with the sport, television companies will become braver at negotiating deals, and England’s love affair with football will fizzle out.

Bury and Bolton may be the talking points right now, but there are dozens of other clubs who are just one missed loan repayment away from financial collapse.

And that is wrong when you consider the wages of just one, average Premier League player are enough to keep many lower league clubs going for months, if not an entire season. I may sound a bit like a communist Robin Hood but I genuinely believe the only hope for the long-term future of English football is if the balance of wealth is redressed and more of the money from the rich is handed to the poor.

Were it up to me, every club in the Premier League would be forced to pay a percentage of their television revenue into an emergency fund or trust fund which clubs in danger of going bust could apply to use.

Of course, these struggling clubs would need to justify why they deserve the financial help and prove they have a sensible plan to turn things around and eventually repay the money.

Maybe that idea wouldn’t work for legal reasons, but something needs to be done sooner rather than later to shore up football’s foundations.

Stopping small but historical football teams going out of business cannot be something the Premier League turns a blind eye to any longer.

No social conscience

I wrote last Sunday about Phil Neville’s proposal that football as a whole should boycott social media for six months to force the industry to sort out its abuse issues.

Since then, Marcus Rashford has joined the list of players who have been racially targeted on social media following his penalty miss against Crystal Palace.

On that basis we should surely have heard more about Neville’s idea, shouldn’t we? The call to arms should have been echoing from ground to ground. Clubs should have been falling over each other to join the cause by pledging to abandon social media.

Well, apparently not.

Despite further cases of abuse over the last seven days, I haven’t heard a single player, club, agent, fan or WAG voice their support for the ‘Neville Initiative’.

It seems that when push came to shove, everybody in the game decided they had too much to lose by walking away from Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, even on a temporary basis.

They collectively decided the abuse was a small price to pay for the convenience of social media and the revenue it generates for them. Forget about taking the moral high ground, these people don’t even know how to get up to it.

sportscolumnist@timesofmalta.com
Twitter: @maltablade