The legendary Red Devils coach: The road to success

Volume 1992: The first Premier League title (1993- season)

"The official creation of the English Premier League replaced the original League One, providing a better stage for Ferguson. In the first season of the Premier League, Ferguson led the Red Devils to successfully challenge the league championship. After six years of hard work, Ferguson finally fulfilled his promise and achieved his great goal. The first Premier League season championship is also an important chapter in the history of Ferguson's coaching of the Red Devils, a great milestone, and an important starting point for Ferguson to lead the Red Devils to glory."

——Foreword

Chapter 221 The End of English Football League One

“These are the worst of times, and the best of times.”

—Charles Dickens

1992 was an important year for the development of English football, a historical moment comparable to the English football team's victory in the World Cup in 1966.

What happened in English football in 1992 that warrants comparison with winning the World Cup?

English football had no achievements in competition, and they were just a foil in the 1992 European Cup. The historical event that really made English football go down in history was the emergence of the Premier League in that year.

The Premier League replacing the English League One is a landmark reform and a major event that will have an impact on the business model of world football.

Let’s first talk about the background of the reform.

The English Football League was once glorious. Manchester United, Liverpool, Nottingham Forest, Everton and Villa were all powerful teams that dominated Europe. Liverpool and Nottingham Forest in particular once dominated Europe for a long time, winning the European Champions League consecutively and becoming the hegemons of European football. Liverpool dominated the European football scene for a long time and became the flag bearer of the English First Division.

After entering the 80s, Italian football rose strongly. With the generous investment of many wealthy people, the level of Serie A improved rapidly, the team became stronger, the game became more exciting, new business models such as advertising and sponsorship began to expand rapidly along with ticket revenue, and the league's competitiveness began to surpass the English Football League. During this period, Liverpool suffered the Heysel and Hillsborough disasters in succession, and a generation of hegemons sank. The entire English team was also excluded from Europe, lost 5 years, and the league level was seriously weakened. Not only that, the Red Devils fell into mediocrity after the Busby miracle, Nottingham Forest was also weak after winning two consecutive European Cups, and teams such as Everton and Villa were only in the limelight for a while and could not carry the banner of English football at all. Not only that, the reputation of English football was also deeply damaged by football hooligans, and its influence gradually declined, and its income also gradually decreased in the 80s.

By the late 80s, English football was entering its worst period.

Starting with the Bradford Stadium fire, coupled with the Heysel tragedy and the Hillsborough tragedy, the English football world has fallen into trouble and depression. At the same time, the English government's concept of football management and operation was also a failure. They completely neglected the management of fans, resulting in more and more football hooligans and extreme fans. Fights, melees, and injuries are happening every day, and there are more and more bad incidents. The Heysel tragedy was already shocking, and the occurrence of the Hillsborough tragedy is even a management responsibility that the government cannot shirk. These tragedies caused by football have become events that shocked the world, and football hooligans have made people in England lack a sense of security. They think that going to the stadium to watch the game is life-threatening, and many people are afraid of it. English football hooligans have caused strong resistance all over the world. FIFA and UEFA have strongly condemned this and strictly required clubs to mark various football hooligans, prohibit them from entering the stadium to watch the game, and prevent them from provoking trouble. This influence even caused the English team to be treated differently when participating in international competitions. Police from various countries have implemented extreme control measures on English fans, which is unacceptable to many normal fans.

From 1975 to 1989, the attendance of the English Football League dropped by one third, and snooker even surpassed football to become the most popular sport among the British. It can be said that the international reputation of English football, both the national team and the club, has fallen to the lowest point, and the business has also reached a difficult time.

On the other hand, this is also the best of times.

Unlike the Serie A and Bundesliga clubs, which have big money behind them, English football clubs began to develop radical commercialization in 1989, taking a different path from other countries: going public. Tottenham, Manchester United, Arsenal and other teams have successively operated stock listings, and have received huge financial support through this financing method. On the one hand, the team can invest huge sums of money to renovate the stadium, and on the other hand, it can introduce stars to increase the team's strength and attractiveness. English football has gradually shown its advantages in financial support. Some non-English stars have begun to join, such as Cantona, Kanchelskis, Schmeichel, etc., which have effectively helped the team improve its level. With the expiration of the European ban, teams such as Manchester United were able to participate in European competitions and won the European Cup Winners' Cup and the European Super Cup, once again demonstrating the strength of English teams.

For the English Premier League, they are more concerned about the overall level of the league and the improvement of operations. The major English clubs are still ambitious to challenge the competitive level and business model of the Serie A. However, from 1990 to 92, English clubs were not able to surpass their opponents in competition. How to steadily increase club income has become a challenge that the major giants need to face. Because listing financing only has a one-time effect, the team still needs to continuously increase the income from daily operations in order to impact the best league.

The operation of English League One teams has also reached a bottleneck. With the renovation of stadium seats, ticket revenue has decreased instead of increased; the expansion of the stadium requires a large investment of money, which has also become a new burden; and the income from sponsorship and broadcasting fees is managed by the league committee, so the growth is very slow, especially for the giants.

Club owners are worried. They began to think that the rigid government management led to a gradual decrease in fans, and too many restrictions made them helpless. The content of league games, the viewing experience, and the market operation of clubs are all subject to various restrictions. After the Hillsborough tragedy, the British government required clubs to renovate the stadium, change all standing positions to seats, and increase security forces on match days. These measures reduced the number of spectators watching the clubs, which meant a decrease in match day revenue; while the renovation of security facilities and the increase of security services led to a significant increase in expenditures. Although the highly anticipated sponsorship and broadcasting fee income has become a lifeline for small and medium-sized clubs, it is not enough to enable the giants to develop rapidly.

Revenue growth in English Football League One has been slow, and even the biggest clubs are suffering as a result.

Several major clubs in the English Football League One have decided to push for reforms. They started with the league's organizational form, hoping to truly gain autonomy and operational rights and reduce the FA's management and profit sharing.

For a long time, English football affairs have been managed by the FA under the British government, and the leagues are managed by the League Committee under the FA. By the early 90s, the FA League Committee managed four levels of professional leagues, and the organization became large and inefficient, lacking ambition. The FA is responsible for the operation of the national team, as well as player registration, coach qualifications, the formulation, revision and interpretation of football game rules, referee selection supervision, violation penalties and arbitration, while the League Committee is responsible for the specific organization of the four levels of leagues, and gradually became a behemoth. The League Committee is responsible for heavyweight businesses including schedule arrangement, league income and profit distribution, league referee appointment, league commercial operation, etc., and has seized the source of wealth of the clubs. They draw a sufficient proportion of the league income every year for the use of the various agencies of the committee. The agencies and personnel are more inclined to the civil service system, and there is no intention to further commercialize the league, and there is no motivation for reform.

The league committee was not aggressive in the commercial operation of the four-level league, which was naturally not welcomed by the clubs. The members of the league committee were basically from the government. They had no commercial impulse, let alone how to increase income and reduce expenses. At that time, the 92 teams in the four-level league in England were of different sizes, and the tickets belonged to each team. However, due to the long-standing rules, the league committee was only responsible for extracting a proportion of the funds for the core league sponsorship and broadcasting income, and ignored the increase in total income. The most outrageous thing is that the 92 clubs in the four-level league have different contributions to income and the number of fans is very different, but under the management of the league committee, an extremely backward and primitive average income distribution is implemented.

That’s right, everyone eats from the same big pot.

Before television became widely available in fans' homes, league sponsorship and broadcasting revenues were small at first, and clubs mainly relied on self-operated income. Therefore, the sponsorship raised and broadcasting arranged by the league committee were only additional sources of profit, and they did not object to equal distribution. However, as the broadcasting revenues of Serie A, Bundesliga and La Liga repeatedly set records, especially with more and more sponsorship for top clubs, England's big clubs also began to have new ideas. In particular, the English First League has always been regarded as the largest and most influential league in Europe, but the league committee is guarding a gold mine like a beggar, which seriously damages the interests of top clubs.

The reasons of the big clubs are simple, direct and sufficient. League sponsorship, league broadcasting income, etc. are mostly generated by the big clubs. These clubs have made the greatest contribution, and it is unacceptable to distribute them equally. Especially with the rapid economic development, sponsorship and broadcasting income have quickly exceeded ticket revenue and self-operated income, but the league committee has not paid attention to it, which makes the big clubs even more dissatisfied.

As the income of top clubs grows slowly, they are increasingly unwilling to accept this "fair play" principle.

Around the 90s, television broadcasting of competitive games began to become popular. The top clubs believed that a huge market had been opened up, and fans would definitely pay more attention to the games between the top clubs. The commercial value of the English Football League needed to be vigorously explored. At that time, the English Football League television market was monopolized by the two oligopolies, BBC and ITV. They also knew that this was a piece of fat meat, so they began to invest more resources and were willing to pay more for broadcasting.

Even so, it is far from enough for England's top clubs. Each club gets hundreds of thousands of pounds in broadcasting revenue, which is far from the tens of millions of pounds that other European giants can easily earn.

For ambitious big clubs, they are most reluctant to see long-term stagnation of income and equal distribution of income between clubs regardless of size. As early as 1981, the traditional "five giants" of English First Division - Tottenham Hotspur, Arsenal, Manchester United, Liverpool and Everton - discussed the establishment of a "Super League" to operate independently. They planned to leave those poor relatives aside and play the money-making game themselves. As soon as this proposal was put forward, it was jointly opposed by other clubs and was ordered to stop by the English Football Association, and eventually it came to nothing. In 1988, when the English League celebrated its centenary, these clubs once again conspired to reform.

In view of the failure of previous separation plans, these top English football clubs have set their sights on huge television broadcasting revenues and have proposed the initial idea of ​​auctioning broadcasting rights.

This goal has leveraged the entire league.

At that time, the football league had entered a period of great development. With the continuous record of revenue from Serie A broadcasts and the large number of audiences attracted by various competitive sports games, the most popular football league in the UK became a super profitable business. Major TV stations and the BBC wanted to grab more market share and compete for huge economic benefits. Media giants secretly made plans.

In November 1990, ITV, a British television station, contacted the five giants privately in order to monopolize the broadcasting interests. ITV proposed an astonishing plan: as long as the clubs led by the five giants separated from the English First League and then wooed the middle-level clubs to form the "Premier League", ITV would be willing to pay a large sponsorship and an "astronomical" TV broadcasting fee. The broadcasting fee would be distributed by the five giants and the clubs participating in the league according to the contribution ratio and the results of the games.

The broadcasting income and sponsorship amounts are shocking, even the well-informed management of major clubs are surprised. The most important thing is the huge TV broadcasting income, which will enable the club to enter a lucrative area and not be taken advantage of by lower leagues.

Compared with the previous plan, the five giants did not reject the participation of the middle and lower-level English League One clubs, but proposed a plan to cut off from the lower-level leagues and distribute the broadcasting fees differently according to the league results. This plan has disintegrated the unity of the English League One. Now, after calculating their own gains and losses, other clubs have requested to join the preparatory group led by the five giants.

In this way, the FA watched as League One began to split from the four-tier league system. League One quickly came to the end of its temporary status.