I can’t believe an Arab club albeit managed by Gerard paid £12 million for Henderson at 33 Years of age, no wonder Liverpool never stood in his way. I always thought Henderson was overrated and poor man’s Gerrard.

According to the report he will be on £700k (tax free) per week. Madness.

I bet Featherstone would like a team to offer him a 2 year contract at 33 years of age.

The thing that disturbs me is the prospect of an Arab league that becomes the wealthiest in the world, which subsequently attracts all the best players to it's league. Henderson's contract to me suggest they mean business, serious business. If they are prepared to pay that for a near has been, what happens if and when they start wooing the younger element who can make a much bigger impression on the market. They started by buying European clubs, are they now saying, why can't we do it at home. Their product would span the TV networks everywhere.

Fantasy or realism????

I would love to see the Arab league surpassing the Premier League allowing locally grown talent to get their chance and Sky losing subscribers.

The thing is, most European players who have a thriving career are not interested in going to the Middle East, they wanna stay, win things, be on the telly which brings sponsorship etc. What seems to be happening is formerly good players at the fag end of their careers are going there for a big pay day. Dont see it as a threat.

Flash in the pan, you can’t build clubs and a league overnight, this is just hobby clubs taken to a silly level.

I reckon it's today's version of the USA league in the 70's
When the likes of Pele and a few of our old pros turned up for one last pay day
There was a bit of interest for a while but never took off big style.
Also reminiscent of Hobby Clubs like Rushden and Diamonds near me
in Northants - Great while there is a benefactor who ploughs in loads of money
But reality hits home when they get bored and it's quickly realised that it's all built on sand.
Drove past the site of the former Nene Park today and commented on the way past to my mate that even though I was no fan of their club, the fact that the stadium has been levelled is an absolute disgrace.

One thing about Rushden and Diamonds I can say is I attended every match there…all three of them
Pity about the stadium though, but they were the benchmark of a hobby club or should that be passing fad club and money wasn’t just thrown at it but carpet bombed with cash, it works while the cash pipeline keeps pumping in cash, but once the life support gets turned off it collapses…even a fair proportion of the supporters were ‘day trippers’ without the stamina.
We went to the night match and one of the lads with us was from Northampton and said the pub we went into pre-match was where the Rushden ‘fans’ hung out… you entered the pub to find you’d entered a meeting of the Parent Teachers Association discussing discussing time shares in Portugal….Wieeeerd.

no nothing about arab countries but wonder how great an interest there is there about football. doubt they,ll be building special ladies facilities for their women to come to watch. doubt we,ll hear shouts from the croud of get your burka off for the lads, any day soon. then i also doubt if any club will have a gay section of their supporters club or a Camel Business fanzine.

went there once. it was in a very rural area consisting of many small towns and villages. many who went to support them will be ex northampton and kettering fans whose clubs were really in the doldrums at the time of the rise. doubt the few hundred rushden town or irthlingborogh diamonds fans could have sustained the club without financial backing. If it was me i,d have thrown in my lot with kettering who were an established non league side with good gates at the time with a decentish ground and could have sustained being a league club with just a small helping hand.

Kettering's old ground Rockingham Road is literally at the end of my road. After being levelled about 5 years ago they are currently building houses on it. They went pop the same year as Darlo, though didn't fall.as far down the pyramid.
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They moved out of their ground into Rushden and Diamonds after Rushden folded- think Nene Park must have been cursed.2 clubs in 3 seasons. A lot of the Kettering fans refused to go to Rushden on principle

The council also need to take responsibility , wouldn't renew the lease and disgracefully sold it to a developer- should have stayed in Kettering 100 years of history down the toilet.

They would have been a league club after winning the Conference in the early nineties in the days of 1 up, 1 down but their ground didn't meet the league standards by the 31st December that year and the team they would have ironically replaced was Northampton!

Unsurprisingly Kettering also had a dodgy owner, who was basically a crook. He came in sacked then manager Kevin Wilson and replaced him with GAZZA who was always pissed and lasted about as long as Liz Truss did as PM- and did relatively the same amount of damage.

They now play on the edge of town in Burton Latimer opposite the Weetabix factory. There are plans to move back into the town and a site has been identified, not that far from the old ground, in the north of the town, but it ain't getting built anytime soon.

I'm gutted for the Kettering fans and would have taken my lads to watch them if they still played at the end of my road - can't bring myself to venture across town to a ground that is slightly better than Greyfields Enclosure!

i actually used to watch kettering quite a lot when i did my first spell living in the midlands in the late 70,s. nice drive to the place and could park very close to the ground if you got there early enough. had the added bonus of allowing dogs in which suited me. saw some decent games in the two seasons i went and the dog enjoyed it also.

£249M for Mbappe. Maybe they are serious after all.

It seems as long as the clubs splashing the cash were in Europe then all was fine.

…..and € 700million ‘wages’….an obscenity.

Nothing lasts forever and I sincerely hope this is the beginning of the end of the Premier League.

Please, please remove the ridiculous amounts of money from our game and allow it to return to previous levels where it wasn't unreasonable for well run clubs with good managers to win the highest accolade and it not be all about who is paying the most money.

Bring it on.

I really do think they are serious. I don't like it but we can't afford to bury our heads in the sand hoping it goes away, No pun intended.

I couldn't care less if the best players played on the Moon.

Personally, all I want, is as fair a game as possible where, as previously posted, well run clubs have as much chance as anyone else to achieve.

Leeds won the last Division One title and that was after being in the top divsion for only a couple of seasons after winning Division Two.

These days it's all about can the promoted clubs survive. It's shite.

The Championship is a great division but even that's getting a bit more of a divide than it previously had thanks to cash and parachute payments. If cash wasn't so bloody key to everything there'd be no need for parachute payments at all.

I guess that some Satellite Channels will televise the Saudi League in the same way they currently do with La Liga, Ligue 1, Bundesliga even MLS and A-League. There will be a limited appetite for them from armchair watchers.

I don't see the Saudi league affecting FL and lower teams with the exception of the Premier League teams maybe having a few more spaces on the bench to fill with young kids from somewhere.

No way on Gods earth would I be watching the highlights from ‘The Camel Stadium’..it’ll be overpaid, over hyped exhibition football, played to appeal to people who haven’t got a clue…more plastic showbiz than football.

Completely agree. And I'm very reluctant to say this......the possibility of four quarters instead of two halves.

Your last sentence highlights the problem but I'm afraid unfortunately cash is the key. Even at our level splashing the cash is demanded by more and more fans.
I was recently on holiday in Cornwall and I went to watch AFC Perranporth play in a couple of friendlies which ended 4-4 and 2-3 respectively. Really enjoyed the experience. Very friendly club and clubhouse, players of all shapes and sizes enjoying a game of footy, tackles flying in. Proper footy. On the adjacent pitch the Rugby Union club play so during the winter you have a choice. A nice pint or two before or after the game, or both.
A club founded a couple of years before Pools where everybody mucks in. I was served me pint by the bloody Chairman. Roast beef and horseradish sandwiches at £1.50 each.
Makes you think.

May i add that a 33 year old Prem Player (of Hendersons quality) is probably like having a prime 28 year old playing his best football at football League level. Just all round built different hence his career ! I think too many of us live still with the 80s 90s mind set that once a pro turns 31 hes finished. I play with lads whom are 38/39 and probably playing their best football albeit not as fit as when we where kids but damn site better on the ball and reading the game etc. I think soon enough we will see most prem players (if they are injury free) easily playing on in the pro game at high level until they are 40. Modric and Ronaldo fine examples - aswell as Busquets and Iniesta who have just joined Messi at Inter Miami (madness !!!)

I applaud the longevity of professional sportsmen and women these days, they are just built differently both mentally and physically from years gone by. How they stay motivated to the daily slog with £millions sitting in their bank accounts is beyond me. I know that money isn't an issue to them but they can hardly pop away for a family weekend at Centre Parks in the Easter Holidays.

How many of us look forward to the day that we may be financially secure enough to do something we enjoy rather than something that pays enough to cover our bills?

I have no issue with them filling their pockets with sandy cash as long as they don't pretend to care about where that money comes from.

At €700 million for one season he can buy bloody Centre Parks …. It’s obscene no matter what anyone says.

I haven't seen any comments from the French FA as yet but they must be at least concerned as to how he'll perform nationally and the level of hunger to do well for his country.
He'd heading into the billionaire bracket.
What on earth would they pay for the likes of Pele or Best or a 24 year old Ronaldo/Messi.
Four or five players like that lot in a team is a phenomenal wage bill, by any standards.
I think the premier league are about to find out what it is like to be treat as they've treat the rest of us.

But money can't buy you those memories from your kids' childhoods. I know a lot of people who have worked away from home to earn enough to give their families a comfortable standard of living and I would guess they would all give some of that money up for more time with their kids as time goes on.

Yep, I expect there won't be many tears wept around the lower league clubs and fans as the Premier League squads as pillaged.

Yep, I expect there won't be many tears wept around the lower league clubs and fans as the Premier League squads as pillaged.[/quote]

I doubt very much that the Prem is feeling pillaged - these are mostly players in the latter stages of their careers and big money is being handed over. It just means the Prem's big spenders can focus on younger talent and pay fortunes for that - though Jude Bellingham wasn't having it and opted to go to Madrid. Good on him.

Anyway, for Newcastle it's just a way of avoiding FFP penalties. What's the odds Ruben Neves is announced as a season long loan on the last day of the transfer window?

You’re right it can’t, but if you want to make loadsa money, that’s price you pay, you could still have an extremely comfortable life with your family and never work again on what they’re earning now, don’t paint them as heroes doing it for their family, it’s greed.
Saw plenty of lads out contracting earning good money to keep their families in the style to which they’ve become accustomed ….and and when they come home they’re a stranger disrupting their lives…which he’s paid for.

Don,t think we really want the PL to go tits up, Even though we can,t stand it.
Cause if it does they will be a domino effect through the EFL and beyond.

Agree with Shilts.
Maybe I'm being naive but don't possibly see how this affects us directly.
If anything it might be beneficial, if the Premier clubs are getting less wedge, could help to close the massive gulf that we currently see.
I mean it's not as if the money is distributed down to reasonable affect at the moment.

It would in fact be quite amusing to see swathes of empty seats at Old Trafford league games because a large chunk of their Pseudo fanbase were now Massif fans of Camel Jockeys United !

one good thing about the arab leagues is the wealthy shieks might keep the money in there own country instead of throwing it around over here. how has arab and wank owners helped football in general over here. as for the players themselves wasn,t it better years ago when their top flight career was over and dropped down the leagues like they used to do in this country.

If you sign up all the best talent they’ll cancel each other out and every match will look like a cross between a friendly and an exhibition match.

I've watched a rugby match there in January. Took me until March to defrost. There was a fantastic Sunday League game on the pitch adjacent. Carnage. All the football and rugby clubs down here are community focused and run. It's great to be involved.

Good to hear Mr T. like I said I was very impressed with what I experienced. Whole families present down to babes in arms. some good local produce to try with Healey's Cyder Factory just down the road. One of the games I saw was with Goonharven, a local derby with them having a ground literally just up the road. Great atmosphere and very friendly people. As you say, very committed, which is great to see.

Good to hear Mr T. like I said I was very impressed with what I experienced. Whole families present down to babes in arms. some good local produce to try with Healey's Cyder Factory just down the road. One of the games I saw was with Goonharven, a local derby with them having a ground literally just up the road. Great atmosphere and very friendly people. As you say, very committed, which is great to see.[/quote]
you can understand why some turn there backs on the game at the top to watch their local clubs in all sports. if just having a relaxing and enjoyable day out is your thing it might be better to join them. no promotion or bust but a relaxing day out that costs far less.