It mirrors life. These clubs who get rich new owners, a new plastic stadium etc. are 'all fur coat and no knickers'. You often see scrubbers winning the Lottery, buying a flash car and moving to a big house but 'You can take the girl out of The Manor, but...' etc. etc.
It's happening at Hillsborough now. Without the success.
In the future, fans won't be important to clubs. They will be replaced by sponsors. If that sounds bizarre then look no further than the Premiership because it's already happening there. A report the other week showed that approximately half the clubs in the Prem could play behind closed doors and still make a profit. The revenues the fans bring in is peanuts compared to what they get from elsewhere, like the TV companies, sponsors, merchandise, etc.
Unless there is a drastic change in the way that money flows throughout the game, we will see the game drift away from the supporters, at the higher levels of the game for sure, maybe not so much for lower league teams who can't avail themselves of the corporate riches so easily.
The risks I see in this is that clubs may neglect their supporters and they'll become disaffected over time. That may not be a problem whilst the club is competing at the top echelons of the game and raking in big corporate money, but the moment that changes and the club drops down a level or two, they won't have the corporate money to sustain them anymore and they'll have lost the core support needed to prop them up.
It's a dangerous game to play imo. But, as in other walks of life, money lures people to do things that aren't right, in order to make short-term financial gains. Money is like a drug, it becomes addictive. It feels so good whilst you've got it that sometimes it's hard to stop and question whether this is the right thing to be doing. I think that's where many of the clubs in the Prem are at right now.
We are unusual in so much as no other professional league club in the country depends more on supporter revenues than us. But that will change when we get to the Premier League. I just hope our principles don't change, because our long term future depends on that.
