FAMILY VALUES..

In the past few days and weeks, the Premier League of English football has spent close on half a billion pounds on player transfers.   We hear of players having `wages` in excess of £200,000 a week and in the Fairy Land of the Premier League excess, it seems, knows no bounds.

At the other end of the Football League, the players, coaches, manager, office staff, groundsmen and others have gone without their full wages for months whilst their club, Plymouth Argyle, have wrestled with Administration and seemingly endless attempts by the Administrator, Brendan Guilfoyle, to find new owners willing to invest and secure the club`s future.

As things stand, a deal has allegedly been done with a consortium who are not interested in the football club but are interested in the development potential of the ground and the surrounding land.   This arrangement would leave the much travelled Peter Ridsdale to buy Plymouth Argyle as a football club for the princely sum of one pound and see himself running the club, leaving the `consortium` to pursue their redevelopment plans.

Sounds like a dodgy arrangement to me and small wonder that the Football League are taking their time to approve it or otherwise.   In the meantime, the players, led by team captain Carl Fletcher, pictured above with manager Peter Reid and the club`s longest serving player Romain Larrieu, are thinking of refusing to play in the club`s next fixture away at Burton Albion, having reached the end of their tether after months of unfulfilled promises and not being paid.

The contrast between the fortunes at one end of the supposed `football family` and the other could hardly be greater.   Having been through the slings and arrows of Administration with my own club, Southampton, I know only too well the anxiety, not to say despair, being suffered by Argyle`s loyal supporters.   They deserve better but the really sad thing  is that those at the top table don`t seem willing to throw any crumbs of hope in the direction of those at the other end.

So much for family values.