England’s football pyramid has become  a Jenga tower

When I read this report from the Independent Football Regulator (IFR), I immediately imagined the brilliant Steve Carell as Mark Baum in The Big Short.

It’s a brilliant movie based on Michael Lewis’s book of the same name.

Here’s my take on it from a decade ago.

Highly recommended.

Mark Baum is a fictional name for Steve Eisman, a real-life hedge fund manager and investor who famously predicted and profited from the 2008 subprime mortgage collapse.

The key moment is when he tells his colleague, “HEY THERE’S A BUBBLE!”

Dear reader, bubbles ALWAYS burst.

Always…

In the law of unintended consequences, it was also the hinge factor that did for Sir David Murray’s  empire.

The knight of the realm ran his business ventures on the assumption that the credit spigot would never be turned off.

One day, it ran dry.

He couldn’t borrow, and his vanity project at Ibrox was in a liquidity crisis.

The bank moved in, and with the Big Tax Case looming, he had to sell it to anyone.

Even a billionaire with wealth off the radar.

You know the rest…

In the considered opinion  of the IFR, English football’s finances are “dangerously exposed, with the majority of clubs living on the edge of financial disaster”.

When I read that, I also thought of another scene from “The Big Short”, hence the title of this piece.

I’ve noted that the intrepid chaps in the Stenography Corps have been rather reticent about comparing what Manchester City have been charged with and their beloved nativist franchise on Edmiston Drive.

It’s almost as if they’re cowardly shills who shy away from anything remotely resembling journalism.

Almost…