Contract Killer

In a special series over Christmas, the lads consider ways in which the future of football can be improved.

Today, Lakes begins by looking at a novel way in which clubs can look at improving results on the pitch - and their financial position off it.

Coming to a football club near you soon. Well, Lakes can wish.

Football these days. It's all about the players. Overpaid, underworked prima donnas, the lot of them.

It's a criticism you hear time after time on the terraces. One-time 'star players' waste away on the bench, happy to pick up a hefty wage, bankrolled by the club you love.

With the security of a fat, long contract, players know they have a guaranteed wage for a certain number of years. All you can do is tear your hair out and bemoan your miserable life. Nothing personal.

How many wastes of space can you name at your club? I'll wager one or two at least. Wouldn't it have been great, with hindsight, to have signed those players to a shorter contract? Goodbye, Emile!

For a moment, let's consider my personal experience as a Preston North End supporter. We recently got taken for a violent ride on the HMRC's wide love rocket, owing hundreds of thousands of pounds to the tax man.

We were issued with two winding up orders. All the while, Darren Carter sat on the substitutes bench, picking up a rumoured five-figure weekly salary.

Carter had never really adapted to the hustle and bustle of the Championship and looked forlorn at the prospect of playing more than five minutes a game.

What a relief it would have been for both parties if we could've let him go easily. Like Rose on that wooden crate, releasing Jack's hands, he'd have slipped away into the murky depths with little more than a bubble of air escaping from his jaded lungs.

Instead, Darren was happy to pick up a wage for getting a slightly numb bench-backside, while we were too poor to sever his contract in one lump sum.

That's why I'm proposing mandatory one-year contracts for all footballers. Forget player power, it's time for a bit of club power.

This is the next generation of football: the generation that picks itself up from the floor, battered and bruised by the ITV Digital collapse, demanding agents, and boom and bust. The generation that finally takes affirmative action and kicks the prima donnas square in the balls.

Get rid of Carter: Preston's second most-useless employee called Darren

Here's how it would work. Players sign up to a club on a one-year basis. They have precisely that duration to impress. If a club wants to keep the player, they can give them another one-year contract.

If they want to get rid of them, there are no costly severance packages, messy backroom deals, or unsightly public rows - a player simply gets let go at the end of their contract.

It's not all doom and gloom for the players, either. With only a one-year commitment required from a club, they represent a low-risk gamble for sides looking for a solution to fill a problem position in their side, or looking for someone new to come in and shake things up.

The best teams, of course, will keep hold of their best players by offering them new one-year deals.

Into the deals they could build improved incentive-based clauses, such a "x amount more money and a guaranteed contract next year if you score 30 goals this season."

It would revolutionise the game, enabling clubs to keep their best players, but still provide players with the choice to move if it's not right for them.

Some will argue, wrongly, that players deserve a bit of stability in their lives. I'm afraid they sacrificed the right to that when they became overpaid sacks.

So what if player X feels he has to move up north? That's his choice - he became a footballer. It's hard to feel any real sympathy for players when the bottom line is they're paid thousands of pounds a week. I'm paid thousands of pounds a year. They can get lost.

There is, perhaps, a token bone of sympathy worth throwing to players in the lower division. League Two players, for example, might find it more troublesome to constantly uproot than players in the Championship.

But let's be clear: clubs have the option of retaining players they want for another year, and if a player really wants to stay then he needs to impress.

It would result in a greater effort from players, each playing for a new contract. Why shouldn't players give 100% effort? It would also mean the gravy train would stop for some less able, or less willing, players who put in minimum effort.

The kind of players who end up lurching from one club to another would quickly get a fair reputation as unemployable. That's exactly how it works in the real world - why shouldn't it be the case for footballers too?

Why should clubs owe players loyalty when players don't show any to their clubs? It's time to take a bit of that power back, football clubs of Great Britain. It's time for change.

On Wednesday, Turls makes his argument for bringing back regionalisation in the lower leagues.