Hello and welcome to the game podcast from The Times. I'm Gregor Robertson Robertson we're with you twice a week throughout

the season for all the best reaction and analysis from some of the best football

writers in the business joining us today are the Times Chief Sports writer

Matt Dickinson the Sunday Times reporter Rebecca Myers, and the Times Football Statistician, Bill Edgar.

Coming up we'll discuss where the power lies in North London before Sunday's Big Derby,

and take a look at Alexis Sanchez's Premier League legacy.

But there's only one place to start this week and that is the tragic demise of Burry

and the existential crisis facing the Football League.

This week, Buddy were expelled from the EFL

and Bolton Wanderers also flirted with extinction before finally being sold.

How these two proud old clubs got into a mess is not a straightforward question.

Matt, you've written an excellent piece in the times today which highlights the difficulty in protecting lowly clubs like these because essentially

there are more trouble clubs than potentially decent owners out there. That's a huge barrier to

overcome no matter what regulations change.

Yeah exactly I mean I think you know there are, you know, I've turned

through a few of them, huge holes in EFL regulations, whether it has to do with

the type of owners who come in or, you know fair play which obviously if it works would

make you know for a lot less loss-making clubs but the fact is that you know there are as Martin Ziegler

traced a few months ago a substantial majority of of lowly clubs do lose money and this is the sort of I think the crucial

context against which this all has to be set you know I think there's a lot of

emotion understandably wrapped up in the stories of Bolton and

especially Barry being expelled but again we also have to you know say

...