With the Australian Professional Leagues in the the midst of a painful restructure, Central Coast Mariners boss Richard Peil recently voiced the sentiments of some of contemporaries by describing next year’s March-April unveiling of an eight to 10 team second tier as “somewhat dangerous”.

However Galatas contends that the new entity, spearheaded by Football Australia, poses no threat to the well being, or otherwise, of the A-League, and may ultimately benefit the competition, as it seeks to recover from a financial buffeting which saw it shed half its 80-strong workforce last month and shutter its flagship KeepUp media platform.

“If we’re going to make our game stronger then we need a national second tier - and whatever the financials of the A-League are has no bearing on that,” Galatas told FTBL.

“There is one way the A-League financials will improve and that’s by growing the pie.The more fans interested in the game, the more might show an interest in the A-League. So I see it as a win-win.

“There is this idea that people follow a league when the reality is they follow clubs and in particular their own teams.”

Peil warned in the wake of the APL cutbacks: “The FA has to do the right thing by clubs - is it the right time to launch a second division? I personally don’t think it is. Putting competition next to the A-League, when we’re in the midst of several business corrections, isn’t the best idea.

“We’re still trying to find our feet a bit (after diverging from FA) and I just feel it won’t help the current situation at all. The point is that unleashing it at a point where we’re in the middle of a bit of a correction is somewhat dangerous."

The APL has burned through a large portion of the $140 million American equity firm Silver Lake paid for a one third stake in the competition, without a tangible uptick in metrics or eyeballs on the A-League.

But Galatas doesn’t see its travails as a valid reason to delay, or even can, a second tier which many hope will ultimately pave the way for a promotion-relegation model seen almost everywhere else in the football firmament.

“The problem for the A-League is its costs,” he added. “Whatever the crowds are, whatever the revenue is, whatever the TV rights money is if you calibrate that against costs then it shouldn’t matter. The issue is they’re locked into a high cost base which they can never quite meet.

“They’ve said publicly that the Silver Lake money was going to buy time to shore things up and allow them to do everything they had to do strengthen the league.

“It frankly staggers me that they could have apparently burned through so much of the Silver Lake money when I thought the plan was for that money to last five or six years, by which time it would have been on an even keel financially.

“It seems like most of that money has gone, from all reports, and now they’re coming out and saying ‘don’t make it harder for us by having a national second division’.

“But I don’t believe a NSD will harm it. On the contrary, it will help it. If you have an entity which most fans think will lead towards real football (a promotion/relegation pyramid) it will bring more supporters back to the game.

“Overall, it’s a positive in my view, though in Richard Peil’s eyes perhaps not since he has bought a stake which he now perhaps considers to be at risk.”

Galatas fell short of accusing the APL of being financially foolhardy, but did add: “It’s a private organisation which has been doing what it considers to be appropriate from a profit perspective.

“I was surprised to read recently that it stated, in response to the closure of KeepUp, it was now going to focus on 'serving core A-League fans'.

“I would have thought a football organisation owned by the 12 A-League licensees would have that as their starting position. That statement in itself is probably revealing of some of the mistakes many football people believe, looking in from the outside, have been made. 

“I’m not saying that’s financial mismanagement but if as a football body you now basically say you haven’t been focusing on football enough that might tell you something.”

Galatas’ comments came on the same day that APL independent chair Stephen Conroy penned an open letter to fans outlining his vision for the competition, and where it’s currently at.

He said, amongst other things, “As mentioned, the A-Leagues business does not change. Whilst we have had good growth across our core metrics, we acknowledge more needs to be done to get the leagues where we want them to be, and sustainable A-Leagues growth will be the focus of our team.

“The hard work continues, especially in these tough economic conditions but our aim remains the same; create the most exciting competitions possible for our fans – with strong teams producing great young players, male and female, across Australia and New Zealand.”

APIA Leichhardt, Avondale, Marconi, Preston Lions, South Melbourne, Sydney Olympic, Sydney United, and Wollongong Wolves are the eight clubs to have already agreed to enter the national second tier.