Industrial relations in football in Britain, it seems, are tied to a form of language that makes measured assessment difficult and causes ill feeling by its very nature. Just as player—manager relations are conducted in the outdated language of the traditional factory floor, so the terminology used to describe changing jobs, 'buying' and 'selling' players, distorts the reality. Both sides suffer from this: the management accuses some players of greed or disloyalty, while the players feel the club treats them cynically, as if they were disposable objects. In the real world, though, people move from one job to another all the time. They aren't bought or sold, they resign, sign a new contract with another business, have a change. Sometimes, if they have signed a long- term contract, their old employers refuse to let them go, or demand to be compensated. In fact, life in the corporate world is generally less well paid, less secure and more demanding than it is in the world of professional football. The resentment that players feel about 'being sold' is probably created more by the language used to describe the process than by the process itself, This all has a tendency to descend into stereotypes: the gentleman chairman who considers himself a model of good business behaviour, and the hypersensitive player who thinks he is being treated as a disposable commodity.