Is Football Immune To Economic Pressures?

There were some pretty dire economic figures on the news last week.

Many shops were slashing prices by up to 70% in a desperate bid to attract sales and takings on the high streets are down this Christmas on what they were last year.

The figures still sound pretty impressive, though. Up to £4bn taken this weekend, with some reports saying Britain was spending upwards of £1.5m a minute on Christmas stuff and popular toys at risk of being completely sold out.

However it is a curious economic picture, with takings in shops across the country down by £20m a week compared to October this year and it does look as though times are tough on the High Street.

About the only sector of the country not feeling the economic pinch, it seems, is top level football.

Read the gossip columns each morning and teams are said to be spending astronomical sums on players in the January window. Manchester United are to be close to spending nearly £40million on players, if you believe what is on there today at any rate, with Chelsea also set to buy all sorts of players.

When the spending in the last transfer window – which ended on August 31^st -  was totted up, clubs had spent something in the region of £485 million.

That in itself represented a significant increase on the previous year’s spending with some putting it as a 33% rise – hardly in keeping with the general economic picture.

So are the big clubs totally removed from economic reality? The answer on the face of it is yes – with many clubs breaking their transfer records in the last 12 months and players wages reaching what seems to be astronomical levels, some players again reportedly, are believed to be on £200,000 a week.

But that maybe doesn’t tell the whole story. Outside the top level teams are struggling as badly – and perhaps worse than they have done -  for years and even within the top tier there is only certain teams that are doing any spending at all. Everton for example have hardly signed a player for a cash sum in years.

Football expert at accountancy firm Deloitte, Dan Jones explained recently "This summer's spending [was] largely focused amongst the top end Premier League clubs most strongly competing for domestic and European success and the consequent financial rewards.”

So the big six teams, then, and the likes of Stoke City, who spent £22m on the back of their rich owners benevolence are the only ones to really splash the cash.

But then of course, even those clubs aren’t totally immune from High Street pressures. Hardly any of the Premier League Clubs have raised ticket prices in the last few years (indeed my own, at a mid table Premier League outfit has been the same price since 2008). Now, those prices were too high anyway, and they remain so, but at least those fans that are already forking out too much for their clubs aren’t being asked to pay even more.

Many fans are now opting to stay away all together, as pubs are offering live games from foreign channels – a practice that was thought to be illegal until a Portsmouth landlady won her case the other week.

The problem that football will have in the future is that largely, as we have written on these blogs before, clubs aren’t self-sufficient, with many relying on their rich owners to sign cheque’s and although the UEFA financial fair play rules, which come into force soon are meant to stop the sort of massive losses that the likes of Manchester City have recorded, there are ways around it, as the deal to sponsor City’s ground has shown.

So it could be some time yet for the economic austerity that is affecting so much of life elsewhere truly hits football.

All that remains to say is to wish all our readers and customers a very Happy Christmas. We are open throughout the Christmas period, but the blogs will return in the New Year.

Thursday Night's, Channel Five - And The Hotel Owners Hopping Mad

There was a lot of bluster and nonsense surrounding Manchester United’s Champions league exit. A lot of people said some pretty stupid things.

It was “embarrassing” said Patrice Evra. It was a “penalty” according to Sir Alex Ferguson. And the headline writers went into overdrive.

And in fairness to Evra, the players probably should feel embarrassed, they are highly paid and excellent footballers and ones who should have managed to qualify from the group in which they found themselves.

You have to have less sympathy with Sir Alex, as his comments were a little bit ridiculous and met with short shrift from UEFA president Michel Platini who said: 'The world does not revolve around England, I like England a lot, it's football is fantastic, it's supporters are wonderful but you shouldn't criticise the Europa League just because you've played in three Champions League finals.”

But one fact that came out of all fluff and conjecture did make us take notice it is that Manchester United stand to lose around £20m in TV money as a result of their dismissal from the group.

That £20m is before, you suspect, the lost ticket revenue, the prize money the programmes, the shirts, the merchandise is taken into account – in short it is a big loss.

Dan Roan, Sports News Correspondent at the BBC paints a bleak picture, on his blog he wrote: "Given the interest repayments United have to pay each year to service their vast debt, an exit from the Champions League is highly damaging. Being condemned to what many fans will see as the Thursday night purgatory of the Europa League is an embarrassment for a club of such ambition. The defeat also raises serious questions about the Glazers' ownership and will intensify the pressure on them to invest in a blockbuster midfield signing.”

Now, that might just be hype, but whatever financial pressures are, it is quite clear it is a situation that would have been best avoided, and one which has wider implications than might have been first imagined.

It is not just the football club’s that are worried about lost revenue. The City of Manchester itself relies on football income to help its tourist industry – an industry that is worth £5.4bn annually, or to put it another way, the equivalent of 75,000 full time jobs.

The previous occasion when Manchester United didn’t qualify for the latter stages of the Champions League was back in 2005-6 and according to the Chair of the Manchester Hoteliers Association there was a marked drop off in hotel bookings in that period, of course this year there is the fall back – for both United and City – of playing on the Europa League, but are those games as attractive?

The average champions league visitor, it seems would spend on average £776 on their visit to the city and that is revenue that might be missed out on. Depending, of course on how seriously the two clubs take the competition.

So it seems that whilst the Manchester teams are smarting at the results last week, it is the City of Manchester as a whole that may have to pay the “Penalty.”

Welcome to Channel Five on a Thursday night – its not that bad, you know.

Chin Up Pompey, Chin Up Pompey

To describe Portsmouth supporters as “long suffering” rather misses the point.

Since they won the FA Cup in 2008, it’s been a pretty hideous time for the club. They purchased a lot of players, which it turned out they might not have been able to afford and they went down in pretty ignominious circumstances in 2010.

Throughout the entire time the fans of the famous old club maintained their dignity and support for Portsmouth Football Club and earned themselves much credit as they made the FA Cup Final again the year they got relegated.

However, if those supporters thought things were going to get easier following their relegation and subsequent buy-out then the fans were sadly wrong.

They managed to purchase enough players for a good, if small squad after some wheeler-dealing from then Manager Steve Cotterill who led them to a mid-table finish and it might have been expected that, with a period of stability and some what looked like astute strengthening, a play-off push might be on the horizon.

However, recent history has taught fans to expect only the unexpected, so their manager did a flit to Nottingham Forest in October then came last weeks news – seemingly out of the blue – that the company that owns Portsmouth FC (2010) Ltd, CSI, has gone into administration.

The Administrator that helped stabilise the club before, Andrew Andronikou has been appointed to a joint role to do the same for the parent company and he apparently is hopeful that the club can be sold again telling the Daily Telegraph “there is always a solution.”

In the meantime the Pompey faithful have all the worry of not only whether they will have a club at all to support, but whether that club, assuming it does survive, will face a points deduction for going into Administration.

Andronikou believes they can avoid this fate because it’s the parent company that has gone bust. The Football League board will sit on this matter soon, but were forced to clarify their own rules regarding Parent Companies, ironically enough, after events just down the road at Southampton. In 2009 when The Saints hit the skids they made the same argument – that they should have been spared a points deduction, because it was not the football club itself that was having money troubles.

The League rejected this plea and found that the two organisations were “inextricably linked as one economic entity”. The Telegraph reports that this does not “appear” to be the case at Fratton Park.

All of which is fine, but does beg the question of how on earth this has been allowed to happen again?

Are there not rules to stop football clubs falling into the wrong hands? And if there is - and it’s the Fit and Proper Persons Test, the test that all prospective owners of football clubs have to pass, the problem is that time and time again it seems to fail the fans of these clubs who are used almost as playthings by these owners.

The FA needs to make sure that its own regulations are rigorous and fit for purpose, or else the whole thing is a pointless façade.

Surely we need to learn lessons so that this is the last time these type of stories are associated with this famous old club.

Gary Speed 1969-2011

The shocking events of Sunday morning mean that all other ideas for blogs this week might seem pointless and rather trivial.

Sometimes, just sometimes Football isn’t the most important thing in the world and the tragic passing of Gary Speed aged at just 42 proves that.

The inquest into his death starts today and it would be entirely wrong of us to speculate as to what happened. But what we can say with certainty is that Gary touched lives far beyond the fans of the clubs he played for.

Everyone, from fans, players, his friends and family has been left shocked and stunned at his loss and the tributes have been both moving and fulsome.

He was a model professional for club and country and one of the greatest – perhaps the greatest -  goalscoring midfielder’s of his generation. Here was a man who lived a quiet life with his wife and two sons, who was never in the tabloids and who appeared happy. Speaking on the BBC, Mark Lawrenson said his abiding memory of Speed was how “normal he was.”

He was also a dedicated professional footballer. He embraced the new thoughts on diet and fitness a long time before they became prevalent in the game only the most dedicated and fit of players can still be playing football into their 40’s as Speed did in a career that spanned over 20 years.

And what a career it was! Playing 677 league games for Leeds – with whom he won the league in 1992 - Everton, Newcastle, Bolton and Sheffield United, he also scored 103 goals.

A boyhood Everton fan, he jumped at the chance to sign for them in 1996 after eight years at

Elland Road

, and whilst at Goodison Park he scored the winner in a Merseyside derby. It took £5.5m to get him to the North East and St James’ Park, and it was here that he enjoyed the second most prolific spell – playing over 200 games for Newcastle.

He was nearly 35 when he left there to move south to Bolton in 2004, but far from winding down he managed three and a half years more in the Premier League playing another 120 games before moving to Sheffield United as Player-Coach.

It was whilst at Brammall Lane that he took his first steps into the Management Career he had always seemed destined for, taking over in the hot seat after Kevin Blackwell was sacked in September.

He was only at the helm for a matter of months before his beloved Wales came calling. Speed had been the Captain of the National Team had played 92 times for his country. He was appointed at the Welsh National Manager on December 14^th 2010 and he was slowly turning the fortunes of the country around, declaring his “pride” at the way his team had played despite the loss to England and since then they have recorded three successive wins for the first time in three years, including a 4-1 friendly win against Norway which Speed himself declared as “sensational.”

Sadly we will never get to see just how good a manager he could have made.

His last public appearance was as a pundit on Football Focus on the BBC on Saturday, when he gave no impression that was worried about anything. Making plans to visit Alan Shearer at his home this weekend and thanking host of the show Dan Walker for having him on. Tragically he will never be on again.

Amongst the many moving and warm tributes to Gary came from his friend Robbie Savage, who was in tears on the news when he said: "I loved him as a friend, his wife is beautiful, he had a lovely family, he'd do anything for anybody.

"I idolised him, he was one of my heroes in life, he's been there for me, someone I spoke to every week…this guy had everything, a beautiful family. He had a caring, loving family and was doing great at his job. Why has this happened?

"He was a larger than life character, he's got a great family, his father Roger travelled all around the world to watch him and he's left behind two beautiful, beautiful boys. It's just so sad.”

Everyone at Football Business echoes those thoughts and our condolences and good wishes are with his family and friends.

Financial Fair Play, The £194m Loss....And Snoods

Personalised snoods.

Those two words alone tell you all you need to know about the ridiculous situation at Manchester City.

On the pitch things are going superbly, 11 wins in 12 games to start the season tells you as much.

Off the field, it’s not so good – at least on paper. First they lost Chief Exec Garry Cook thanks to some pretty stupid and offensive remarks about a player’s mother who had cancer, then last week they announced record losses.

In case you haven’t seen, Man City lost a quite staggering £194 million last year. Just to repeat that figure it is ONE HUNDRED AND NINETY FOUR MILLION POUNDS.

Then this week we see the news that they have bought all their players personalised snoods to wear in training – of course that is a miniscule outlay compared to the losses, but doesn’t it just sum things up? Doesn’t it just sum up how out of control football’s spending is? And those comments could apply to every club at top level really, not just City.

As Ian Herbert put it in the Independent last week, though: ”Thankfully for City, the figures will not be taken into account used as part of UEFA's Financial Fair Play regulations as they fall outside the accounting window.”

Those regulations stipulate that no club can incur loses of more than £40m in the two seasons of the FFP regulations (the monitoring period begins at the end of this season.)

But even then, of course, clubs will get round the regulations, by finding ever more novel ways to do things, in a similar way of course to that which Manchester City have in having their ground and the so-called Etihad Village that is being built across the road from the ground sponsored for a reported £350m over a ten year period.

So UEFA can make all its grand pronouncements and it can talk as tough as it likes, but until a massive club is actually punished, surely they will just pay the regulations lip service and football will spiral out of control even further.

No other business (except maybe Banking – but that is a whole different political argument ) would be allowed to carry on in such a fashion, nobody else in any walk of life other than football would be able to spend money with such impunity and have someone else picking up the tab. And crucially nobody else, faced with these figures would try and give them a positive spin, which is what the powers that be at Manchester City attempted to do last week.

What of the role of the fans in all of this?

Lets be honest the fans of “Citeh” don’t really care about this – and neither should they, when they thrashed Man United, when they won the Cup, do you really think they thought to themselves, “yeah this is great, but we can’t afford it, it just not fair,” but then the same could be said for Portsmouth fans a couple of seasons ago.

But the responsibility rests with the owners of Man City to run the club in a responsible and business-like way, consistent with the principles of running any other business and crucially it rests with the Governing bodies to enforce their own rules and not be as toothless as you suspect they might be.

Because if they don’t actually do something about the situation then big football clubs will carry on in exactly the way they choose to do with absolutely no recompense.

I stress again that those comments don’t just relate Manchester City, but all football clubs, its just that Man city are the only ones who announced £194m losses last week – and promptly bought their players personalised snoods.

Gripped By Olympic Fever?

Football Business found itself in the pub last Friday night and while talking to a mate about next years cricket season the conversation got round to the Olympics.

The Olympic Act (2006) passed by Parliament is a hefty document, weighing in at 61 pages and amongst the many things it does a law in there means there can be no other sport played in London at the time of the games and because of this England are only played South Africa for three Test Matches rather than the usual four of five.

Given that SA are the second best Test Match Team in the world the prospect of England taking them on has got cricket fans excited and my mate is a trifle vexed at the curtailing of the series.

He went a little further, claiming he was planning to “go away” during the Olympics because he wasn’t bothered by the whole thing and he was already getting annoyed by the hype.

Now, I don’t agree with that necessarily – in fact I have already gone on record on this blog to say that I am quite positive about it – but his comments did get me thinking. With the games now less than nine months away are we gripped by “Olympic Fever” like it is claimed, or are we, as a country, less than enthused at this stage?

Ticket sales went well, with many sports sold out, but this doesn’t tell the whole story, most tickets were bought by those in the south of the UK, with less and less uptake the further North you go. Which points to the whole thing being a rather Southern bias to things. It seems that despite the “UK being gripped by Olympics fever” that many swathes of it are rather underwhelmed by the whole thing.

In fairness there are some events in other areas of the country – the football primarily being taken all over (although there’s no 5 or 6 a side stuff no matter how much we lobby!!) but as we argued on here the other week Football Business thinks that Football has no business at the Olympics so that is rather hollow anyway.

Then there was the revelation last week that the Government is spending £750,000 on tickets. As The Telegraph put it: “2012 has been dubbed The Peoples Games, that must be because the people are paying for absolutely everything.” Again, in fairness, that represents just 0.1% of the total amount of tickets, but it just seems a little too much expense when the public are having to pay so much for everything else.

Then there is the anticipated traffic chaos – bizarrely the lady in charge of Transport for the games was on radio the other week and her plan to alleviate the problems appeared to be “Londoners can work from home for a fortnight.”

There are, in fairness a lot of good things about the Olympics. The stadiums are completed already, the organisation appears to be running well at this stage and there are hundreds, if not thousands, of competitors who are focussing on their training for perhaps the biggest event of their lives.

But next time someone tells you that “Britain is gripped by Olympic Fever” perhaps you should look beyond the headlines. A lot of people couldn’t care less.

Are Things Going To Change - Dont Bet On It?!

Now the dust is settling on the betting scandal that saw three Pakistan Cricketers imprisoned, together with their manager for conspiring to bowl no-balls in a test match last year, we can perhaps think about why they did it.

The obvious answer, of course, is money, greed and thinking they could get away with it, and as has been pointed out in cricket, it would be pretty easy to do just that.

When Football Business isn’t selling franchises to run 5 and 6 a side football leagues we spend a lot of time watching County Cricket, and to be totally honest if bowler A wants to bowl a no-ball then, who in front of 200 spectators on a cold Thursday morning in April is going to remember that it happened? Let alone, to be honest, care.

Of course, it could be argued now that everyone is under suspicion – and that, probably is the worst aspect of this. Every player is effectively “tarred with the same brush.” As an example, I was at a county game a few months ago when a player on the opposition was having what is known as a “no ball problem.”

There was a self-appointed “comedian” in the crowd who, on each occasion this happened, shouted “oh, somebody call the bookies,” there was a titter in the crowd the first time, a little less on the second, but by the tenth it had become downright annoying and you felt sorry for the bowler concerned, who given the attendance levels at these things, could hear every word.

You can only speculate at the level of coercion that took place to get Messrs Butt, Asif, and Amir to cheat. Maybe they were threatened, maybe they weren’t, maybe they were wiling accomplices with no conscience, maybe they weren’t. The fact is that only they know.

What we can be certain of is that this type of betting has been going on for ages. The now deceased former South African Captain Hansie Cronje admitted his role in a match fixing scandal, he was banned for life, but two other players implicated are still playing. Another cricketer implicated in so called “Spot Fixing” is on the England Test Cricket Coaching staff.

As sport becomes ever more like a business and there is ever more money being bet on outcomes, these types of stories will become ever-more prevalent. Certainly the scourge has hit snooker and football already, with World Champion John Higgins banned from the sport for a while and soccer games in Korea, Germany and Italy falling under suspicion and resulting in suicides, convictions and recriminations in the last few years.

And before we start thinking it’s a recent phenomenon, let’s not forget that four players were banned from football for life for their role in fixing a match in December 1962 between Sheffield Wednesday and Ipswich Town, and in his autobiography Matt Le Tissier said that he had agreed to make money on a bet on the time of the first throw in: Spread betting had just started to become popular. It was a new idea which allowed punters to back anything from the final score to the first throw-in”, he said.

“There was a lot of money to be made by exploiting it. We were safe from the threat of relegation when we went to Wimbledon on April 17 and, as it was a televised match, there was a wide range of bets available.

“Obviously I’d never have done anything that might have affected the outcome of the match, but I couldn’t see a problem with making a few quid on the time of the first throw-in.


“My team-mate had some friends with spread-betting accounts who laid some big bets for us. We stood to win well into four figures but if it went wrong we could have lost a lot of money.

“The plan was for us to kick the ball straight into touch at the start of the game and then collect 56 times our stake. Easy money.

“It was set up nicely. The ball was to be rolled back to me and I would smash it into touch. It seemed to be going like clockwork. We kicked off, the ball was tapped to me and I went to hit it out towards Neil Shipperley on the left wing.

“As it was live on television I didn’t want to make it too obvious or end up looking like a prat for miscuing the ball so I tried to hit it just over his head. But with so much riding on it I was a bit nervous and didn’t give it quite enough welly.

“The problem was that Shipperley knew nothing about the bet and managed to reach it and even head it back into play.

“Suddenly it was no longer a question of winning money. We stood to lose a lot of cash if it went much longer than 75 seconds before the ball went out.

“I had visions of guys coming to kneecap me. Eventually we got the ball out on 70 seconds. The neutral time meant we had neither won nor lost. I have never tried spread betting since.”

Quite why he tired it in the first place is open to question but it was probably money, greed and thinking he could get away with it. Which brings us back to the cricketers.

In betting it seems, as in life, the more things change the more they stay the same.

We Only Beat This If Everyone Speaks Up!

Last night during the Champions League game between Chelsea and Genk there was some pretty distasteful chants from a section of the Chelsea crowd about Anton Ferdinand.

Football Business does not intend to repeat the chants here (they are freely available elsewhere if you want to have a look what was said) but we do join Chelsea in condemning it.

A statement from The Blues said: “The chanting was wholly inappropriate and we don’t condone it.”

What I will add, though, that it could have done with Andre Villas Boas condemning it as well, he claimed, in the best traditions of Mangers to have not heard anything as he was “concentrating on the game.”

I am not having that excuse. We all know – and no doubt you have been at games yourselves – when player x or manager y has been urged to “give us a wave” by the crowd and, largely without exception they do. The crowd cheers and the game carries on.

So please, don’t insult our intelligence by claiming not to hear stuff.

That attitude, though, in a way does encapsulate what’s wrong with the attempts to fight racism in the game. It is too easy to claim you haven’t heard stuff – easier certainly than confronting things.

Of course giant strides have been made in the last couple of decades. When I first started going to football in the mid 1980s black players were subjected to some fearful abuse. George Berry – he of the giant afro – famously ate a banana he had thrown at him at Millwall. He also went to remonstrate with a fan who shouted abuse at him on another occasion. Those instances and what I am sure were countless others like them are mercifully rare these days.

The great irony in all of the John Terry/Anton Ferdinand incident that sparked all this off was that it happened in the Kick It Out fortnight of events. Much of the credit for the virtual eradication of racism in the game belongs with the Kick It Out organisation. The campaign – which we are happy and proud to support – has worked tirelessly to champion the cause.

I am sure they would agree with me, though, that the key phrase in the last paragraph was “virtual eradication”. And whilst its unlikely that racism in football – just as in society, which football has always largely reflected – will ever be ended, it certainly will not be while crowds think its ok to sing and chant in the way Chelsea did last night, when the manager “doesn’t hear anything.”

As Edmund Burke once noted: “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

It is perhaps something we should remember.

Help Football Business Help Movember This Month

At Football Business not only do we want to help you run community 5 and 6 a side league to help everyone, we also like to do our bit too.

That is why we are both pleased and excited to announce a massive charity initiative for November.

Throughout November any profits we make will not be going to us. No siree.

Instead all our profits throughout November are going straight to the Movember appeal!

Movember, in case you didn’t know, is a charity campaign that seeks to raise money and awareness for Men’s Health, notably Prostate and Testicular cancer.

The way they do this is to get men (Mo Bros) to grow moustaches.

The scheme is worldwide and is backed by many top sports stars.

Everyone in the world probably has their own story of how cancer has touched their lives. In my own family we have lost many close family members and I wanted to do my bit to help. A lot of the lads in the football-business.co.uk office have signed up to be Mo Bros and the board of Directors have very generously and very kindly agreed to support us by donating all the profits we make next month to the charity.

There are no gimmicks, no catches, just charity. And moustaches.

So help us by telling everyone you know about what we are doing, and if they want to buy a 5 or 6 a side football franchise in November they can do it safe in the knowledge that they are helping the fight against cancer.

And that we look even dafter than we usually do!

Team GB: Any Place At The Games?

Something very weird happened at the Football Business Offices last week.

Something so odd, so utterly bemusing and strange that I didn’t quite understand the magnitude of what had happened until about an hour later.

Even then I tried to deny it, but it is inescapable.

And it is this:

Arsene Wenger said something and I thought: “he’s got a point.” In fact, I didn’t just think “he’s got a point” I thought, “yes, you know, what Arsene said is right.”

This isn’t a trivial matter as far as I am concerned. Agreeing with Mr Wenger isn’t something I do lightly, it isn’t something I like doing and it is something I hope I don’t do again.

But last week when the Arsenal boss said about Olympic Football: “it’s not a real tournament.” I thought to myself ‘he’s correct.’

The reason for the comments to come out last week, you suspect was that last week saw the announcement of the Coaches for the 2012 football tournament. Stuart Pearce will lead the male team, with Hope Powell at the helm of the ladies side.

It’s a job that – for Pearce – appears fraught with problems. The Scottish, Irish and Welsh FA’s don’t want their players selected for any “Team GB” for fear that any moves to do that could see their autonomy within FIFA eroded, so it might be that Team GB is effectively Team England – although Gareth Bale and Aaron Ramsey have declared their hope to play.

And it is the latter that has vexed Arsene. He doesn’t want his players burnt out in what he considers a pointless competition. And, although I do not share the cynicism of a lot of the country for the event and am tremendously looking forward to it, I agree with the Arsenal boss: football has no place there.

In fact, I don’t recall ever watching an Olympic Football match if I am honest, and I am sure I am not the only one.

Football – or for that matter tennis – have no business being in the games (tennis is different matter – it shouldn’t exist full stop). I remember seeing the eminent cultural Professor Ellis Cashmore say that “any sport for which the Olympics wasn’t the pinnacle” shouldn’t be at the competed for at the Games, and its something that makes sense. Are we to believe that Gareth Bale grew up dreaming of the chance to play for Team GB when he was a boy in Cardiff, or did he want to win the Premier League, Champions League or the World Cup for Wales?

Therein, surely is the difference. Usain Bolt would have dreamed of winning Olympic Gold, so do amateur boxers, cyclists, rowers, swimmers and countless other sports men and women. That’s why those sports belong to the gold medallists and football doesn’t.

Team GB must complete of course. Hopefully it will have players from all four Home Nations in as it should, but whether the sport in general should be there is an entirely different matter.

The rest of what Wenger said was:  “For me, the Olympics is for track and field, basically.”

And, as someone who loves the idea of watching the Olympic boxing tournament, or minority sports like Weightlifting I profoundly disagree with that premise.

Disagreeing with Arsene Wenger. My world makes sense again.

The Stupidest Idea Ever?

There have been two big Football Business stories this week.

One has been bubbling for a while and it is something we have talked about before on the Blog. Namely Overseas TV rights.

Last week saw Ian Ayre, Managing Director of Liverpool saying that he wanted an end to clubs all receiving the same money for games overseas no matter how many times they were on. He was pretty blunt (one of the comments reported was: “who tunes in from Kuala Lumpur to watch Bolton?”)

There has been debate about how the comments symbolised Liverpool’s move from Bill Shankley’s socialist roots to the modern, capitalist new world that football now inhabits – further distancing itself from his working class routes. And while, in fairness to Ayre, there is some merit in what he says: Liverpool are on the TV more than Bolton so it can be argued they should be getting more remuneration for this, it is a premise that we at Football Business wholly disagree with.

One of the strengths, surely of English Football (as opposed to other countries) is that we – just about – sustain over 100 professional clubs, and one of the ways we do that is by collective bargaining. In fact, the overseas TV deal is surely the only thing that is equitable about the Premier League and it must stay that way.

The other is even more stupid. In fact, it must rank as perhaps the single most stupid suggestion that has ever been uttered. A story emerged on Monday from the League Managers Association that some of the Premier Leagues foreign owners wanted to abolish relegation. The LMA’s Chief Exec Richard Bevan explained that these people wanted to move to an American Franchise type system of a closed shop.

Encouragingly this idea looks already dead in the water. A host of football people have lined up to ridicule it. Sir Alex calling it “suicide,” Dave Whelan, the Wigan Chairman, saying in today’s Guardian that he would “resign from the Premier League” if it happened and Venky’s Group – the owners of Blackburn Rovers – releasing a statement yesterday explaining: “We believe that the EPL's success is, in large parts, down to its ability to create such excitement for all who follow it, fans, players and staff and of course we the owners.

"We see no reason why anybody would feel it necessary to change the current format of the competition and are proud and privileged to be a part of such a great League.”

Without core support any plot – if there even was one– to ruin (and that’s not too strong a word for it) our great game will never get off the ground.

We all know what promotion and relegation brings to a league. We know how it has improved the competitiveness of Cricket and Rugby – indeed we always encourage our Franchisees to start more than one division because even in 5 and 6 a side football people want to go up and they want teams who deserve to go down to do just that.

Football is, was and must always be meritocracy. And, actually despite all the hot air this week, I am sure it always will be.

Howards Way - Will It Be Plain Saling For The Aussies

With due apologies to all our readers in Wales who probably don’t want to think about rugby right now, there was a story related the oval ball that our eyes here at Football Business last week.

Pat Howard, the former Leicester Tigers player and coach was appointed as General Manager of Cricket Australia.

Australia, you probably don’t need reminding – but lets do it anyway because its fun – have slip down the Test Match rankings and sit now amongst the also-rans. In the wake of the Ashes disaster in the winter Cricket Australia have conducted a review of how they intend to get back to the top of the world. And the man they choose to help them implement their vision for that is Howard.

Reaction to the appointment is mixed. A quick look at the Cricinfo website and you will soon see comments that are typical: “Would Rugby appoint a cricketer?” Says one. “When baking bread we appoint bakers to the job, you should consider the same approach. I think for Rugby Union he would be great,” reasons another.

And that, generally, is the attitude of most sports people too as well as the public. That we don’t understand because we haven’t played the game – or in Howard’s case the right game.

The man himself was unequivocal in his excitement: “It is a great opportunity for anyone in sports leadership,” he commented. And surely it’s the last two words in this sentence that are the key.

It’s not like they have appointed a bloke off the street to do the job. It’s not like they have come up to me and said: “go on then, have a go.” Pat Howard has been a superb coach, he has played top level sport and he is steeped in experience. Are we really, in sport, so insular that we don’t believe skills can be transferable?

To take the argument down to a really simple level, I drive a Ford Focus. That doesn’t mean, though, that I am unable to drive any other sorts of car. The beauty of experience is that those experiences can be used elsewhere. For example, in Football Business we have franchisees from many different walks of life. Some ran businesses before, some did not. Some are young, some are, shall we say, more mature – its not like we say that people are precluded or can’t run a business because they haven’t before and to judge Pat Howard before he has had the chance to do anything is bizarre.

There is a saying that “if you always do what you have always done, you will always get what you’ve always got.” So credit Cricket Australia for thinking outside the box.

As an English cricket fan I would be lying if I said I wished him well, however. Bitterness is also a transferable skill.

Friendlies Fired - Because Players Are Tired

There is an article today in the Daily Mirror that explains how Blackburn Rovers co-owner Balaji Rao has personally paid the expenses of three Blackburn fans who went to India to watch their team’s friendly in Pune last week.

The story highlights how Rao, who had paid for nine other fans to go, heard the story of the other three and paid for them too.

Tremendously laudable from the under-fire Indian Chicken magnate and more power to him. Football Business is always behind moves to make football more affordable and more accessible to fans.

But the real question which still begs itself is this:  Why were Rovers even there in first place?

Of course we already know the answer to that – money. The same reason that Manchester United and Manchester City went to America to play pointless games in the summer. The same reason as the Emirates Cup exists, and all those other ridiculous games take place every summer. Some sort of nonsensical “brand awareness” exercise.

Of course, Blackburn’s case is a little different, given the nature of the ownership there, but really was it the best planning to take the squad out to India for a friendly in the International Break?

Manager Steve Kean is just about public enemy number one in that part of Lancashire – more demonstrations against him are planned, and along with Steve Bruce, he is the real “dead man walking” of the Premier League and I’ll bet you that despite his outward positivity for the trip he is secretly fuming at having to go. But, as we all know in a job, we all have to do what our boss tells us ultimately so go he has.

There is nothing (ok very little) that annoys us at the Football Business HQ than players/managers and everybody else bleating about players being tired (you might have noticed we bang on about it on blogs). And that being the case, please can we make a plea:

If anyone, player, manager and above all Chairman at Blackburn Rovers uses the excuse that the players were tired/leggy/jaded (delete your cliché as appropriate) then we all have the right to scream “YOU WENT TO INDIA!!!”

In an age where Manager’s and players complain about too many games and view the Carling Cup (you know, proper silverware) as a distraction to be avoided, doesn’t it strike you as bizarre that a squad can – in its week off – fly halfway round the world to play basically what amounts to a kickabout?

If they are that desperate for match practice then we know of a Thursday night league in the area we could sell them at a knockdown price!

Same goes for Liverpool and Rangers by the way, who meet for who knows what reason next Tuesday – what is that, a consolation for teams that didn’t get into the Europa League?

I wonder what sort of team either side will put out, and I wonder who will care in the slightest. I have just checked the Rangers Website and prices are an eye-watering £18-25! Anyone who goes to that game deserves a medal!

There’s loads of 5 a side leagues on a Tuesday too – get out and play in one of them instead.

Hard Working Players - Dont Make Me Laugh - Just Ask Delroy

Last week on the Football Business blog I wrote a piece about overseas TV rights. In it I quoted Alex Ferguson. Sir Alex had talked about the demands on his players and said: "You get some ridiculous situations when you're playing on Wednesday night in Europe and then at lunchtime the following Saturday. You ask any manager if they would pick that themselves... there'd be no chance."


I was thinking about those comments on Sunday when Stoke boss Tony Pulis (who had last month talked about how pampered his players were compared to those Welsh Miners who died in the awful tragedy and said he wouldn’t use tiredness as an excuse) said “it was mentally tough to play three games a week” and admitted his players “looked leggy.”


It’s not without precedent of course, we are coming to that time of year when Steve Bruce (for it is always him) will witter on about needing a winter break when faced with a “crazy” Christmas schedule and there are countless other football figures will talk about “too many games” and how things are “unfair.”
When I was thinking about these moaning, bleating football figures the name Delroy Spencer popped into my head.


Don’t worry if the name means nothing to you. It didn’t to me until about three weeks ago when I was watching boxing on TV.
The main fights had finished early, so they showed something from the undercard. The fight they picked was a Super Bantamweight clash between Paul Butler (a highly rated youngster) and the aforementioned Delroy.


They brought Delroy’s record up on screen before the bout. He is 43, which was the first thing that caught my eye – he must be phenomenally fit to make that weight at that age (I am slightly younger than that and haven’t been that weight since I was about 10!)


Then there is his record. That fight against Butler was the 139th of a career that can hardly be described as glittering. Of the previous 138 he had been victorious just 12 times. Losing 121 and drawing the others.
He lost this one too – on points with the younger, faster man winning every round – but that’s not the point. Promoters up and down the country know they can rely on Spencer to give his best whenever he’s called upon.


And he’s called upon a lot. A quick scan of Boxing Website Boxrec shows that most weeks Delroy is gloving up to fight some young prospect or other and good luck to him.
That is what these football managers need to understand (as well as the players in the wake of the Carlos Tevez affair), that for every person in the stands that would give their right arm to do what they do, there is somebody else who plays the game for the love of it (or at least very meagre wages.)


And those – and those even lower down the football food chain, those who play Sunday league, or dare we venture, 5 and 6 a side football are the sort of people who can – and should – feel insulted every time someone says footballers work too hard.
Delroy Spencer could to. But he’s in Scotland and Doncaster in the next three weeks if you fancy watching him – he’s fighting two lads on their debuts, so he’s probably too busy training for his next bout to care.

Robert Johnson Did It First But Football Sells Its Soul To The Devil Says Sir Alex

No sooner has Alex Ferguson Alex Ferguson started talking to the BBC again he is making the headlines for them too.

He has finally buried the hatchet with the Beeb, after you might recall they made a series of allegations about one of his sons, and yesterday he gave his first major interview to the corporation for seven years.

The wide ranging chat, which took place on BBC’s Look North show and was given to Gordon Burns. Once you got past the “blimey, isn’t that the fella that used to present Krypton Factor when I was a kid?” moment (it is by the way) Fergie certainly didn’t disappoint and had plenty to say.

Most of his ire was reserved for TV and he returned to his hobby horse of Football dictating the days and times of the fixtures.

And rather like the old tale that Blues Guitar music started when Robert Johnson went to the crossroads and sold his sold his soul to Beelzebub, Fergie suspects football changed after a satanic pact.

"When you shake hands with the devil you have to pay the price," he said. "Television is God at the moment. It is king.

"When you see the fixture lists come out now, they [the television companies] can pick and choose whenever they want the top teams on television.

"

You get some ridiculous situations when you're playing on Wednesday night in Europe and then at lunchtime the following Saturday. You ask any manager if they would pick that themselves... there'd be no chance."

And he’s probably got a point.

However the crux of the issue wasn’t, you suspect, that Sir Alex wants to spend his Sunday’s with the grandchildren rather in the dugout. The real meat of what he had to say was tucked in the next part of the interview.

Sir Alex was upset that that the Premier Leagues overseas TV contract (currently valued at £1.4bn is split equally between the 20 clubs. He is angry that United appear on the TV more abroad than say,
Wigan, and he added: “When you think of that, I don't think we get enough money."

And there you have it. As the BBC Sports Editor David Bond puts it on his blog: “No matter how many times Manchester United appear on TV in Singapore or America and no matter where they finish in the table, each of the 20 Premier League teams splits the overseas television cash equally.”

And that, lets be honest, is the real reason for the outrage. Not out of any concern for his players, or indeed the fans. Just plain old filthy lucre.

There’s not much that is fair about the Premier League, but the way the overseas TV deal is structured remains so. It has long been suspected that the top Premier League clubs want to be able to do separate TV deals – similar to those in other countries (see Spain for example) but as of now the 20 clubs bargain collectively.

And hopefully that will remain the case. It would be nice, of course, if some of this wealth filtered down the pyramid, but unfortunately such is the rampant greed at the top level that’s about as likely as Sir Alex Ferguson saying something to the press that he hasn’t thought about long and hard.

And so it is here, as always with Sir Alex, it might be worth looking not so much at what he says but the reason why he says it. He is, after all, the master of mind games.

 Especially when it comes to the Football Business