Celtic and Arsenal at top of financial strength league

Celtic and Arsenal hold top positions in a new football financial strength league of 44 European clubs devised by S&P Capital IQ.  While Celtic top the league, Glasgow rivals Rangers are bottom and are held up as an example of how things can go wrong on and off the pitch.

Celtic and Arsenal hold top positions in a new football financial strength league of 44 European clubs devised by S&P Capital IQ.  While Celtic top the league, Glasgow rivals Rangers are bottom and are held up as an example of how things can go wrong on and off the pitch.

Apart from Celtic, only Ajax get ahead of Arsenal in the table based on a range of debt and financial performance indicators, but the North London side are ahead of Bayern Munich and Manchester United (ranked fourth).   Not surprisingly, S&P Capital IQ suggest that Arsenal’s financial stability may be related to its unwillingness to ‘buy’ success by spending heavily on transfers.

Among the 17 publicly listed clubs, there was a correlation between performance on the pitch and investors’ views of creditworthiness, but this does not tell us anything about the direction of the flow of causality.