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A statement issued by the Football League after its meeting yesterday reads: ‘At its meeting today, the Board of the Football League gave detailed consideration to the proposed takeover of Leeds United by Eleonora Sports Limited.’
There is some uncertainty about whether or not Liverpool will satisfy Uefa’s financial fair play (FFP) rules after the publication of broadly encouraging financial results earlier this week which the club claims will usher in a new era of financial stability.
Of course, there is uncertainty about how the rules will apply to any club, given that the devil is in the detail. The decisions will be as much political as legal ones and it is likely that Uefa, with a French president, will want to make an example of at least one Premier League club.
Charlton owner and Belgian entrepreneur Roland Duchâtelet has set up a network of European clubs which he hopes will exchange players as part of a player development plan that keeps agents out of the picture. It’s an interesting experiment which reflects the dynamic of Europeanisation in the game as we discussed in our 2011 book The Transformation of European Football: the Europeanisation of the National Game.
The Premier League is facing increasing pressure from its member clubs to allow them to play reserve teams in the lower leagues or at least to have formal links with nursery clubs.
It is realised that any such move would be strongly opposed by the Football League and enrage fans who would see it as further evidence of an unhealthy dominance by the top flight.
Nevertheless, there is a real dilemma about how one develops players in the 18-21 age group. Less than 35 per cent of Premier League starting XIs are English. One might then argue that clubs should use fewer foreign imports.
Birmingham City owner Carson Yeung has stepped down as chairman and executive director of Blues’ holding company, Birmingham International Holdings Limited (BIHL).
This latest announcement on 53-year-old Yeung’s future was made in a statement to the Hong Kong stock exchange. Yeung, Blues’ owner since 2009, is the football club’s major shareholder.
The sacking and reinstatement of Brian McDermott, a decent man who is popular with supporters, is unparalleled in recent football history. However, Leeds fans may not get the protection from the Football League’s fit and proper person test that they could reasonably hope for.
It would give a whole new meaning to competition between clubs, but could rival clubs act to have Manchester City kicked out of European competition using Uefa’s financial fair play rules? This is the argument made a report in The Independent.
What it shows once again is how complex the financial fair play rules are and how open they are to rival interpretations Manchester City’s place in next season’s Champions’ League could be challenged by rival clubs this summer because of detailed new Uefa rules over Financial Fair Play (FFP).
The recent Deloitte annual Money League report shows how important the commercial segment of the revenue of top clubs is becoming. An average of 41 per cent of the revenues generated by the top 20 clubs came from commercial sources.
Match day sales now account for only a fifth of revenues. At AC Milan, it is as low as one tenth. Even broadcast revenues are now behind commercial revenues, their share falling from 42 per cent to 37 per cent.
23 managers have been fired in England since the beginning of the season. As many of half of England’s 92 league clubs have had a manager who has been in position for less than a year.
Despite some prominent exceptions, it is not a managerial merry go round in which managers leave one club and quickly find a berth at another one. 55 per cent of first-time managers never manage again (although some of these may not have been suited to the job). Only 36 per cent of those sacked last season are back in work. It takes an average of 1.63 years for a manager to find another job.
Sports lawyer Daniel Geey looks at recent financial fair play cases, with particular reference to the case of Malaga, to try and establish what sanctions clubs might face for breaking the guidelines. As is often the case with legal matters, it seems that more case law is needed to come to any definite conclusions.