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Articles and reports on financial issues within football – soccer – from The Political Economy of Football.
Reports that American millionaire Preston Haskell has tabled a bit for Coventry City and the 50 per cent of the Ricoh Stadium owned by the Higgs Trust have been confirmed. Haskell was in Coventry for nine hours of talks earlier in the week.
One of the continuing problems at the Sky Blues has been the lack of any stake in the stadium, but the Haskell backed bid for a share of the stadium would only go ahead if ownership of the golden share could be secured.
Foreign investment now reaches into the second level of the non-league pyramid with Kuwaiti firm KEH Sports Ltd. acquiring Ebbsfleet United. A subsidiary of the Kuwaiti European Holding Company, they have been advised by former Charlton Athletic chief executive Peter Varney.
More has probably now been written about the depature of Sir Alex Ferguson than that of Margaret Thatcher and it is difficult to say anything fresh or new. Yet The Economist has managed to do so in its Bagehot column, named after the weekly’s editor from 1861 to 1877.
Many United fans seem underwhelmed by the appointment of David Moyes as new Manchester United manager. The fact that he was the choice of Sir Alex Ferguson does not reassure some of them. They think that Sir Alex wanted someone in his own mould, not least a fellow Glaswegian.
The future of Worcester City football club is under threat. It’s always questionable whether a club should sell its ground without having a new one to go to. Next season there will be a ground share at Kidderminster which is not an easy journey from Worcester (not least because it means coping with the joys of the Kiddy ring road).
With David Moyes set to take up over at Old Trafford, the way is clear for José Mourinho to return to Chelsea. Many United fans might have preferred Mourinho to come to United, but Moyes is clearly Sir Alex Ferguson’s favoured successor and will offer the stability the club rightly emphasises.
Manchester United have confirmed that Sir Alex Ferguson will retire at the end of the season. He will continue to serve as a director and ambassador for the club.
When I first started watching football in the 1950s, Wolverhampton Wanderers were one of the top teams in the country, if not the top team (although their Black Country rivals West Bromwich Albion were also in there). For a small boy, a visit of Wolves to The Valley was the equivalent of Manchester United today.
The latest conventional wisdom is that the German football model represented by the Bundesliga has established itself as a better one than that of the Premiership.
The first piece of evidence cited for this view is the all-German final in the Champions League and the relatively poor performance of Premiership clubs in the competition. Methodologically, this is not a sound argument. It’s what is called an individualistic fallacy, generalising from an individual case.
In the FT Weekend Magazine distinguished football writer Simon Kuper provides an in depth profile of the success of Everton FC. Quite a lot of article is about how much use the club makes of performance analysis and how demanding manager David Moyes is in his demands for data. This is translated into very detailed instructions to players that anticipate the strengths and weaknesses of the opposition.