"If you want some accessible but informative insight into football then I suggest you couldn't do better than the Political Economy of Football website, which is not only intelligible but comes with the added bonus of being written by Addicks fan Wyn Grant." Ben Hayes - Charlton Athletic programme
China’s richest man may be ready to make a bid for Southampton. Apparently there is interest from Chinese billionaire Wang Jianlin, boss of the Dalian Wanda group, who could make the Saints the richest club in the Premier League.
There is, of course, no guarantee that the new owner would be willing to splash the cash. But it would make Saints the first Chinese owned club in the Premier League.
West Bromwich Albion shirt sponsor, Zoopla, has warned the club to axe Nicolas Anelka or risk their lucrative shirt deal being scrapped.
Zoopla, a property and house prices website company, has delivered an ultimatum to Albion by threatening to pull out of its contract if Anelka plays in the Premier League game against Everton at the Hawthorns on Monday night.
Anelka is under investigation by the Football Association and facing a potentially lengthy suspension after his controversial ‘quenelle’ goal celebration that has been described as anti-Semitic by Jewish organisations.
The outgoing Charlton chairman Michael Slater has discussed the financial constraints facing many Championship clubs in an interview with the South London Press. As we have argued for some time, it is becoming a de facto Premiership 2.
Slater says, ‘The key factor is that every season in the Championship eight or nine clubs will have Premier League parachute money of up to £20million a year and this makes it difficult for Charlton to compete. There is no denying the correlation between a club’s budget and finishing position in the league.’
The Rangers squad was asked on Thursday to consider pay cuts of around 15% until summer 2015 as cost-cutting begins in earnest at Ibrox. The request, put to the players as a possible alternative to some having to be sold, was widely rejected.
One objection that is understood to have been raised in a dressing room discussion is that the directors making the proposal were still on full pay and were in part responsible for the club’s current problems.
A crisis has developed at Southampton FC after the departure of successful executive chairman Nicola Cortese. He is seen as the driving force behind the club’s recent success. The circumstances of his departure are far from clear, but it is evident that he has fallen out with the owner Katrina Liebherr.
Hull City owner Assem Allam has threatened to pull his money out and walk away from the club if he is prevented from changing their name to the Hull Tigers.
Allam remains determined to pursue his belief that Hull will be more marketable with a different name and able to attract better sponsors, even though fans have reacted furiously to the proposal. It is also not the good marketing idea that he thinks it is despite his insistence that the club’s historic name is a ‘lousy identity’.
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.
There is competition from bidders to take over Reading FC. A US-based consortium made the first move at the end of last week, submitting a bid for full control of the club on Friday. Rivalling that bid from across the Atlantic is a firm interest from a group of investors from Oman.
The American bid would be a complete takeover, acquiring both the majority 51 per cent stake of absentee owner Anton Zingarevich and the 49 per cent held by Sir John Madjeski.
Cardiff City lost £30 million in the season they were promoted to the Premier League, latest accounts reveal. The club’s overall debt has risen to a £118m, with just over half, £66m, owed to owner Vincent Tan.
But Cardiff chairman Mehmet Dalman said the club was on course to becoming debt free. Mr Dalman said Malaysian billionaire owner Mr Tan had put up to £150m into the club since 2010.
Getting rid of Sam Allardyce and his backroom staff would cost West Ham £5m, something they had insisted that they will not do, at least for now.
However, relegation could be particularly costly for the club. In 2016 they move to the Olympic Stadium and they need to have paid off their debt. One year ago it was £71m and they have taken on more debt since then to sign Andy Carroll.