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Articles and reports on financial issues within football – soccer – from The Political Economy of Football.
Gloucester City feel let down after being told by council planners to go back to the drawing board over their plans to rebuild their stadium. Their Meadow Park home was badly flooded in 2007 and since then they have played at Forest Green Rovers, Cirencester Town and Cheltenham Town.
Liverpool’s commercial income has improved, but the club is in a less good condition than it was when it was bought by Tom Hicks and George Gillett Jr in early 2007. Then they were en route to a second Champions League final in three seasons and a new stadium in Stanley Park was a real prospect.
Peter Hill-Wood, the Arsenal chairman, has admitted the club “can’t compete” in the transfer market with their Premier League top-four rivals. But Hill-Wood was confident the club would mount a serious title challenge and insisted the board was not worried about manager Arsène Wenger’s failure to win a trophy for seven years.
It’s too early to talk of a crisis at Liverpool. The club is currently in the relegation zone, but that’s after only three matches and they won’t be there at the end of the season. However, doubts are increasingly being expressed about whether they can challenge for a Champions League place despite claims from chairman Tom Werner that they have the resources to compete with anyone in football.
Overseas clubs did well out of the transfer window, according to figures produced by Deloitte Sports Business.
Transfer fees to overseas clubs were around £300m, almost 50% up on the level seen in 2011. This represented 61% of total transfer fees committed by Premier League clubs, as compared with 42% in 2011.
The financial challenges being faced by non-league clubs are illustrated by the case of Leamington. Shareholding is widely dispersed among fans and the club is run on a prudent basis. However, the club admits that it has been a struggle to balance the books in recent years despite a significant increase in commercial revenue.
Truro City have been placed into administration, but the move may have come too late and the club could disappear. They face a winding up order in the High Court tomorrow from Revenue and Customs for £15,000 before costs and the patience of the tax authorities is running out.
Meanwhile, the club’s players are turning out for free to aid its battle for survival. However, they said they would not turn out for yesterday’s match against Boreham Wood (which they won 2-0) unless steps were taken to place the club in administration.
Aston Villa have the potential to be the leading regional club in the Midlands, but it is a potential that has not been realised in the last 30 years since they were European champions.
Randy Lerner was welcomed as an owner. It was seen as an end to the austerity and lack of hope of the final years of the Ellis regime. Lerner was seen as one of the better foreign owners. For a time he walked the walk as well as talking the talk.
Once again it was a last minute frenzy that spurred on spending in the transfer window after a sluggish start. At £490m the final outcome was marginally up on last year’s figure of £485m, but failed to beat the record of £500m in 2008.
£300m was spent on foreign players. The ‘trickle down’ effect to the Football League was limited with just £50m spent at that level.
Arsenal have purused a strategy of only paying what they can afford, the problem is that they are the only top club acting in this prudent fashion.
There is two ways in which their strategy could work. One is the oft repeated claim that ‘the Premiership bubble will burst.’ But we have been hearing these claims for year. If I had received a pound for every time I have heard it, I would have quite a sum of money.