"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
The Chinese long march into European football continues with the acqusition of AC Milan from Silvio Berlusconi by a state-backed Chinese group. Finnvest, the holding company controlled by Mr Berlusconi, has stated that it has signed a preliminary contract with a group of Chinese investors for a 99.93 per cent stake in AC Milan that valued the club at €740m including debts of €220m.
It used to be said that some matches attracted just one man and a dog, but the non league dog phenomenon is attracting growing interest. You can see a selection of non league dogs here. One of them is appropriately supporting Barking FC.
At Leamington a collie comes with his owner to every match and watches the play intently. Indeed, so badly does he need his fix that he comes to some junior matches as well. In winter he wears the club’s colours.
With the smallest playing budget in League Two at about £450,000, Accrington Stanley missed out on automatic promotion last season on goal difference. They then lost in the play off semi-finals to AFC Wimbledon.
Since then a number of star players have left, two to Rangers for just £125,000. The club reckons that domestic transfers in England would have yielded around £2 million. It just shows how the odds are stacked against small clubs.
West Bromwich Albion are the third Midlands club to go into Chinese ownership in the last few months, following Aston Villa and Wolverhampton Wanderers.
Yunki Golao Sports Development are the new owners in which Guochan Lai is the majority shareholder. He has been associated with the development of ‘eco towns’ in the past.
Can money buy success in football? The simple answer would seem to be yes, but it’s actually a lot more complicated than that, particularly in the year of the underdog. Money is not always spent well and, if you have a lot of it, you may find yourself paying over the odds for players that under perform.
Some clubs from relatively small towns have the name ‘City’ after their title, e.g., Ely City. This is because they are the home to a cathedral, but the secular status of being a ‘city’ is quite different. It has been recently granted to Brighton and Wolverhampton, for example.
The combined value of Premier League shirt sponsorship deals this year is £226.5m, an increase of £3.6m on last year. In percentage terms this is less than two per cent, so it is a much smaller rise than that for broadcasting contracts.
I have just returned from a visit to Scotland and there has been much attention given in the media to the new away kit for Hearts.
Manchester City want to sign defender John Stones from Everton for £40m. Everton have insisted on £50m and at that price the deal is unlikely to go ahead.
This has a broader significance beyond these two clubs. The revenue from the new broadcasting contract means that no club has to sell a player if they don’t want to in order to stay afloat.
Boosted by the new television contract, the Premier League is expected to exceed last summer’s transfer spend of £670m. Ten years ago in 2006 it was just £250m. Between 2007 and 2012 it fluctuated around a figure just short of £500m, although it reached that amount in 2008 and fell back to £385m in 2010. There was then a big jump from £480m in 2012 to £630m in 2013.