New crowdfunding platform for players

Kickrs.Net is a new digital crowdfunding platform that allows fans to fund the acquistion of new young players at their club.   Belgian Juliper Pro League club Sint-Truiden is the first to feature with a young Greek player being targeted.

€103,175 Euros has been raised so far from 289 investors.  That’s an average of €357 Euros per investor or approximately £260.

We Want Answers Say Cobblers Fans

There is still no clarity about the projected takeover of Northampton Town.   A trilateral meeting yesterday between the current owners, the London-based Indian consortium interested in buying the club, and Northampton Borough Council was cancelled.    A meeting between the owners and the purchasers will go ahead.

Fans running a #WeWantAnswers campaign plan to demonstrate at Saturday’s game.

Wages cost more than transfer fees

A focus on the cost of transfer fees is understandable when some of them are so large and their negotiation is surrounded by so much last minute drama.  

However, a study by the Fifa Transfer Matching System, the body that oversees all cross-border transfers, found that clubs committed to spending £4,5bn in wages in 2015 alone, far outstripping the £2.6bn spent on transfer fees.  The amount of money committed to salaries this year is more than a third higher than the same figure for 2013.

Is prudence back in fashion?

Next year the new £1.7 billion Premier League television contract kicks in, an increase of 70 per cent on the present contract. Even so, a few exceptions aside, Premier League clubs were relatively restrained in their spending in the summer transfer window.

The Premier League’s net spend over the last three seasons was £427.1m, £369.1m and £414.6m.  They paid just £12.5m more than they did two summers ago.  If the David De Gea deal had gone through, they would have spent less than in 2013.

Who are the big attenders?

The Faroe Islands have the biggest regular attendances at football matches in terms of the proportion of the population that go, followed by Iceland, Cyprus, Scotland and England.   The research was done three years ago, but the relative proportions have probably not changed all that much.

England had the biggest absolute attendances at just under 1.5 million, accounting for 2.79 per cent of the population.