Why Arsenal have a problem when trying to buy a centre forward
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By Tony Attwood
According to the Guardian PSG was “Bought for €70m (£59m) in 2011” and is now “valued between €3.5bn and €4.2bn.”
So there we are, in one sentence, that is why people buy football clubs: to make them grow so that should the need ever arise, they can be sold. PSG’s commercial revenues, according to the same article were once a third of Manchester United’s annual income. Now, well, ManU is involved in cost-cutting everywhere.
Which then gives us a warning. Football clubs can rise in value, as many do, but they can also fall in value. And that is the problem because not everyone quite knows how to make a club grow in value. After all, most top clubs sell out the tickets for every match. Most clubs have sponsors. Most clubs have been putting advertising all over the ground for years. But not every club increases in value. In fact I would guess that Tottenham Hotspur will probably have to win either the Champions League or the Premier League next season to stop their value sinking again and compile the financial damage of finishing just one place above relegation this time around.
For the moment, club owners are happy because commercial deals seem to be very easy to find, as more and more firms want to be associated with a club. But there is a limit. This last season six clubs from the Premier League made it into the Champions League for the next campaign. That doesn’t always happen.
And there is another problem. Some club owners really do have more money than they can ever need in order to buy success. Yet even there, they can sometimes come unstuck. Manchester United is an example but it could happen elsewhere.
Of course, if ManU were owned by an oil state then the owners could say to any player who is causing a bit of trouble, “of course stay with the club and don’t play if you wish, but if you want to be a footballer again accept whatever transfer deal we find for you.” But as it happens, they are not owned by just such a state so “slash and burn” football management as it is now known, is not currently an option. But in dire straits it could be…
Of course the big spenders go beyond buying players at top prices – they give their players conditions that can’t be imagined even in the Premier League. The PSG training centre is described in the same article as above as having “pristine acreages, its market garden, its chauffeurs’ ping-pong room, its hypoxic oxygen chamber, luxury living quarters and hairdressing salon, the panic room in case of terrorist attack…”
Whether it is worth clubs not owned by oil states playing in the same competition as those that are, is a matter that some clubs are starting to consider, for the fact is that whatever everyone else spends, the oil-sponsored clubs like PSG can pay double. They are also helped by the fact that they own BeIn Sports, run the European Club Association, and have a pretty strong hold on UIefa. The people who now run the really big clubs (in financial terms) also run governments. They discuss unrest and uprisings as much as whether to sponsor this or that competition.
So is it now all over.? Does oil and countries with oil own football?
Yes up to a point, but there is a key element missing, for although they own, or can buy, the big clubs, fans still have an attachment to their own clubs, and a league made up of clubs that are not oil run, and which don’t have access to ceaseless investment, is always going to be attractive to many who have a felling for their own club.
Sot let us think of this. Supposing the rest of the league in France get fed up with PSG automatically winning every year. Or supposing their supporters would like to have some real competition to enter which they could win. What then?
Clearly the clubs like PSG are never willingly going to give up their situation at the top of the league, and their supporters will keep on going to see them, no matter how biased the league is in their favour.
But supposing the rest of the league actually want a real competition, what then? Perhaps we might imagine a league set up in which the amount of money each club within the league has available to spend on everything – an agreement for that without loopholes.
What then for the clubs with all the money?
Well the first thing that would happen is that the people who love lording it over everyone else would find that “everyone else” was not taking notice any more. And then what? That could be rather interesting…
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Why Arsenal have a problem when trying to buy a centre forward
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