How come everyone else spends billions and we don’t? « Untold Arsenal: Arsenal News. 800,000 visits last month
By Tony Attwood
I recently saw this post come through at Untold.
“yea ofcouese sell RVP for measly 15 mil to our greatest rival does make sense.How on earth anybody let such situation to build up in the first place…..now i am hearing song is about to go too….fk our self sustaining economy model.”
(Obviously I have printed it exactly as it was sent in).
The essence of it is the self-sustaining economy model of a football club that Arsenal pursues results in good players going to other clubs – most hurtfully our rivals. And it is very hard for this model to deliver a club which can produce a championship winning side.
It is easy to think, at the moment, that we should be like Man City or Chelsea, because they won the big prizes last season. But I would argue that success is not inevitable if one does follow the model of Chelsea, Man City, PSG, Málaga etc etc. There’s a list of some of the other clubs that follow this route in the Billionaire Files (see foot of article for some of the articles from the series.)
Some of the histories of these clubs don’t make good reading – Málaga is obviously one, as their billionaire owner suddenly seemed to get fed up and has stopped funding them, which is why we just signed a brilliant midfielder.
And there was also one of the clubs where it was bought and given to the owner’s son as a play thing. There is also the developing situation of what we might call “associated clubs”. We find this with Watford Giampaolo Pozzo an Italian businessman who is currently the owner Italian football team Udinese, Spanish club Granada and Watford.
We should also look at PSG who are currently the laughing stock of French football. They accounted for about 75% of the entire transfer window expenditure in France this summer, and have so far played two and drawn two.
My point therefore is not that the Arsenal model of ownership and management is perfect nor the only one. Rather all models of ownership and finance have problems, and really the choice is how big a risk you want to take.
I believe there are three models that football clubs seeking to change can follow: Self-sustaining, Billionaire, Changing ownership. My argument is none of them is safe, but the self-sustaining model looks to me to be the safest for long term prosperity.
Just consider this list of clubs all of which have changed hands recently. We all know about Chelsea and Man C because they are the most high profile, but consider also. It is easy to say, Arsenal aren’t Blackburn or Rangers, but with the wrong ownership we could easily become like these clubs…
Blackburn Rovers – Venkey’s took them over to make them a leading brand in the Premier League. They’ve been relegated, and the supporters protest daily.
Portsmouth – with five owners in 2010 the club descended into chaos, and are on the very edge of extinction, sitting in the third division and being run by administrators.
Rangers – I hardly need tell you… is in the 4th tier of Scottish football, and still with outstanding tax claims, claims that they issued false contracts to players, and unable to sign any new players for a year. There will be more punishment to come.
Nottingham Forest – The Al Hasawi Family. You tell me.
Notts County – the oldest league club was owned by a Supporters Trust who inexplicably gave the club away to Munto Finance, who brought in Sven as the manager before the club was sold it to Peter Trembling who sold it to Ray Trew after receiving a winding up petitions from HMRC. What induced the Supporters Trust to give away their own club? The promise of a quick rise up the leagues under a billionaire owner.
Cardiff City Datuk Chan Tien Ghee and Vincent Tan own the club. They have promised vast sums, an expansion of the stadium and Premier League football. Their first action was to force the club to play in red instead of blue.
Hull City. Assem Allam At the moment he looks like one of the good guys. We’ll see if I am right.
Birmingham City. In July 2007, Hong Kong-based businessman Carson Yeung bought 29.9% of shares in the club, making him the biggest single shareholder, with a view to taking full control in the future, and promised vast sums in transfer money. But no new money arrived, the manager left, and the management brought in the ex-manager of Villa, of all clubs. Yes they beat us in the League Cup, but then were relegated before being given a transfer embargo because of unpaid debts.
Reading: maybe they too are owned by a good guy. But it is hard to know because the owner is the son of Boris Zingarevich, and the owning company is registered in Gibraltar (similar to the Cayman where the Glazers have Man U), so it is hard to say. In the last financial year Reading made a £5m loss and the owner loaned the club £26m. The question is, will the new owner, with no connection with this country, let alone Berkshire, be similarly inclined?
The move for Reading is part of the new phase of changing ownership. No longer do people want the top names – rather they go for the lesser clubs. Reading is costing about £25m. Maybe they will move down to the League One and League Two clubs soon.
So I see a danger with billionaires moving in – some may be wonderful some may not. I see the same danger with other take-overs – too often they just don’t seem to be all that we would want them to be.
My point then is that all the models of clubs are dangerous, but at least with the self-financing model that Arsenal use, the club will keep going. If our owner suddenly pulls out for whatever reason, all he can really do is sell his shares. If the owner of Chelsea, Man City, Reading etc etc, pulls out, there is a chance of disaster, since the owner is funding the club.
No approach is perfect, no approach guarantees success. Yes Chelsea won the Champions League, and of course I acknowledge that Arsenal have got no further than being beaten finalists. But I suspect even the most ardent Chelsea supporter would recognise that it was close this time – and had they failed, Chelsea for all their spending, would not have got into the Champions League.
There is one final point that comes out of the comment I printed at the top of the page. I have read it often in other people’s emails, and it basically says, how could Arsenal have been so stupid as to allow RVP’s contract run down?
All I can say is, had RVP been given a new 5 year contract a year ago, and had he accepted it, and then got injured we could have had people now saying, “how could the club be so stupid as to give a contract extension to such an injury prone player?”
In the end it is all about looking at the options and taking a gamble. Portsmouth won the FA Cup and were then refused entry to the Europa League because of their finances (if I remember correctly). Rangers were dominant in Scotland, and look where they are now.
I guess if we were talking about dog racing, people would talk about doping of the dogs, and how Arsenal Dogs ought to be doped because the others are doing it. In such a scenario I’d still argue that we shouldn’t. In the real world we have financial doping, and I still argue that we shouldn’t do that either.
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Some of the billionaire files