Arsenal News » 2009 » October » 19

On a number of occasions Tony has written about the financial situation of clubs in the EPL and lower leagues.  And Tony’s point has been consistent throughout: that the way Arsenal is working is the best way to develop a club and to keep it in a good shape.  It is an approach much removed from the problems that can ruin other clubs like Liverpool, Manchester, West Ham and Portsmouth.

I don’t know if the news has reached England yet but there is another club that is facing a big financial crisis. It is our next opponent in the Champions League, AZ Alkmaar.

The president of AZ, Dick Scheringa is also the owner of the DSB Bank. And it is this bank that is almost bankrupt. DSB bank is the main sponsor from AZ, it has financed the building of the new stadium, given cheap loans to the players, and also loaned a lot of money to AZ.

Now the bank is placed under guardianship of the authorities and they are searching for another bank who is willing to take DSB bank over. But it has now been reported that all the possible take-over companies have withdrawn.  This is yet more evidence of how bad the financial situation of the bank is.

For AZ Alkmaar this is a disaster – as it is for the players personally but I will get back on this later. The club has got a new stadium, (Arsenal played the opening game in a few years ago) financed by DSB bank.  DSB bank has loaned a lot of money to the club and when the bank really is bankrupt this could mean that AZ Alkmaar has to pay its debt back to the bank as soon as possible. Even a blind man can see that this means trouble with a capital T.

For this year AZ Alkmaar has said that there is no trouble. DSB bank had already paid their 5 million euro sponsorship for the current season. But for next year AZ will not receive any money and with the current economic situation the chance of another company paying that amount of money every year as a sponsor looks rather small.

The possibility of having to pay the loan back and the lost of the sponsorship means that AZ will have to cut back its operating cost and then the players come in line. Last summer AZ turned down offers for Dembele (12 million from Genoa) and a big offer for Maarten Martens from CSKA Moscow. Instead they gave a big raise in salary to those players. They weren’t short of money in those days.

But now it could well be that AZ will be all to happy to sell their best players for any reasonable offer. And as we all know when a house is for sale and you really have to sell it, the price goes down and so will the price of the players go down.

So it is well possible that the club will be facing an negative spiral and nobody knows how it will end.

For the players it also could spell problems. A lot of players have received a cheap mortgage for their houses and now they are afraid that they lose that benefit. How this will affect the players is unknown for the moment. But there is some uncertainty in the group that is for sure.

When players don’t know if they still will be at the club in January or when they fear financial problems regarding their houses, then they tend not to be at their best when preparing for a football game.

The club has ordered it players not to talk about the problems to the press. Only manager Ronald Koeman was allowed to give a short statement to the press in which he said that the situation is not easy but that they will try to focus on the football side of matters.

So what have we learnt today ? First  that the financial crisis is not over yet. Second and most importantly that it is so dangerous for a club to have all its eggs in one basket. You can rely on a rich man for some time but in the end of the day it always ends in a catastrophe.

The only way to run a club at the long term is the way Arsenal does it. Thank whatever God you worship for the way our board and our manager run our club.

Walter Broeckx is a passionate Arsenal follower since 1979 from Flanders, Belgium. Since a couple of years he is the main news reporter for the Arsenal fans in Belgium, Holland and Luxemburg where he tries to bring them a daily portion of Arsenal news. His passion for football goes so far that he even is a referee. In the real world he is married, has 4 children including some Gooners, and he works as a civil servant in a small town and provides building permissions.

MAKING THE ARSENAL – the new book about Arsenal FC – can now be ordered ahead of publication at the end of October.  For details of the book and to place an order just click on this link.