Arsenal News » Football finance – breaking, smashing, creaking, snapping and crunching news.

Two snippettas of news (I know there is no such word, but it is gone 10.30pm in the UK and the gas fire has been on for a couple of hours and I couldn’t go jiving because I pulled a muscle jumping up and down in the Ems on wednesday night, so I am allowed to make up words).

First I am extremely grateful to one of the really good friends of this site, who goes out of his way to provide me with up to date info that I otherwise would miss, and this snippet is an example, which really should have been in the last article…

The Spanish Football Federation (El Corrupto) is planning a match day strike in protest against the reform of the Beckham ruling through which players called Beckham, plus those who hold the nationality of any other country other than Spain or Gibralter, and who earn over 600,000 euro now will have to pay 43 percent tax like the locals.

The Fed has convened an EGM which will decide whether the strike goes on or not. Most of the clubs (so I am told) would agree to a strike.

Until now Johnny Foreigners (to use the phrase popularised by Alan Sugar of Tottingham Hot) pay 24 percent tax and some people born in Spain are changing their nationality to some other Euro country in order to get lower tax.

The rule was introduced in 2004 and named after David Beckham when he played for Real Mad.  Any change in the law would apply to employment contracts signed after January 1, 2010.

Britain has already changed its tax laws to accommodate the corrupt financial affairs of UEFA.  UEFA refused to give Britain any Euro cup finals unless it changed the way players were taxed on extra earnings they received from sponsorship and similar rights resulting from appearance in such a match.  The government caved in to the demands although not until the Ems lost the rights to a Euro cup final.

This move in Spain can be considered as some good news to the PL and subsequently to Arsenal. We all have heard the rumour run and re-run by the Mail and Sun concerning Arshavin who was said to be unhappy with the 50 percent tax ruling in the UK.  It makes it cheaper for English clubs to employ other EU nationals and those from elsewhere who qualify.

Meanwhile and more extraordinarily Ron Gourlay of the KGB in Fulham has said Che-lsea, has decided to rename its stadium Stamford Lubyanka Bridge.   Now when I was researching MAKING THE ARSENAL I am sure I came across a deed related to the name of the Chelsea ground and the name of the club being linked, but for the moment I can’t find that document.  When I do I’ll come back to this.

But that is not the main point.  Just look at this comment from the man…

“What we are not prepared to happen, and I am sure our fans will appreciate this, is allow our rival clubs in England and Europe to gain a competitive advantage over us in terms of the revenue they can generate through either expanding the capacity of their existing stadia or moving to a new stadium and then invest that upside in their team or the club.

“Those possibilities are not open to Chelsea for the foreseeable future because of the restrictions in expanding our stadium and the issues around finding a new site, so that means we have to be creative and look at our sponsorship architecture and see if we can create new value and new opportunities that keeps us competitive.”

Now excuse me if I am a bit dim, but I thought the whole operation was bankrolled by Mr Abramovich, MP for Siberia, (or is that Surbiton) in which case why bother with something as silly as renaming an existing ground.   There is no point in moving when the club fails to sell out so many of its games – particularly in the Champs League and the Diddly Cup – games that Arsenal do manage to sell 59,000 or 60,000 for (the variation is usually in relation to away fans).  What’s more Mr A has often spooked about moving the club somewhere else.  (Orkney perhaps).

So is there a message of the hidden variety?  Is Mr A really starting to squeeze the old cash flow and say, “make a profit of trot off to the frozen northlands?”

Who knows.  I certainly don’t and as regular readers will appreciate I make much of this up.   Making the Arsenal is good though.

(c) Tony Attwood 2009.