 |
Dear group members of the Beautiful Game, I'll try my best to be neutral here. I started responding to Anand's post ("Monetary investment is fine in a free economic world") on the comments thread, but as I kept typing, I feared anyone seeing a comment of that size wouldn't bother reading through. So this is for those of you who would have been interested in doing so, presented in the uncluttered environs of Plumb in Front (pretty shameless eh...? So what!). Read on I say...
Before I start on other clubs, I'd like to say that I AM aware of the fact that even the club I support was at one point a benefactor in terms of revenue (rather unfairly, you can say). David Dein, an Arsenal fan who invested in the club was a fanatic and would do anything to see his club at the top. Pre-Wenger he had a huge influence on anything that went on at Arsenal. Dein - after becoming chairman of the Football League Management Committee (FLMC) - along with a few others championed the deal with ITV in 1988 for exclusive rights to home games, that saw the top 5 teams getting a lion's share of TV revenue for a few years. This obviously gave these clubs (Arsenal, United, Liverpool, Tottenham and one more which I can't remember) a significant financial advantage. The formation of the Premier League, meant that these clubs could negotiate better commercial deals (naturally) even though the TV revenue was then distributed evenly once Sky took over. What I'm getting at is that, at the end of the day any club/business will do what (it thinks) is best for itself. Dein and Co., definitely gave the top 5 an edge and its probably the implications of this deal that saw these clubs more successful in the years that followed.
"Monetary investment is fine in a free economic world" - 90% correct.
"Sustainable monetary investment is fine in a free economic world." - is 100% correct, as far as I'm concerned.
At a time when the world's markets are plunging, football seems to be (actually is) thriving in a different solar system. It's unsustainable and it should stop. It will stop. At least that's what I think.
I accept that for a club outside the previous Big Four, the ONLY way to get in amongst them was to spend BIG. The dominance of these clubs would have otherwise definitely continued and we wouldn't have reached this point at which we are witnessing an exciting league with no real big four any more.
While I acknowledge that there had to be spending to give the traditional big teams a run for their money, the manner in which this has been carried out is what makes me give no importance to the success (that may be) achieved as a result. The methods employed by City and in years past by Chelsea astound me for the short termism in decision making. Chelsea's mad spree started in 2003-04 (am I right there?), yet almost a decade letter, I'm not sure they can say they've built up a club that is envied by anyone. Trophies yes. What else? How many managers have stayed there for more than... a year? Can they say they're completely stable? What if Abramovich decides to pack his bags and leave to invest in a kabaddi team in 2019 (assuming we have the Indian Kabaddi League set up by then)? How many players have they invested in from a very young age by buying them at a reasonable cost (sorry but £50m is not reasonable)? How many outstanding players have come through their academy? In my mind, the commercial clout and everything else that Chelsea gained after the first few trophies started pouring in, should have been made use of sensibly, to build a long term plan, a plan that should have considered becoming even more successful by forming foundations that would have seen them dominate, not through further spending sprees, but through an excellent system supplemented by intelligent purchases in the transfer market. I don't see that kind of system in place. After almost of decade of a foreign investor coming in, there are just too many uncomfortable questions.
From what we've seen from Manchester City in the last two years, they seem to be heading down the same path, although this made me 0.0001% more interested in what they're trying to achieve. Even if I was a Man City supporter, I would have been utterly flabbergasted when I heard about the scale of losses that were posted last year. Only one word comes to mind. Unsustainable. A trophy at the end of such massive spending is a minimum requirement and won't be a truly great achievement. Anything less would be a complete/utter disaster. In fact their exit from the Champions League in the group stages is already for me the flop of the season.
I actually hope they win the domestic league in a way, because I'm curious to see how they will build on that. A successful team will financially strengthen the whole club. The question that remains is, will trophies be used as a platform to build on or will it just be the start of a never ending obsession to win-at-any-cost(£££)? That for me will determine whether they're class or classless. This is not aimed at the fans but just at the way this/these club(s) is(are) run.
As a football fan, I'd like my team to win things, but that doesn't look likely in the current climate. Trophies would be great, but it's not an obsession - which it is for many - for me. Arsenal may not win anything this year (Champions league maybe.. heh) or the next year or the year after that, but Arsene Wenger will continue to be a genius in my mind, for the culture he's cultivated at the club; someone who has ensured that this club will be in good stead even years after he eventually says goodbye. Arsenal for me will be a successful club as it is now. We'll be back in the reckoning for silverware when the football bubble bursts. It surely will. Ciao!