From The Sunday Times
June 8, 2008
Chelsea and Manchester United have thrived with huge debts, but changing times could be on the way. ACCORDING to a new report, Manchester United have 333 million “followers” worldwide - roughly the same as the populations of the USA and Canada combined. I like the word “followers” in connection with this great club: those old-fashioned terms “fans” and “supporters” don’t really do justice to the franchise. “Followers” is much better. It will include, for example, the cheerful taxi driver who picked you up from Changi airport last year and who said, as soon as you got in his car: “Harro Engrish people! Manchester United! Denis Raw!”
I assume it includes, too, all sorts of people who “follow” Manchester United in much the same way as I “follow” the Conservative Party - taking a vague interest in them and hoping all the while that they fail. By rights, that makes me a “follower” of Manchester United as well. I check their results, with fingers crossed, on a Saturday. Or a Sunday or Monday evening, whatever. “Followers” is close to the correct name for the sort of people who one typically pompous football columnist last week said he wished were the norm for the game - not people who “parochially” support one club and loathe the rest, but people who enjoy a lovely game of footie wherever it is played, without fear or favour. Typical West Ham fan. Or “follower”, take your pick.
The boss of Uefa, Michel Platini, has incurred the wrath of the cynical monkeys who run our top Premier League clubs by calling Manchester United and Chelsea the “cheats” of English football, claiming the former “won the Champions League final on the never-never”. Once again he lamented the “never-ending gold rush” of the Premier League, epitomised by its magnificently objectionable scheme to add a 39th game in the middle of the season to be played in some benighted foreign capital (a scheme they still haven’t dropped entirely). But the majority of the contents of his bile duct were sprayed in the direction of our top two clubs.
The cheating stuff referred to the fact that Chelsea and United have combined debts of a remarkable £1.5 billion. “The goal is not to win titles but to make money to pay off debts,” he said. The response to this was, as you might imagine, furious. A “source” at Chelsea - not the medal-collecting millionaire Peter Kenyon, I’m sure - stamped his little foot and said: “People in the Premier League will not just stand for being slagged off like this.”
Well, yes you will, mate, because you can’t do anything else, unless you want to break away and form a new Champions League consisting of Manchester United, Chelsea, Liverpool and Arsenal. Platini is right about this as he has been right about almost everything else that is horribly amiss with the English game. And despite those 333 million “followers” of Manchester United, you suspect that the force is with him; with Platini and indeed with Sepp Blatter, the boss of Fifa, who is no more greatly enamoured of the greed of the English Premier League. There will be plenty of people - Kenyon, Scudamore, Barwick, the Glazers - who will insist you can’t buck the market, and that both it and the laws of international finance are in some way inviolable and based on solid foundations, beyond dispute. Therefore debts of £1.5 billion are perfectly legitimate, providing they are underwritten somehow; interest payments of £100m a year are fine, so long as they can be met. But of course money is loaned according to the fashion of the day, and fashions change. What was once a sure thing suddenly becomes, overnight, more risky. The loans are then called in. Those vaunted 333 million “followers” are United’s equivalent of Northern Rock’s sub-prime mortgages, the stuff the company diversified into because it wasn’t satisfied with being a normal building society - it wanted evermore money, quickly, secured on the most slender basis. Money loaned to people who could not possibly pay their debts. It is borrowing based upon smoke and mirrors - and sooner or later, someone gets twitchy and takes the mirrors away and all you are left with is smoke. Where will those 333 million followers go then?
For Chelsea, read Gretna - except on a much more elevated plateau, obviously. Remove Roman Abramovich from Chelsea, which is not an inconceivable scenario, and you are left with a mountain of debt and fairly ordinary players earning £120,000 a week. And with the removal of Abramovich, the removal of success too - and thus the rapid evaporation of Chelsea’s new fan base, the ones who have arrived in the last 10 years attracted solely by the prospect of vicarious success, of being part of a winning team.
Platini also took a swipe at the England side. They would not be missed at Euro 2008, he said, and their failure to qualify was their own fault. Right on both counts, but he might have added that our failure to qualify was a direct consequence of the malaise he correctly identified within the top tier of the British game - too much money invested in the most tenuous of causes. Smoke and mirrors.
Glory on the never-never is recipe for disaster
Most of Chelsea's debt is owed to Abramavich, he has only loaned the club his money, not given it, and has the right to get it back when he's finished with them.
Would anyone want to buy the club for 700m pounds knowing you'll running at a massive loss (wages and transfers) each year. You can reduce that loss but then you won't win much.
Last year Chelsea lost 75m pounds, and that was with a club record turnover of 190m pounds AND with a transfer profit, ie: bought 7m, sold 15.8m. Since then, in this years accounts, they've spent 56m pounds on new players, sold 6m
They have to keep buying big to compete, if not competing the house of cards falls down ..... we are Leeds, we are Leeds, we are Leeds.
Question is will he ever get fed up with it or not, he's not attached to the club like a lifeling fan is, in however many years his debt will be 1 Billion.
tick tock
Mate has just renewed his season ticket in MH stand, they've not increased the prices from last season, strange seeing as they're currently in demand.
SJ
Would anyone want to buy the club for 700m pounds knowing you'll running at a massive loss (wages and transfers) each year. You can reduce that loss but then you won't win much.
Last year Chelsea lost 75m pounds, and that was with a club record turnover of 190m pounds AND with a transfer profit, ie: bought 7m, sold 15.8m. Since then, in this years accounts, they've spent 56m pounds on new players, sold 6m
They have to keep buying big to compete, if not competing the house of cards falls down ..... we are Leeds, we are Leeds, we are Leeds.
Question is will he ever get fed up with it or not, he's not attached to the club like a lifeling fan is, in however many years his debt will be 1 Billion.
tick tock
Mate has just renewed his season ticket in MH stand, they've not increased the prices from last season, strange seeing as they're currently in demand.
SJ
Super Joe wrote:Most of Chelsea's debt is owed to Abramavich, he has only loaned the club his money, not given it, and has the right to get it back when he's finished with them.
Would anyone want to buy the club for 700m pounds knowing you'll running at a massive loss (wages and transfers) each year. You can reduce that loss but then you won't win much.
Could they win less than last season, even after incurring all of that debt? Championship Plymouth Argyle 1 - 2 Leeds Utd 
Points 46; Position 23 RELEGATED
Points 46; Position 23 RELEGATED