Only when a new owner buys out the hated Mike Ashley will the club’s fans appreciate the Saudi Arabia deal was not the one they needed to hitch themselves toPut the cans back in the fridge. Take down the Kylian Mbappé poster from your bedroom wall. Quietly delete the Saudi Arabia flag from your Twitter handle. Yes, the end is nigh for one of English football’s most unlikely summer romances. Boy meets sovereign wealth fund. Boy loses sovereign wealth fund over television piracy issues. Boy pockets £17m deposit. A tale as old as time itself.Of course, you don’t need to be a professional satirist to spot the heavy irony in Saudi Arabia’s bid for Newcastle United being thwarted by due...
The argument for financial reform is at last beyond credible dispute as historic clubs face ruin owing to the Covid-19 crisisEven before football was plunged into crisis by the Covid-19 pandemic, influential people in the game were discussing the need for the Premier League’s improbable fortunes to be shared more equally. As historic, stalwart lower-division and semi-professional clubs stare at ruin, and promised investment could drain from the grassroots, the argument is finally beyond credible dispute.However the Premier League resolves its struggle to finish this season so that it can clutch the remainder of the TV money, it will still be a huge draw for broadcast billions when normal life finally returns. The pre-pandemic position, that the big clubs keep...
As Premier League clubs seek government support to restart the focus is on the brutal gap to the Football League’s three divisionsIf one impact of the Covid‑19 catastrophe has been to hold Britain rigid and shine a merciless light on all our structures, it was inevitable that football’s struggles would culminate in a piercing look at the money. And just as there are calls for fundamental improvements to the nation’s inequities when the horror is finally over, a focus is emerging on football’s own inequalities and how sustainable they really are.The financial gap between the Premier League and the rest has widened exponentially over the 28 years since the First Division clubs broke away from sharing with the Football League’s...
United are the most extreme debt-loaded commercial model, predicated on constant growth. What happens when it crashes?What’s your favourite bit of non-football-football so far? In my opinion the best new sub-genre to emerge is pictures of José Mourinho delivering vegetables.You don’t have to go looking for them. They just turn up on your social media feed or on the click-bar beneath a news story. Handsome, crinkly José carrying a box of lettuce across the tenement threshold. José in a surgical mask distributing radishes to elderly war heroes. José off-camera giving a secret briefing against the fucking artichoke guy who isn’t pulling his weight (premium content: subscribers only). Related: Next season's cup competitions may suffer, says United's Woodward Related: Championship makes...
Focus on securing noodle and mattress partners has brought derision but it puts club in a good position to weather stormOle Gunnar Solskjær broke cover a few days ago, appearing on Sky Sports to tell his pal Gary Neville that once the pandemic is over Manchester United are hoping to be able to exploit any unexpected transfer market opportunities caused by clubs being forced into financial difficulties through lack of income during the long layoff.That was how the conversation was reported in most newspapers, anyway. The United manager did not choose the word exploit, and though Neville subsequently conceded his question might have been more diplomatically phrased, it is a little late now to be sparing the feelings of clubs...