Ars�ne Wenger is in danger of being swept aside in the spate of cash unleashed by Chelsea and Manchester City
Arsenal have been swallowed up by the long shadow of that 8-2 defeat at Old Trafford. In addition to the immediate agony, the result raised questions as to whether the club can maintain its membership of the Premier League elite. The fees are exorbitant and Arsenal have come no higher than third since they were runners-up in 2005. Property development around the Emirates should be a boon eventually, but a sluggish economy causes delays.
Manchester United have no such worries and means could even be found for a splurge if necessary. The sport is usually dominated by the wealthy. If United's commercial operations are formidable, Chelsea and Manchester City, the expected challengers, are funded by indulgent proprietors. The public's mind is often taken off financial anxieties by the extravagance that still persists in football.
Only a curmudgeon could complain when City have David Silva and Sergio Ag�ero in the lineup as well as Edin Dzeko, scorer of four goals in the 5-1 rout at White Hart Lane. It was just last season that Tottenham Hotspur were in the Champions League, where they got to the quarter-finals before going out to Real Madrid.
Fans might look back on that campaign with disbelief. Access to the tournament appears, after all, as if it will be even more restricted in future. Money has often been critical to success in football but the materialism is unusually pronounced among most of England's elite at the present. The Glazers, proprietors of United, are exceptions of a sort since there is no requirement to subsidise the club from their own funds.
Elsewhere, owners bear regular losses. Since the start of 2011, Roman Abramovich, right, has approved outlay at Chelsea of well over �100m, in total, for Fernando Torres, David Luiz, Juan Mata and Romelu Lukaku, with the desire to sign Luka Modric still intense. The Stamford Bridge club, however, cannot face quite so many charges of gross materialism when indignation has to be kept in store for City.
While a club such as Liverpool have made great efforts to improve their squad, the arrival of Luis Su�rez, Andy Carroll and others has been financed to a notable extent by the Torres sale. Cash is generated more easily by those who are already wealthy.
Sir Alex Ferguson's impact at Old Trafford has intensified the allure the club has held for generations. The craving of businesses to be associated with United verged on self-parody when DHL chose to sponsor the training kit for �10m a year.
Liverpool, aiming to achieve a better financial footing, have long contemplated a new stadium to be built in Stanley Park but such a project is taxing even to contemplate. Indeed the club has been pondering the scheme and striving to advance it since 2001.
Elsewhere these matters can barely be a consideration. While City may not own the ground at which they play, the naming rights to what is now the Etihad Stadium still brought them �400m, over a 10-year period, from the airline. City, of course, are owned by Sheikh Mansour, a member of the Abu Dhabi royal family.
There are dilemmas in all this. Efforts by individuals to spend their way to domination of football are nothing new and there is often comic effect when projects go badly wrong. No one in the public at large minds a fiasco of that sort, but money can obtain success, especially when it is spent with the sort of finesse that made Jack Walker's Blackburn Rovers champions of England in 1995.
There was a romance to that, all the more so since the club were not to repeat the achievement. The present-day situation is rather different, with owners aiming to put their club in a permanent elite dependent on means that others will never enjoy.
Manchester United cannot be put in that category and would most likely by overjoyed if financial fair play regulations encumbered their challengers. As it is, the spate of cash unleashed by City and Chelsea in particular sweeps the game along excitingly, despite the misgivings among the authorities.
Michel Platini, the president of Uefa, presses on with his financial fair play initiative and many clubs would be grateful if they were saved from their extravagant selves and forced to be prudent. A dilemma lies at the heart of all this. The spectacle of astonishing footballers holds us in thrall to such an extent that we avoid thinking of the way in which wealth warps the sport as a whole.
Ultimately, however, there would be an increased diversity and a greater element of surprise if clubs were denied "financial doping" and made to play clean. The perspective of an oligarch is one the rest of us can barely imagine but perhaps even they might come to value the element of surprise that is critical to sport.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/2011/aug/29/arsenal-money-premier-league
Michael Vernace Ivan Vishnevskiy Lubomir Visnovsky Marc-Edouard Vlasic
No comments:
Post a Comment