Boring Boring Premiership: Part 2 – Greed Is Good

“The point is ladies and gentlemen that greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of it’s forms – greed for life, for money, knowledge – has marked the upward surge of mankind and greed – you mark my words – will not only save Teldar Paper but that other malfunctioning corporation called the USA. Thank you.”

– Gordon Gecko – Wall Street.

You may well ask what a 1980′s Oliver Stone movie about the dark side of American corporate greed has to do with the English Premiership during the 1990′s but I don’t think there can be too many football fans who lived during that decade who couldn’t imagine their very own chairman, be it Sir Alan Sugar at Tottenham Hotspur, Martin Edwards at Manchester United or even cuddly Ken Bates at Chelsea trotting out that same speech at any number of AGMs and inserting their club name for the bit about Teldar Paper. The financial problems faced by clubs as the 1980′s drew to a close and the increased burden of funding ground redevelopments following the Taylor Report meant the top clubs were terrified of falling further behind their main European rivals, a situation exacerbated by the ban on English clubs from European competition after the Heysel disaster in 1985. As such the tops clubs proposed and formed a breakaway top division, the F.A. Premier League, in 1992 and wrestled control of their commercial independence from the F.A. and Football League.

Sky TV

Rupert Murdoch

With the ability to negotiate their own broadcast and sponsorship agreements the newly created Premier League found a new willing and able bed partner in Rupert Murdoch’s burgeoning satellite TV company, British Sky Broadcasting, the recently formed amalgam of Murdoch’s Sky company and it’s erstwhile competitor British Satellite Broadcasting. With a virtual monopoly over satellite broadcasting in the UK, Murdoch and Sky bought the TV rights to Premiership games for an initial ?191 million over five years, a figure which had risen to ?670 million by the time it was renewed for an additional four seasons beginning in 1997/98 and again for a massive ?1.024 billion which runs over the course of three seasons from August 2004. With such a massive influx of cash the clubs were able to modernise their stadia and begin to attract some of the top players in Europe to come and play for them including Dennis Bergkamp, Jurgen Klinsmann and Gianfranco Zola.

Jurgen Klinsmann

While the TV money in the top flight helped to give the big clubs a much needed infusion of ready money, the lower leagues suffered. Trying to piggy back on the back of the good times of their richer cousins, many clubs overspent as player wage inflation spiralled as did transfer fees and many clubs believing the gold rush would never end spent accordingly. The collapse of ITV Digital who had bid a bumper ?315 million for TV rights to the Football League, and on who’s income the lower league clubs had budgeted for their survival, left a massive hole in many clubs finances and the very real possibility of league clubs going to the wall. The number of clubs, many former Premiership (as it was re-branded), who found themselves with no option but to bring in the administrators was a telling sign that while greed may be good for the top clubs, there will always be casualties further down the food chain.

Richest Clubs In The World

With the Sky TV money rolling in and the same company’s relentless advertising campaign pushing the game and it’s top clubs and players to previously unheard of heights there began to appear a gap between the haves, the really haves and the have nots. While Manchester United under Alex Ferguson built an empire of Premiership, FA Cup and, eventually in 1999, Champion’s League winners and brought in enough income to make them the world’s richest club (earning ?251m in 2003/04), other clubs spent big in an effort to emulate their success only to see that success at Old Trafford bred more success and more money to help fund rebuilding efforts culminating with the ?30 million capture of Rio Ferdinand from Leeds United and more recently the ?30 million investment in Everton’s boy wonder, Wayne Rooney. Putting so much stress on qualifying for the Champion’s League as a way to pay for the spiralling spending on players was a disaster waiting to happen and it almost destroyed perhaps the most high profile financial casualty, Leeds United. Manager David O’Leary, ably funded by chairman Peter Ridsdale, got the Yorkshire club in over their heads to the tune of almost ?100 million in the red and only a very public fire sale of their top players leading to an eventual relegation helped them keep their financial heads above water.

A gap had developed then between the regular Champion’s League clubs like Manchester United and Arsenal, who divided the Premiership between themselves bar for Blackburn’s one glorious season bought for them by local fan and sugar daddy Jack Walker, and the rest of the Premiership creating virtual leagues within the league as clubs like Spurs, Aston Villa and Everton floated between almost qualifying for the UEFA Cup and near relegation in successive seasons for almost a decade. Even former greats like Liverpool found that spending money hand over fist was no guarantee of being able to challenge for the league title, a fact they are still finding out today.

What Did Roman Ever Do For Us?

Roman Abramovich

Just when the bubble seemed to be bursting with Leeds demise and other clubs like Leicester going into administration a lone Russian came strolling over the West London plains and set the whole money merry go round off again. Roman Abramovich, the young Russian oil billionaire, rescued Chelsea from their own mountainous debts as the vultures circled in the summer of 2003 and began the biggest episode of transfer sepnding in the history of English football. To date he has alledgedly funded both Claudio Ranieri and his latest managerial incumbent, the self styled Chosen One, Jose Mourinho, to the tune of greater than ?300 million in a little over two years and by all accounts his chequebook isn’t about to stop any time soon.

Evidently it has all paid off for him as Chelsea lifted their first English League title in fifty years in the 2004/2005 season but the damage to the entertainment value of the game is plain for all to see. How can any club compete with another who have no impetus to tie their turnover to their outgoings whatsoever despite what their directors tell the press. We now have a monopoly that could stretch for year in the Premiership or at least as long as Mr. Abramovich keeps his interest in football and doesn’t turn it to Formula One or donkey racing or whatever he desires. When there is no competition there can be no entertainment value as other clubs playing Chelsea will view the best result they can get to be a draw and with Mourinho’s dour safety first tactics as well it doesn’t add up well for fans in the stand who are being charged top dollar for the privelige or for the armchair supporters forking out always increasing subscription fees to Mr. Murdoch who if we remember helped kick the whole money influx off in the first place.

The Future

Short of a wage cap, a limit on the number of non-homegrown players or some way of tying turnover to wages I really can’t see any way out of Chelsea’s domination of the domestic game. Pundits can say other clubs have to raise the bar as well to match Chelsea but it’s an impossible task as when they do Mr. Mourinho can go out in the next transfer window with a blank cheque and after his friend Peter kenyon has had a word in any player’s ear the job is almost as good as done. Even Manchester United and Arsenal can’t compete with these tactics so what chance a Premiership winner coming from nowhere like Derby County and Nottingham Forest during the 1970′s or Aston Villa in the early 1980′s. Sadly those days seem like a distant memory.

“Greed is good” he said, I know there are many football fans who would disagree somewhat with that sentiment.