by Tony Attwood
- A major change to the law concerning transfers will happen very soon
- What happens if ManC and the rest of the League can’t agree on anything?
On the Mathday Finance website, there is a statement in relation to 2023/24 that calls it “another record-breaking year.”
Now that phrase is one that always causes me the odd problem because some records are actually not records that you want to break while others can of themselves hide a number of problems.
And I think there is one here, for overall, Premier League clubs lost money. Not just last year but for each of the past five years. And ultimately that has to stop. Except that billionaires keep coming in and spending more and more and more… and the rest try to keep up.
Certainly the money the PL clubs earn has gone up year after year after year. As the BBC put it “The Premier League has been spectacularly successful since it started in 1992. Since that time consumer prices have increased by about 112% but Premier League revenues have increased by 2,800%.”
That of course is amazing – except the clubs are still making losses, and those losses just keep piling up. The matches, broadcasting and sponsorship deals all keep generating more cash, but as fast as that happens the clubs keep spending more and more and there is no sign that profits will return so that clubs can start paying off their debts which grow with each passing season.
Of course, Arsenal have improved dramatically from the days of Unai Emery, and as you obviously know, the club has come second three years running. But still, all we read about is the need for Arsenal to spend more. And then more. Another £50m? No problem!
In fact, in 2022/23 only three Premier League clubs made a profit according to their own accounts. Bournemouth, Manchester City and Brighton and Hove Albion. I remain unconvinced that all of Manchester City’s sponsorship income is valid in the sense of not coming from owner-related sources, but that’s just me – their accounts show they made a profit, and I’m not on the board of enquiry, so we’ll accept that until told otherwise.
Arsenal were exactly halfway down the profitability league for the last set of accounts making a loss of £52m. The most loss-making clubs were Manchester United, Aston Villa, Tottenham Hots and Chelsea.
Chelsea however have since turned themselves around through the very clever ploy of selling their women’s team for an astronomical amount to a club that the owners of Chelsea also own. Why the rest of the league allowed this, I am not sure, although it is quite likely because a fair number of them fancy playing the same trick when the time comes.
Meanwhile the league talks about its “aggregate operating profit” going up and up, and yet (and I know this sounds weird) most of them continue to lose money.
And although it is true that the last round of accounts show an improvement, overall the clubs in the League lost £100m in one season!!! And that is when the clubs are doing really well. And people celebrate because it is a lot less than the £700,000,000 loss the year before.
Of course, if that trajectory continues, eventually the clubs might become profitable, but there is no guarantee on that.
However, at the moment football clubs are the multi-billionaires flavour of the month, and it is not surprising that stories circulate to the effect that Tottenham Hots have been put up for sale. And yes someone may want to buy the club that just came 17th in the league because they are now guaranteed four home games in the Champions League next season.
Oh yes and there is the report that “Spurs have consistently outperformed sides who spent far more.” That comes from an analysis of Premier League spending from 2010-20, by Stefan Szymanski, the co-author of Soccernomics, which shows that Tottenham paid £2.02 million per point earned in the Premier League.”
Man U, Man C and Chelsea each spent over £2bn in the last set of accounts and we are pointedly told that Arsenal spent almost twice as much per point on salaries as Tottenham. So the Totts really are the winners.
Except that although there is an analysis that says that Arsenal spent £3.44 million per Premier League point last season, (which is almost twice as much as Tottenham), the fact is that the higher up the league you get, the more each point costs, because you need ever better players. So that projection is a bit misleading, especially as even with their super new stadium, Tottenham earn less each season than Arsenal. True they are now back in the Champions League they’ll earn more. But then again, having come rather low in the Premier League and not having played in the Champs League last season they’ll need to start buying some players who are used to the CL…
And let’s not forget that Arsenal ended up within a gnats whisker of double the number of points of Tottenham last season, so here too, to avoid the embarrassment of another 17th place finish, Tottenham need some new players, which means spending a lot of money on transfers and salaries.
Arsenal obviously have paid for their stadium, and did it without sinking to 17th. The anti-Wenger cry during that era was, “Fourth is not a trophy” and Tottenham have indeed won a trophy. But to keep winning the club needs to spend more… and their solution seems to be to find another billionaire willing to spend, without any guarantee that he will get his money back. Of course the owners get to entertain their guests in the club restaurant, and that’s a bonus, although there is also a problem – the club is actually in Tottenham High Road not overlooking the Thames, as Fulham’s restaurant does.
The Telegraph pronounced that “No club exploits the geographical advantages that London provides as well as Spurs”, but I’d say Fulham doesn’t do too badly – and they earned 16 more points than Tottenham last season.
Of course part of Tottenham’s problem is that the original cost of their ground was planned at £305 million. It actually cost four times as much and that still needs to be paid for.
So Tottenham will go on putting on more concerts and advertising the excitement of being in Tottenham High Road, but maybe others like me will note that they have just had seven seasons outside the top three.
Of course, Arsenal had a run like that from 2017 to 2023, but for Tottenham the run of not winning anything went on 16 years (at last I think it was 16, I may have miscounted – anyway it was quite a few). And 16 years without winning even a diddly cup is quite a lot really. Arsenal have had a similar run – but that was way back in the 1950s and 1960s and they ended it by winning the League and Cup double in 1971. And I guess that for all the grandeur of the new Tottenham stadium, that’s the sort of thing people who buy mega-expensive seats and meals are actually looking for. An association not just with one victory, but ongoing success.
And they may be able to deliver that. It will be interesting to see.
