- Why has it taken so long for the League to tell us the ManC case can’t be reslolved?
- A football club that is far too big to fail, but is on the very edge of collapse.
By Tony Attwood
In the end it seems it doesn’t matter how much you spend on players, and how much work you do nurturing a youth team, the referees and their pals behind the scenes can over write anything you do. And so we are left thinking “Is it a coincidence that Manchester City get the benefit?”
Haaland’s winning goal in Manchester this weekend should not have been allowed and the VAR team has admitted that. Manchester United has been screwed, and Arsenal has been screwed. Is anyone surprised? If so, such a person might like to keep up with the evolution of football in England a little more.
Haaland’s “goal” was ruled offside. VAR said Fernández was not involved so the goal stood. Then Pro Ref said: “Following the incident in the 60th minute of Sunday’s Premier League fixture between Manchester United and Manchester City at Old Trafford, we can provide clarification regarding Erling Haaland’s awarded goal…. Contact has been made with Manchester United this evening to acknowledge what we deem is an error of judgement.”
And does ManC get its points taken away? No of course not because this is ManC. The team with all the money. The team with 100+ charges against them. The club that has said that if it were found guilty of anything it would sue the Premier League out of existence.
Now we don’t make the mistake of saying that ManC is still spending the most money on transfers. They have done that, and are reaping the rewards, obviously now aided by VAR and the financing they have. In fact as the CIES Football Observatory has shown, in its analysis of teams around the globe, that ManC have not spent the most. You can see the full details on line here. (If you just want the answer, the top four are Liverpool, Manchester City, Tottenham Hots and Chelsea).
Which just shows that the spending on players year on year does not guarantee the top position in the Premier League. What a club needs is either the ideal manager who can make the team work together to get to the top or help from elsewhere. And what we might best call “help from elsewhere,” which we have mentioned once or twice before. .
In fact spending money can be a bit of a laugh. Not with the fact that Manchester City spend the most money in order to buy their way to the top, (with the help of a few referees along the way as per yesterday). But the fact that Tottenham are the club that spend the second largest amount, ahead of Liverpool and Manchester United. But maybe they forgot the referees and Tottenham. Whatever the cause they are currently 17th in the league exactly where they were last season and the season before. And really it is hard not to smile. All that money spent on players and the new ground, and they forgot the most important bit!
But it is Manchester City who get it sorted,: second biggest spend and judging by this past weekend, help when needed from other sources. Help so clear that even the Premier League officials apologised.
Arsenal of course long since realised that why spending money on players on its own does not guarantee success (in terms of sheer spending, Arsenal in ninth place) so they work on training players to understand what else the referee might get up to.
Indeed if we consider net spending (that is to say the money spent minus the money received on players) the top spenders are Tottenham, followed by Liverpool. Arsenal are 19th, below quite a few Championship sides. But remember this relates to the money spent on players minus the money received from player sales which itself indicates a club running a proper financial system.
Six English clubs occupy the top six places in terms of money spent on players. (Chelsea did actually make a profit on selling players in the last year, although that profit was nowhere near enough to compensate for the losses on buying those players in earlier seasons). The only clubs from outside England that are in the top spend-spend-spend positions are Real Madrid who have overtaken Paris Saint-Germain.
And we have to remember the dangers that brings. If you didn’t see it, it you might care to have a look at our piece on the utterly insane financial state of Barcelona. It is not just shocking what a state their finances are in, but shocking in the sense of how any owners allowed them to get there.
But back to the transfer expenditure in England: the top five for this year are Manchester City, Tottenham, Aston Villa, Chelsea and Newcastle, and across the last five-year period it was Chelsea, Manchester City, Tottenham, Liverpool and Manchester United).
The fact that Arsenal is achieving all it has achieved without being in that group and without “dealing” with referees, is a tribute to Arteta & Co. But of course what we don’t yet have is a way to overcome referee bias toward other clubs. That might take time.
