Women’s clubs being put up for sale; Arsenal’s team tonight v Real Mad.

 

 

 

By Tony Attwood

• Arsenal v Real Mad. Media conspiracies, AFC players return,
• Uefa Mafia: supporters win the fight to chant what they like
• Arsenal v Real Madrid. A TV problem, a possibly faltering Real Mad… maybe this is the moment.

In an article in Sports Pro, it is said that, “According to The Times, multiple Premier League sides with WSL teams are exploring the idea of selling their women’s team to increase their profit and avoid penalties.” This situation has evolved through the financial regulations of the league being very sloppily written, and then clubs spending too much on their men’s teams while more and more fans are turning up at the women’s matches (making the women’s league a viable proposition financially).

This is not what the League had in mind when it brought in the latest round of regulations on financing, and it shows that there is a staggering inability in the League Management team to imagine what the ultra-rich will do to get their own way, no matter what regulations are brought in to penalise them or restrict their options.   The League seems to have invested in some lawyers, but what they need, and what neither they nor the media have, are people with that ability to say, “If we do this, what will they do in reply?”

And this is bonkers.   It is exactly the sort of thinking that goes on every day in virtually all successful companies that are not operating a monopoly.  In its simplest version that means asking, “If we cut prices, what will they do and what will the overall effect be?”   This sort of thinking is beyond most journalists, which is why they are journalists and not in business, but it does need to be part of the analysis.

But eventually, the media does catch up and so now, according to The Times, multiple Premier League sides with WSL teams are exploring the idea of selling them off and ludicrously counting the wholesale price as profit, to avoid FFP rules.   Which to me seems to be an absolute tragedy, and reduces women’s football to nothing more than a bit of commercial opportunism.   But then, hang on, this is football, so I guess we should have expected that.

Yet that ability to contemplate the opposition’s response before you’ve made your move is surely one of the prerequisites of football – as indeed it is in all business.   I certainly know that when I was chair of a plc we would not only discuss what we would do next, but also “if we do x what will our rivals do?”  In football, it is not just a case of having a team with a player who can wallop the ball hard toward the net.  It is also a case of imagining what the opposition might do in response.

So in business, we ask, “if we cut prices, what will they do?”  If we offer a giveaway what will they do?  And in all such cases this is followed by, “Will their response affect us and if so what do we do next?”

Maybe football clubs don’t think ahead.  Or maybe journalists can’t deal with such a concept and instead want to focus on the next crisis.  Thus for months on end journalists have got away with writing up the same “forward line crisis” tableaux but now we have  Gabriel Magalhães ruled out for the rest of the season with a hamstring injury so it’s a back line crisis with Calafiori and Tomiyasu also out.  White came off early in the last game, but that may have been a precaution ready for this one – Sports Mole have no mention of him being injured.   

Meanwhile, quite a few newspaper websites pick up on the fact that Real Madrid have beaten 111 clubs in club international competitions more than anyone else.  And they mention that even though as we have already noted, that excludes Arsenal. They could celebrate that achievement – but no, they don’t. 

The Standard gives us a team of

 

 

 

 

Raya;

Timber, Saliba, Kiwior, Lewis-Skelly;

Odegaard, Partey, Rice;

Saka, Merino, Martinelli

Give me sport go for much the same but emphasize the more forward role that they think Odegaard could take up.

 David Raya
Timber, Saliba, Kiwior, Lewis-Skelly
Partey, Rice
Saka, Odegaard, Martinelli
Merino

We should not forget that this is only the second season in the last seven years that Arsenal have been in this competition.  Last season we got to the quarter-finals, but in the previous seven seasons in the Champions League Arsenal went out in the Roud of 16.  Before then, 2008/9, Arsenal made it to the semi-finals made up of three Premier League teams Manchester United, Arsenal and Chelsea, along with Barcelona who got through the semi-final on the away goals rule, and who went on to win the final.   That defeat to Chelsea was Arsenal’s first defeat at the Emirates Stadium.

Arsenal’s team in the last game of that competition was (and my format may be wrong but this is what my notes say – if you can remember exactly how we lined up then please do correct me – although really it is just a point of historic detail).

Almunia
Gibbs             Song           Sagna
Djourou        Toure 
  Nasri              Fabregas           Walcott
Adebayor     VanPersie