The Premier League’s two giant problems: bullying of youngsters and making huge losses

 

 

• How not to run a football club. How Tottenham and Arsenal have coped with failure.
• Who owns the Premier League and why are they minded not to make any changes?

By Tony Attwood

It might seem, amidst all the excitement of the forthcoming World Cup finals and the current round of World Cup games, that everything is wonderful in the world of football.   And yet there are problems – indeed, two profound problems.

The two gigantic problem areas are ones that we have mentioned many times before: sustainability and bullying.   Two very different issues, but nonetheless two issues that are constantly there – but rarely mentioned by mainstream commentators, and so often forgotten.

One is the financial sustainability of clubs, the other is the bullying of young players within clubs.   And although these are two utterly different issues, they have one thing linking them together: for not only will the football authorities not deal with them, but much of the time, the authorities seem to be denying the problems even exist.  

Let’s take the bullying of young players first, and yes, I know I have mentioned it over and over again.   Young players are desperate to be available to play, desperate to make a good impression.  Yet in the end, there comes a moment where they have an injury, which means even they, in their desperation to play, know that they should not be playing.  Indeed, they may well have their own doctor or even a club doctor saying, “You must not play” until that pain stops or that injury heals.

But coaches of the younger teams, ever desperate to win matches and look good within the club, will continue to pick such players, telling them to “man up” and if they can’t play through the pain, tell them there is no place for them in the club.

Sadly, as a result, there often isn’t a place for the player in the club, since such playing simply makes the injury worse, until, in the worst-case scenarios, the youngster can never play at a top level of his age again.

At which point the club chucks the kid out, knowing that there are a dozen more talented young footballers available where he came from.

This behaviour is not bad coaching, and is worse than bullying: it is abuse.  And yet no authority within football will take note of it.  The FA say it is not their problem.  Individual clubs of course, deny it because that would be an admission of guilt.   The League doesn’t want to know.   No one will take up the issue each saying, “this is not an issue for us.”   And let me stress, they are not saying “there is not enough evidence,” they are saying “we don’t investigate allegations of bullying and the maltreatment of young players within football clubs.”

And I have mentioned this time and again, and yet there is still no progress.  Many clubs (not all, I stress, but many) seem just to kick out youngsters that are injured, and take no responsibility for the young players recovery.

And this lack of interest extends to the Leagues, the FA and other Associations, and the media. No one will even talk about this subject.

As for the other issue – the sustainability of football, I think that problem was shown in the recent chart that we published courtesy of Swiss Ramble, who deliver regular financial updates and clubs.   With their ok I have previously published their table on the profitability of clubs, which showed that only five of the 20 PL clubs made a profit in the last couple of years, and one of those (Chelsea) only managed to do it by selling part of their football empire to another company already owned by the same directors!  I think that is called “creative accounting”.  To their shame, the League accepted this ploy as a way of getting rid of an apparent loss.

To give a comparison, it would be like “Untold Arsenal” (which I own) losing £100m, so I sell it to “Untold Dylan” (which I also own) for £110m, and they say to everyone, “look, Untold Arsenal made a profit”.   That goes beyond creative accounting.

The problem is that all but five clubs in the last financial year reported losing money.   But they can simply move money from one business empire to another to cover these losses, and the league will accept this.

 The total profits of the five profitable clubs was £211m, but more than half of that profit came from Chelsea moving unimaginable sums into the club from another enterprise owned by the same people.   The total loss made by the remaining 15 teams was £697,000,000.

And that is just in one year.  It goes on like that year after year.

So how does football sustain itself?   Basically, by the multi-millionaires pumping in more money.  But in the end, even these people begin to think that this is a bit silly – losing, for example, £127,000,000 as Tottenham did in the last season for which finances were reported.

But they remain secure in the knowledge that if they don’t want to run the club any more, another billionaire or two will take the club over and run the club.

Yet we might ask two questions: one is “why?” and the other is “can this go on forever?”   The answer seems to me to be no, because ultimately we will run out of people arrogant and stupid enough to believe that while almost everyone else fails, they can make a football club profitable.  These people have made their billions and seem to assume that where everyone else fails, they will be able to run the club at a profit and take it to the top of the league.

Arsenal was run at a profit for many years under the previous owners.   The current owners have invested heavily in the club, and so we are top of the league, and in the last set of accounts, Arsenal were on the edge of breaking even.  The next set of accounts should have the club making a profit.  So yes it is possible, but not every club seems able to do it.

As I noted, Tottenham lost £127m last year.  I am not sure they will make a profit this year.