- Moving on to our next game: How have LOSC been doing?
- When it comes to explaining football maybe there just is no time to think
By Tony Attwood
In the four years from 2019/20 and 2023/23 Arsenal lost €319m, very close t ot the Real Madrid loss of €310m. The loss for Arsenal came from a constant investment in new players as Arsenal sought to overcome the production line of Manchester City who seems to be able to buy everyone and anyone they wanted, no matter what the cost.
Yet amazingly while Arsenal lost around a third of a billion euros, during this period Manchester City made a profit of €5m!!! Tottenham struggling to catch Arsenal made a loss of €349m, and Chelsea feeling the freedom that comes from multiple big money investors lost €470m.
Interestingly, PSG, the eternal champions of France, who can buy anyone they wish given their financing, made a loss of €833m. At the other extreme, Barcelona, busy building themselves a new super stadium to rival Real Mad, lost €888m.
And this is the sort of thing that happens when a club like ManC is allowed to roam free. Other clubs try to keep up by buying players, but just can’t quite get there.
As a result, and indeed as you can see, losses were commonplace. Manchester City in fact was the only club in the Premier League to make a profit – and I suspect that we are likely to find out just how they did that from the financial revelations that will come shortly, following their breach of the regulations something like 115 times in recent years. But of course, like everyone else, I can only wait and see.
Yet even so, such numbers can be informative. For example PSG seem to have slipped down the French league from their normal position of beating everyone and winning the league with several months to spare. Indeed, the free-flowing attacks from last season have been replaced by long passages of stale possession – as the league defeats by Marseille and Monaco illustrated. Suddenly there are not top any more.
Those results could be explained by the injury crisis which meant Dembele, Desire Doue, Nuno Mendes and Achraf Hakimi were all at times unavailable. But the Cup defeat to Paris earlier this month, though, seemed to suggest something is not quite right for PSG, and they haven’t been able to rectify it with the usual solution of money.
In fact PSG have looked almost normal, using talented players to fill in here and there, and not always with success. Players noted to be “off the pace” are still played whereas in the past they’d be dropped and the “go out and buy some players” approach has been used. But now that approach does not seem to have been utilised, at least not so much.
There is even talk of “too many games” and the players being fatigued, though that was dismissed, and now as we are currently reading in the English media statements such as “Cheats prosper: Man City’s hollow victory renders Premier League a farce,” there is a bit of finger pointing going on in France where PSG are said by some to have been getting away with the “ManC trick.”
PSG in fact have won the French league seven times in the last eight seasons which is similar to Bayern in Germany. Even trying to bet on both PSG and Bayern winning their titles, only gets derisory odds.
Of course PSG and Bayern they might win the league yet again – and be joined by ManC winning the Premier League year after year from here on. But there is just a doubt that something is not going right for any of these clubs, as leagues across Europe realise that having the same team win all the time, doesn’t attract crowds anywhere, apart from at the eternal winners’ grounds.
In short, the disgrace facing Manchester City in England at the moment could well be influencing attitudes in other countries as everyone starts to think, “Why have we let this one club get away with all this for so long?”
In the late 1970s and through the 1980s Liverpool were the dominant team and from 1975/6 through to 1989/90. They won the league ten times in 15 seasons and came second four times and third once.
Between 2011/12 and 2023/24 Manchester City won the league seven times in those 13 seasons, came second twice and third once.
In the opening 11 years of the Premier League Manchester United won the league eight times in those11 seasons.
So the argument could be made the we are now being too critical of Manchester City as they haven’t even got up to the level of Manchester United’s wins, and maybe that is right. But maybe it is the other way round – nobody dared challenged the then managerial leadership of Manchester United or Liverpool when they kept on winning over and over again. And perhaps they should have done.
Indeed I remember the debate about why a London team such as Arsenal could not reach the level of these northern clubs. Was it just a coincidence that these long runs of titles came only to clubs in Manchester and Liverpool? The answer mostly given was that London life made all our players too soft whereas living in the north made players more gritty and more determined. That always seemed an odd sort of excuse to me, and I did wonder if there might not be something else going on. Maybe in the past people who monitor such things didn’t pay enough attention to how those northern clubs were winning so many games.
Of course I have no evidence. But I think maybe, at long last, we are gong to start finding out.
