By Tony Attwood
“Barrios strikes after 53 seconds as Atlético pile misery on 10-man Manchester United” says the Guardian headline and I must admit that there was a time when that would have brought a smile to my face, but it hardly seems worth the effort now. And this not least because the generalised public support of the club that seems to spread across the whole country in in days gone by has now long gone. They are now just a team that mishandled all their riches, and yet still have an image of being so much more than they are.
If the question was asked, “who do you support” and the answer was “ManU,” then it was assumed the respondent came from Cornwall – or at a pinch Devon. But now a sense of reality seems to have emerged with both Liverpool and ManU being in the mid-to-lower reaches. And if the legal system holds its nerve this could have the most recent of those “I support…” clubs from far away will also be given the heave-ho.
| Team | P | W | D | L | F | A | GD | Pts | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Manchester City | 6 | 6 | 0 | 0 | 16 | 5 | 11 | 18 |
| 2 | Arsenal | 6 | 5 | 0 | 1 | 10 | 5 | 5 | 15 |
| 9 | Liverpool | 6 | 2 | 3 | 1 | 7 | 7 | 0 | 9 |
| 13 | Manchester United | 6 | 1 | 3 | 2 | 9 | 9 | 0 | 6 |
Last year’s dominance of the first eight game section of the Champions League (does it have a proper name, I wonder – should we call it the Champions League League?) by Arsenal was something to enjoy. The fact that Bayern only managed a 3-3 draw with Viking recently confirms that the new financial regulations rumoured in Germany are having an impact.
For it seems Germany now has phase one of a new squad cost rule, which is being introduced year by year up to full implementation by the start of 2028-29 season. This regulation is based on the Uefa regulations applicable to international club competitions and says the cost of paying the squad can’t exceed 70 percent of a club’s income.
Perhaps as a result. instead ad of being top of the German league having won each match after five games Bayern Munich are third having won three and drawn two. There might be hope for teams not called Bayern Munich.
As for Arsenal, except at Brighton, they haven’t got the early season gitters that have sometimes affected the club in the past which again is good news. Let’s hope it continues.
Meanwhile in the newspapers, the Telegraph is desperately hanging on to its old “if it’s Arsenal be negative” mantra quite possibly because they have a few ManC supporters still occupying the football desks, as with “Arsenal’s big guns blow Lille away after the second string flop” (making a rather pathetic reference to the substitutions) but they have at least changed their ManU treatment, running, “United in crisis after Martinez launches lacerating attack on board”.
But there is something rather curious in the Telegraph which says “Qatar showed Man City the way to build a football club” with the sub-heading, PSG are beating their troubled Abu Dhabi-owned rivals in football’s soft-power battle, both commercially and on the pitch.
And there is one other bit of sporting news of interest under the headline “Football regulator to recommend cost controls in landmark report with 94% of clubs making loss”
This comes from Matt Hughes in the Guardian who tells us about a report that contains recommendations to improve sustainability in football.
It comes from the Independent Football Regulator and recommends that football club have greater financial controls. Now considering that something like 80% opf the Premier League clubs actually lost money last season that seems blindingly obvious, and one wonders why it takes 250 pages or so to say it, and why (come to that) this version is just called a draft. Presumably so it can be watered down by the loss-making clubs so they don’t have to do anything.
I mean surely it is obvious that one cannot go on losing money for ever, because, well, not to put too fine a point on it, eventually the money runs out. But apparently that is still a contested issue, so what we are getting is a drafty report, then we’ll have a public consultation report, and then the report. All of which will tell us what you already know that 94% of the clubs in the top five leagues are losing money each season.
Of course, one issue that will not come out is why the regulator didn’t notice sooner that the ManCs were engaged in practices that (to put it mildly) were somewhat out of order. But I suppose they can’t look at everything at once.
All of this leads up to the “State of the Game report” next year which might say something which might be watered down and which might then involve some minor adjustments. I suspect ManC will still be fighting its appeals by then and will say the report is biased.
But ahead of all that the Premier League has offered to pay the EFL £180m a year over 10 years, up from £150m. But since inflation would seem to dictate that the figure needs to be far far far higher than that by the end of the ten years, the League’s demands of £207m a year for five years seems much more realistic and still modest.
Except of course the Football League clubs have no power – the Premier League give them the money out of the kindness of their hearts, and the possible backlash across the country if huge numbers of league clubs started to go out of business.
The EFL has also come up with the idea of a “lifeboat fund” for financially troubled football clubs, but the problem there is virtually every club is in “financial distress” as they call it, so everyone wants a share..
