Now the FA have got one less thing to worry about.
Over the weekend, this landed in my inbox. Although Bolton aren’t necessarily in the same financial hole as Man U or Liverpool, one bad season and we may be. Have a read, and if you want to know more, pop over to here.
What do you do when you are fed up with the financial mess of our football clubs? We moan aboutit and talk to friends.
In our case, we are all supporters of different clubs, we decided to try to see who else felt like we do and what we could do about it.
Clearly the most effective way to do this was to use the internet, so we looked for an eye-catchingname and registered it.
Our main topic on the web site is the off-the-field performance, so we included our own set of footballing statistics, which are largely derived from accounts filed at Companies House. We also decided to put in a Forum to generate discussion. We will welcome any corrections or additions to our data; news on developments at clubs; or other topics of interest to supporters, like what impact all this could have on the national team.
Our objective is to present a petition to the Football Association asking them to do something to sort out the mess.
At the moment we are not telling them what we think should be done, but we will have our own Forum up and running by the end of the World Cup and maybe our supporters will come up with some constructive suggestions.
A lot has been said about football finances following a string of club failures, including the highprofile Receivership at Portsmouth, and UEFA`s Michel Platini has been quite vocal about what should be done. The FA has responded to some of the media outcry by saying that they will increase their assessment of the suitability of would-be investors, but is this enough?
It seems that we have to question the morality of someone coming along and buying a company (football club) at inflated prices and then saddling that company with the debt. It doesn`t only happen in football, the BAA take-over by Ferrovia was another example.
In its simplest terms it means that somebody else comes along and says I can run this better than you. “Here`s my bet, now you pay for it”. The value of the club has now been inflated and when the new owners tire of it they will want even more money off any new purchasers to cover their losses at least or make a decent profit.
Remember too that the club`s profitability is significantly reduced by all the extra costs of debt servicing and that their ability to compete in the transfer market is also effected.
We have read that these “American Owners” are doing, in the UK, what they could not do at home with their other sporting assets. Does this mean that US rules do not allow leveraged take-overs, as they are called? How do they prevent it? Can the FA learn from this?
We are happy to co-ordinate the views of fans on this aspect of the game and will present our Petition to the FA, and, if necessary, try to get the attention of the Government and other sporting bodies.