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A theme I’ll look to develop in this blog is the financial mess that football clubs find themselves in. I think it’s pretty fair to say that many clubs don’t have a good business model.

Looking at a club purely from a business perspective, you’ll often find lots of income and customers, but expenses that result in a net loss.

If this blog had 23,849 loyal readers, I can tell you two things

1) I’d be generating some income, but still a pretty modest amount - maybe $100,000 in my wildest dreams.

2) I’d be making a profit, because there’s no way I can spend more that $100K a year on a blog.

By an uncanny coincidence, 23,849 is also the average attendance that Southampton enjoy in the 2006/07 season. What did they do with this impressive fan base?

1) Generated lots of income - £10.5 million in matchday receipts and £23.2 million from all sources.

2) Made a loss of £1 million (which was only so low because the club made £5 million in trading players).

It beggers belief that a business with thousands of loyal customers who pay, on average, £450 a season just at the ground, can end up losing money. But Southampton have managed it, and most clubs are doing something similar.

Fast-forward to the end of the 2007/08 season and things have not improved for the Saints. Today’s news included a dispatch about Southampton being prepared to take a £3 million haircut on Theo Walcott’s transfer fee just to accelerate the pace of installments. This is like taking the ‘lump sum’ option when winning the lottery rather than accepting payments over thirty years - never a sign of solid financial planning.

If there’s one thing that’s fundamentally flawed about organized football, it’s the following:

1) Teams that win competitions are rewarded with lots of money.

2) Teams are allowed to spend unlimited money on improving their playing squad.

3) The teams with the best squads win the competitions.

4) Repeat steps 1-3 until everyone is thoroughly bored.

So a few clubs get their noses out in front and never look back.

The reward structure of the Premier League is actually quite reasonable - the top club gets less than double that the bottom club earns.  The problem comes with the Champions League - the top four effectively double their Premier League earnings with a decent run in Europe, and therefore end up with four times as much as the bottom club (table).

This has the predictable result of making the top three or four clubs untouchable in their domestic competition.

They say that money is the root of all evil. Well, it’s certainly at the root of much that is wrong with the Premier League. How can they hope to run any kind of even competition, when a handful of the clubs are getting a huge leg-up from a competition that the others are not even able to enter?

Arsene Wenger’s blind spot has become legion in footballing circles. “Doing a Wenger” has become synonymous with pretending not to see something that implicates one of your players.

That’s all well and good to a degree - it’s the footballing equivalent of pleading the fifth - but there comes a point you’d have to assume that your audience are imbeciles if they’re going to buy it. And as Wenger’s audience are also the people who pour their money into the sport - and therefore his club - he’s insulting his customers. And that’s just not cool.

Wenger on Martin Taylor’s tackle on Eduardo:

“The tackle was horrendous and unforgivable.”

He did retract the statement that contained that comment, but presumably he would still stand by that part of it. “On reflection, I feel that my comments about Martin Taylor were excessive”, he later said, but nothing along the lines of “the tackle wasn’t that bad after all”.

So after Abou Diaby’s red card against Bolton (video), which to my mind was right up there with Martin Taylor’s leg-breaker, we get

“I was not upset with the sending off but I felt it was more of a protective tackle. But he was too high so I don’t complain. Just before that I thought it was a foul on him.”

You’re probably familiar with the concept of parallel universes. The theory says that there are an infinite number of them, but for the sake of time and bandwidth, there’s only two of them that I want you to try and imagine.

In another universe, Eduardo is still skipping about on the football pitch and no-one has spent any more time thinking about Martin Taylor than they did last season, which is not very much. However, Bolton’s Gretar Steinsson is in hospital with a compound fracture of his shin, thanks to Abou Diaby’s lunge. It could easily have happened.

What would Wenger have said then?

“I was not upset with the sending off but I felt it was more of a protective tackle. But he was too high so I don’t complain. Just before that I thought it was a foul on him.”

Let’s dance on to another parallel universe. This one is even more uncomfortable for Mr Wenger. In this universe, there have been two broken legs in the Premier League this season - one a piece for Eduardo and Steinsson.

What would Wenger have said then?

“I was not upset with the sending off but I felt it was more of a protective tackle. But he was too high so I don’t complain. Just before that I thought it was a foul on him.”

I don’t think Wenger’s blind spot is his inability to notice things that happen on a football pitch - his job title will tell you that cannot be true. His blind spot is that he can’t tell when he’s sounding ridiculous and treating those that pay his wages like morons.

The Caught Offside blog had a post about Premier League re-arranging the Everton v Chelsea match in three week’s time, or Chelsea Throw Toys Out of Pram, as they put it (I took a slightly more sympathetic view).

Here’s one of the comments to that post.

“As a Chelsea supporter who had got my tickets for the Everton match and had booked my flights from Ireland for myself and my son, I find it difficult to understand how Sky can just step in at the last minute and upset the plans of the loyal fans who have spent a lot of money over the years following their team. Do the FA really care about the ordinary fan? I don’t think so! It looks as if Sky calls the shots not the FA. I’d rather watch my team live than on TV but it looks as though I’ll not be able to plan for away matched in the future. Is this the way we realy want football to go? “

‘Nuff said, really.

Can anyone help me figure out why the Everton v Chelsea match was switched from a weekend to a Thursday night?

Chelsea and Everton are both complaining, on the grounds of messing with the fans and impinging on sporting integrity. For once, I’m with Chelsea all the way on this one - Everton will have had five days rest to Chelsea’s three, again thanks to television.

What I can’t figure out is why either the early or the late television slot on the Saturday was not used - according to the BBC, they’re both open right now.

You would think that the Premier League would take the time to give a well thought out explanation to the fans if they’re going to throw them off-schedule and possibly derail their team’s title ambitions.

Premier League Spokeman: “The compilation of the fixture list is a complex procedure which faces enormous pressure from international match and European competition dates, as well as the need to balance the important requirements of the police and our broadcasters. We are also required by the European Commission to televise 138 matches per season, which brings its own inevitable pressures. Under these difficult circumstances, this date was seen as the fairest that could be achieved.”

To paraphrase: “Football fans aren’t smart enough to comprehend what we do here”. Then they throw in a few factors - that don’t apply here - by way of misdirection, then blame someone else.

As an experiment with how open the Premier League is with its customers, I’ll see if I can get a straight answer from the Premier League. Stand by (but don’t hold your breath).

Update: The Premier League website now has the early and late Saturday kick-offs allocated to Arsenal v Reading and Blackburn v Man Utd.

I’m a firm believer of looking paying more attention to actions than words.  It’s a great way to determine what is important to people or organizations.

So it was telling this week when UEFA decided they could not consider New Wembley as a venue for the 2010 Champions League final.  The reason behind the decision was that the UK government could tax the players on the money they earned for playing in the final.  The event will take place in Real Madrid’s Bernabeu Stadium.

While I’m a big fan of not paying unnecessary taxes - and the Bernabeu is a fitting venue for any final - I have to ask the question:

What’s more important: Having the final you want, or saving a the players money that they’re too rich to spend anyway?

I would think that most players in the first-team of the finalists will be on contracts that guarantee them a million pounds a year for several years.  If they were to lose ten or twenty thousand pounds - in return for playing in the biggest game of the season - would they turn up their noses?  I doubt they’d even notice.

So if UEFA wants the final to be at Wembley, they should have it at Wembley.  The trade-off with additional taxes is not significant.

I have no problem with them picking the Bernabeu over Webmley per se, but not to consider Wembley is letting the tail wag the dog.

So here we are, gathered to bid farewell to Derby’s short and inglorious stint in the Premier League. It’s common knowledge to football fans that the play-off winner barely stands a chance of Premier League survival. What might not be so well-known is that a bad situation is getting worse. And this is to the benefit of the established teams in the league.

If we take the current season as a foregone conclusion - a liberty I’m not afraid to take - there have been sixteen Premier League seasons. In ten of those season, the play-off winner has been relegated at the first attempt - a 37% chance of survival.

However, if you look at the last five seasons, that rate of survival has dropped to just 20% - West Ham in 2006 being the only exception to the relegation rule.

What does that mean to the rest of the league? It’s good news - great news, actually. Instead of three relegation places to fret about, there’s now effectively two. Who wouldn’t welcome that?

Football fans.

We’ve seen how three of the top four teams are effectively pre-ordained before the season begins. Now we see that one of the three relegation spots is taken care of. The aspirations of most teams now lie somewhere between “lower-mid-table” and “upper-mid-table” - not much to get excited about, is it?

So long Derby, and thanks for all the points. You might have had a miserable, dull season but you should take a crumb of comfort in the fact that most other teams are also having a miserable, dull season (just not quite as bad as yours).

Winning promotion is one of the most exciting and wonderful things a football fan can experience. The Premier League has managed to take the gloss off the experience by ensuring that a season of misery is probably waiting for you on the other side. This was not always the case.

Whether a promoted team enjoyed an easy romp to the league title or a nail-biting fight to the finish, these days they will often find themselves hopelessly out gunned when they kick off their first Premier League season.

I’ve broken the recent past into two groups - the Premier League seasons (15 seasons) and the 18 seasons before that (which takes us back to the 74-75 season, when 3-up/3-down was introduced).

It was once an common occurrence to find all three promoted teams beating the drop. In fact, it used to happen 50% of the time. Since the Premier League was formed, it has only happened once (7%). In fact, 50% of the time a promoted team now finishes dead last. This is illustrated in the chart below.

In the years before the Premier League, there was only a 20% chance of your newly promoted teams getting relegated. In the Premier League, that number has jumped to 44%.

We saw in a recent post how the excitement at the top of the league has been eroded since the Premier League was established. Now we see another group of teams will have a fairly predictable path through the season. If you’re feeling a little less-than-passionate about football these days, I’d suggest this pre-ordination of who will finish where is a significant factor.

This won’t be the first time you’ve heard the statement that the Premier League has become terribly predictable. It might be the first time you’ll appreciate just how bad the situation has become, and how this trend will continue unless something fundamental is changed.

Before we get to the pictures I’ve promised, let’s talk about Liverpool’s domination of the 70’s and 80’s, which is often brought up to paint the picture that the current situation is just the same as it ever was.

It’s true that Liverpool did dominate that time period. The Reds only finished outside the top-2 only once in a 19-year span starting in 1972-73, winning the Championship 11 times. Wow.

But to understand how predictable that time period wasn’t, take a look at the teams that did manage to usurp Liverpool during that period of dominance:

• Leeds United
• Derby County
• Nottingham Forest
• Aston Villa
• Everton
• Arsenal

So while Liverpool were bossing the league for almost two decades, the supporters of other clubs could enjoy a realistic notion of not only finishing in the top few positions, but even finishing above the best club side in the world. That, my friend, is unpredictability, and it’s what gets the juices flowing if you’re a football fan.

Now that we’ve put “Liverpool dominated for twenty years” into some kind of perspective, let’s move on to the pictures.

I have just two charts to share with you: First I divided the last 35 years into five-year chunks and looked at how many different teams managed to finish in the top-4. Bear in mind that, by definition, the minimum is four.

For twenty years, 10 different teams (on average) finished in the top-4 in a five-year span. In other words, almost half the league could expect what today would result in Champions League qualification. Think about how exciting that must have been for fans. Five years isn’t very long to wait for a shot at the top few spots.

By contrast, in the last ten years that number has fallen from 10 to 6.

That’s clearly a big drop, but does it really call for doom-and-gloom?

The second chart will illustrate another aspect of predictability. The next chart shows the number of teams that finished in the top-4 for all five of the years in same five-year periods.

The feat of staying in the top-4 for five years in a row was only achieved on two occasions in the first twenty years of this chart. Apart from Liverpool, no other team managed a sustained period of dominance, and even Liverpool were knocked off their perch on occasions.

In the last ten years, this once-rare accomplishment has become common-place. Arsenal have been in the top-4 for the last ten years, and Manchester United for the last fifteen. We can also add Chelsea to that list in the last five years.

The most damning piece of news is this: Once a team gets this five-year lock on a Champions League spot, they don’t give it up. First Manchester United, who were joined by Arsenal, and now by Chelsea as well. We’re adding teams that dominate but never taking any away.

This is what is eroding the passion that football supporters feel for the game. It’s hard to feel passionate about finishing “somewhere above the middle but not near the top”, which is pretty much the best that the majority of fans can hope for.

If the thought of a fifth-place finish does get your heart beating, I hope this brief history lesson illustrats that this shows the lack of ambition that has been forced on most teams and most fans.

A parting thought: By the time the 2007-08 season finishes, the number of different teams enjoying a top-4 finish in the last five years will likely fall to five. That will take us just one step away from the worst-possible scenario - the same four teams in the top-4 year after year after year.

My football has gone flat.

No, I didn’t kick my Mitre through a window. No irate gardener has stuck it with his pinking shears. This is not about never being able to find that needle valve that you know you have somewhere.

I’m talking football, the sport. My football. The game I’ve loved since I was old enough to remember.

I think you know exactly what I’m talking about.

The same four teams at the top of the table. Millionaire footballers that care more about the colour of their boots than the colour of their shirt. Being treated like an imbecile by managers who think I’ll be satisfied with the usual platitudes of ref-done-us-wrong and deserved-something-from-the-game. The appearance of a Billionaire Investor becoming the single most important event in the trajectory of a football club. Being ignored by the club I’ve followed my whole life.

Maybe your football has gone flat too?

But this isn’t a blog about bitterness and misery. It’s about dreaming and optimism.

What effect could one person have in the face of multi-million pound corporations with only self-interest on their minds?

Change the sport? Unravel the mess? Unspill the milk?

What about one person with a blog? One person who starts a movement?

“Interesting. Very interesting”.