PORSTMOUTH
ABOVE: FA Cup
winners...Harry
Redknapp and Sol
Campbell lift the
FA Cup trophy
MIDDLE: Former
owner...Alexandre
Gaydamak (R) after
his arrival at Fratton
Park back in 2006
I
t almost works as a neat image
to point out that Premier League
clubs wearing red – Manchester
United and Liverpool – entered
2010 with serious debts, while those
in blue – Chelsea and Manchester City- had their loans paid off by indulgent
billionaires. That, though, leaves out the
deep blues of Portsmouth, who limp
on in a financial state more parlous
than any Premier League club since
Leeds United’s 2003 implosion.
The Premier League, led by its chief
executive, Richard Scudamore, remains
wedded to the dogma that its football
clubs are not clubs but commercial
companies with shares available for
purchase by anybody. Scudamore
presents this as a virtue, pointing to
the huge investment which some
buyers – most notably Roman
Abramovich at Chelsea and Sheikh
Mansour at City – have introduced.Only a tiny fraction of that money has
gone anywhere other than in increased
wages for players: Chelsea reportedly
breaking the £7.5 million-a-year barrier
for captainJohn Terry, City delivering
£8m per annum to Robinho.
The free marketeers neverthelessargue that the owners’ investments have
trickled down, delivering cash to clubs
that have sold players to those two, a
long chain which can be traced down the
leagues. Yet that overlooks the fact that
the excessive spending has inflated all
transfer fees, and all wages, for all players,
trickling right through the Premier League,
Football League and even into semi-
pro football. The sport is an intimately
connected pyramid in which tiny slivers
of superiority between exceptionally
talented players are rewarded in millions.
Chelsea and City posted losses of£44m and £92m respectively for
2008-09 due to spending vastly more
in players’ transfer fees and wages than
they could afford without the financial
backing of their owners.
Overspending on that dizzying scale
is possible because their owners – both
oil magnates, of dizzyingly different
backgrounds – are prepared, for
their own reasons, to pay for them.
Yet there is a direct connection
between the good times City fans are
now expecting and the cracking up
of Pompey. There, Harry Redknapp’s
FA Cup win, as recent as May 2008,
was attained with players such as Sol
Campbell, GlenJohnson, Sylvain Distin,
Niko Kranjcar, Pedro Mendes and
Lassana Diarra – all now departed.
The club could not afford them
without the financial support of owner
Alexandre Gaydamak, which he withdrew
after Wembley. Now Pompey hover
around the knacker’s yard, struggling to
pay the players who remain, while staring
at insolvency which relegation to the
Championship would surely precipitate.
Both Abramovich and Mansour have
converted their loans to their clubs into
shares – a permanent form of investment
that looks far better than providing it as
debt. Both clubs have committed not
to overspend forever, though Chelsea’s
ex-chief executive, Peter Kenyon, was
forced to revise his deadline of this yearfor Chelsea to break even, partly due
to Abramovich’s habit of firing managers
with handsome compensation packages.
City have pledged to become
“sustainable”, with Graham Wallace, their
chief financial officer, saying the 2008-09
loss represents City “in investment mode”.
Certainly, the club cannot be expected to
sign players with quite the same frenzy,
but Wallace would still not define what
they mean by “sustainable”, nor would
he put a date on it.
The Premier League’s relaxed,
free-market attitude to the random
nature of English football’s club car boot
sale means that no owner has anything
to fear as long as they can maintain the
club in whatever financial state they are
running it. But for Chelsea and City there
is an emerging threat to the owners’
subsidies – or welcome discipline,
depending on your point of view.
Michel Platini has wrestled since
hebecame UEFA president with his gut
feeling that overspending is unsustainable
and bad for football, and he has felt his
way into deciding what to do about it. Last
August, UEFA came up with “Financial Fair
Play”, approved by all its associations and
affiliated club bodies, which means that,
from 2013-14, clubs competing in UEFA
competitions will have to be at break even
and not reliant on funding from outside.
The details are being worked out at
headache-inducing sessions in office
rooms all over Europe, but the rule – in
some form – is heading for the statute
book. It is intended to mean that Chelsea
and City will not be able to compete in
the Champions League if Abramovich and
Mansour are still needed to pay wages.
Portsmouth, though, are unlikely to be
affected. They will surely be a long, long
way from European competition when
any such rule does come into force.Portsmouth did indeed enter
administration in February 2010
and, despite miraculously reaching
another FA Cup final where they were
beaten1-0 by Chelsea at Wembley,
they were relegated from the Premier
League at the end of the season. By
2013 they had sunk all the way down
to League Two, when they were taken
over by the Pompey Supporters
Trust, and achieved promotion
to League One in 2016-17.WHAT CAME NEXT...
Over the odds
PORTSMOUTH’S DEMISE IS LINKED DIRECTLY TO OVERSPENDING BY CHELSEA AND MANCHESTER CITYYet there is adirect
connection between the
good times City fansare
now expecting and the
cracking up of Pompey