Should Premier League clubs gamble while they still can?
When Sir Alex Ferguson referred to Manchester City’s spending last week, he used the term ‘kamikaze’. As much as I don’t want to soundbite the man, I believe it’s worth noting that the spending taking place at Eastlands is not ‘kamikaze’ because they can afford to do it. If the club wasn’t bankrolled by billionaires, then spending hundreds of millions of pounds would be a problem. A club should only spend what it can afford, and City can afford to continue in the fashion that they have done for the past two years.
City need Champions League football if they want to convert this smash and grab spending into long-term investment – Europe’s elite competition has to be a part of that plan. Very few clubs in City’s position would go about their behaviour in any other way to what we have witnessed them doing, in the same way that they have followed the Abramovich template after seeing what he did at Chelsea. The other reason, and it may be a more astute one, is that the UEFA regulations that will be phased in regarding the expenditure of football clubs, will take place in April of next year.
As with anything involving footballing bureaucracy, the regulation could do with some superficial, but very shiny, Monday Night Football gadgets, simply to get your head around it. Various computer screens, and the homo-erotic affections of the Andy Gray/Richard Keys combo, would convey to you in high definition graphics, that clubs cannot go on making huge losses. After the turn of the financial year, any expenditure will be taken into account for the regulations, although the full set of rules doesn’t come to fruition for another four years. Put simply, any money spent now, or in January, doesn’t count towards the new rules.
This is not me willing all clubs to go out on sprees while they still can, because most clubs simply can’t afford that. However, City can, and should try and get as much use out of the obvious advantage that they currently have over other clubs over the next year. Any club that doesn’t suffer from economic fragility, and has a little nest-egg to play with, should really be thinking about any major purchases that they plan on making, and be doing them now or in January. After then, it will all go down in UEFA’s little black book. A team like Chelsea for example, who have the financial resources and may need one or two additions, should make their move sooner rather than later. It’s the same for Manchester United: they may have debts, but a couple more singings is not going to bankrupt such an enormous brand.
How much of City’s spree is because of the incoming regulations is debateable, the promised land of the Champions League is a far more pressing matter, but it will definitely be in the thoughts of the Eastlands boardroom and their executives. While many Premier League clubs get linked with billionaire takeovers with every turn of a newspaper page, takeovers of Man City’s scale may not be so feasible anymore, which was probably the law’s intention in the first place.
City know that once the rules are in place, it will be even more difficult for clubs to break the top-dog hierarchy that exists in the Premier League. Manchester United and Chelsea will have the biggest budgets and be able to maintain their strangle-hold on domestic matters. The best opportunity City have of trying to dent that monopoly is by investing as heavily as possible while they still can. Although with smaller budgets, clubs with the same aspirations, the Evertons and Spurs of this league, may have to consider gambling now, so they don’t get left behind when Platini’s Police put a stop to potential deals later on.
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