The Political Economy of Football V2

The financial dominance of the Premier League was underscored by the latest Global Transfer Report from Fifa, as the latest window to sign new players slams shut on Monday. English clubs spent $3.82bn in the international transfer market last year, more than the $3.43bn total for the next three leading spenders (Germany, Italy and France) combined. The figure for English teams, up from $1.88bn in 2024, accounted for about 30 per cent of the record $13.08bn spent on international transfer fees across the men’s game in 2025. Spending on international transfers also hit a record high last year in women’s football. The two biggest cross-border deals both involved Premier League holders Liverpool, who brought in midfielder Florian Wirtz from Bayer Leverkusen and Eintracht Frankfurt forward Hugo Ekitike. The report does not include domestic deals, such as the British-record £125mn the Anfield club spent on striker Alexander Isak, signed from Premier League side Newcastle United. That...

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer presented his  Chinese counterpart President Xi Jinping with a Premier League match ball flown 5,000 miles from London. Tthe UK Prime Minister arrived in Beijing armed with one of the yellow Puma match balls used in Sunday’s Premier League fixture between Arsenal and Manchester United, a game he had attended at the Emirates Stadium.    It wassigned by a number of United pl;ayers. It was reportedly presented to Xi ahead of a formal summit and lunch in the Great Hall of the People, with China’s president widely known to be a Manchester United supporter.  Xi’s affection for Manchester United may have been reasonably well known, but more surprising was the revelation   that he told Starmer he also has a fondness for Arsenal, Manchester City and Crystal Palace. Xi’s last trip to Manchester saw him given a tour of the Etihad Campus by City’s chairman Khaldoon Al Mubarak, who has subsequently become a special envoy to China on...

The board of the Shrimps Trust at Morecambe have written to the club’s owners, Panjab Warriors, and the club’s chairman Kuljit Singh Momi, expressing their concern at the direction of the Lancashire club. The open letter details a number of concerns relating to both on-pitch and off-pitch matters, with the trust claiming that promises made have not seen results delivered or communication with fans. The new ownership group took over at the start of the season following a long campaign by fans to oust previous owner Jason Whittingham, who presided over their relegation from the EFL. Supporters hoped that after this period of turmoil which saw club wages going unpaid, a gutting of the club’s playing staff, and their early fixtures in the National League suspended, that new ownership would steady the ship. Now the club find themselves in the relegation places of the National League. The trust, however, are concerned that promised recruitment, strengthened board governance and a l...

January has been a difficult month for Tottenham Hotspur, to put it mildly. The Premier League results have been disastrous, with Spurs taking just three points from five games, none against top sides. The defining sound has been booing.   That negativity has corroded Frank’s standing at Spurs over time. What no one knows today is the impact of Wednesday’s triumph on Sunday’s mood. If the last few weeks have taught us anything, it is that the club’s boardroom executives control the head coach’s future, and they have been consistently supportive of Frank since his appointment in June. The hierarchy will soon face more pressure from fans than they have at any point since Daniel Levy’s dismissal in September. That was the Year Zero moment, the sudden rupture when the Lewis family took back control of the club. The old way of doing things, built around Levy, was out. In came a new modern corporate structure. At the heart of it was CEO Vinai Venkatesham, who had arrived ...

The Athletic has been looking at the hardest clubs in England to support.   Bristol Rovers were selected due to their 2025, which featured relegation as well as a record 10 consecutive defeats. The club have never been in the top flight in their 143 years, and the last time they were in the second tier was 1993. They have never won a major trophy or reached a semi-final.  It was the first home game of 2026, a new start and all that. An old face, Steve Evans, is the new Rovers manager, appointed shortly before Christmas. Rovers’ anthem, Leadbelly’s Goodnight Irene, gets an airing and there was some familiarity in the scoreline, too: Bristol Rovers 0-1 Colchester United. It was Rovers’ 13th home league game this season: they have won three, scoring eight goals. Eight. In the second half of last season, there had also been 13 home matches. Rovers won five of those. Nicknamed ‘The Gas’ and the ‘Pirates’, it meant in 2025 ‘Gasheads’ made 25 trips to the stadium, saw eigh...

I am sceptical about the fashion in football for constantly changing the manager.    The New York Times has run a feature on managerial turnover in the Championship.    T heir view is that more changes are on the way.   However, the evidence of a new managerial bounce seems to be mixed to say the least. Of the 24 managers to start the season in charge of a Championship club, only 15 remain. The relentless and ruthless nature of England’s second tier suggests there will probably be further casualties before the end of the season, too. Over a third of the total sackings (25) across the four divisions in England have been in the Championship, with Leicester City, West Bromwich Albion, Oxford United, Southampton, Swansea City, Norwich City, Watford, and Sheffield United all pulling the plug after experiencing struggles. Of the eight clubs to move a manager on, seven make up the bottom 11 positions in the Championship, with Watford, who have a managerial recrui...