The Political Economy of Football V2

The early promotion of cathedral city team Lincoln to the Championship has rightly attracted attention and praise.   For example, the latest edition of Four Four Two has a feature on the club which is well worth reading. Lincoln is a classic ‘stand alone’ club.   It is clearly the pre-eminent club in Lincolnshire (Grimsby play in Cleethorpes and former EFL club Boston play in the National League, as do Scunthorpe). Lincolnshire is probably the leading arable farming county in England with many large scale and prosperous enterprises – I gave a talk to some of the leading producers many years ago, before Sir James Dyson got involved with his innovative agricultural enterprises. For the first time in 65 years, Lincoln City will play in the second tier of English football next season — a success achieved despite starting their 2025-26 campaign with the seventh-lowest budget among the 24 clubs in League One. American investment Lincoln are one of many English clubs t...

If Tottenham Hotspur are relegated, they will be the wealthiest club to suffer this fate in the Premier League. As a supporter of a Championship club, the chance to visit the iconic Tottenham Hotspur stadium is mouth-watering.     I may be victim of a ‘too big to go down’ fallacy, but I still can’t believe that it will happen.   There is surely enough quality in the squad. Discussing the situation with Spurs fans who are friends, they have agreed with me that it has been as much a problem of structure as agency. What do I mean by that?   First, I think that Spurs have fallen foul of the modern belief that everything is down to the manager and keep changing him is the answer to any problems.    I would add that there is an agency dimension as I do not think that Spurs have chosen well. Second, the stadium is outstanding (a relative who was one of the contractors is full of praise).   It will deliver enhanced revenue streams well into the future....

Newcastle United have agreed a £6 million-a-year deal for their first-ever training ground and training-kit sleeve sponsor in a major boost to their revenues. KNOX Hydration — a South African sports drinks company, not affiliated with Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF), the club’s 85 per cent majority owners — has bought the three-year naming rights to Newcastle’s Darsley Park training ground in Benton from July 1. Despite identifying land for a state of the art   training centre in Woolsington, near Newcastle International Airport, such a substantial infrastructure project is still multiple years away, given it requires planning permission and then needs to be constructed. Naming rights for what Hopkinson insists will be a “10-out-of-10” facility would be substantially more lucrative in the future. In the meantime, Newcastle are expanding and refurbishing their current site, having already invested heavily in Darsley Park since the Saudi-financed takeover of Oc...

National League system clubs paid over £1.2m to football agents in 2025/26. The largest sums were paid by former EFL clubs with Carlisle United, relegated last year, top of the list at just under £188k.   Promotion hopefuls York City spent £169k.  Forest Green Rovers forked out £164k and Southend United £80k.  National League leaders Rochdale paid £43k. Torquay United in National League South spent £15k as did Chelmsford City.   At Step 5 Bury managed to pay out £2,000.

John Foot is a distinguished historian of modern Italy.  He has written an acclaimed standard history of Italian football.   In this week's Sunday Times he laments the state of Italian football after the country's failure to qualify for the World Cup group games. It seems to me that a flaw in his argument is a failure to take account of the success of Italian clubs in European competitions.  Italy ranks after England in terms of its Uefa coefficient. He states: 'A few weeks ago I saw a game in San Siro in Milan. The stadium still looks magnificent from the outside, especially at night. But appearances can deceive. In reality this historic stadium is falling apart, like so many others in Italy. And the experience of watching a game there is not a good one. There is excessive security outside — a series of queues, gates, fences, and three requests to show your tickets, as well as a body search and an ID check. Inside, the stairs are filthy, the stairwells are covered...

Keen Super Hoops supporter Lord Young of Acton (he did briefly consider becoming Lord Young of Lofus Road) reflects on the travails of being a QPR supporter in his column in this week's Spectator. It occurred to me that the noble lord's remarks contained some universal truths that could be applied to supporters of any team outside the Premier League, or even the big six.  Being a football supporter is as much about disappointment as it is joy. Young confesses that at the beginning of the current season he thought that QPR would get promoted. 'We've been languishing in the second tier of English football for more than ten years and I thought that we might finally escape.'  [I don't think many pundits predicted that]. As it turns out 'this season is looking a lot like the previous three.  With seven more games to play, the summit of my ambitions is to finish in the top half of the table.' He tells his sons that 'watching the Hoops bounce up and down th...