The Political Economy of Football V2

The dismissal of ‘Linkedin Liam’ solves one problem at Chelsea, but one has to ask why he was appointed in the first place.  Most Chelsea fans would acknowledge there are far deeper problems under the current ownership. Do the owners really understand what is involved, particularly emotionally, in running a top football club?    As was remarked on Radio 5 this morning, it’s hardly the same as turning round a ball bearings company in Wisconsin.    Nevertheless, the owners clearly think they will eventually be able to cash in on their investment. So let’s step back and see what the Swiss Ramble has to make of their 2024/25 accounts from his Zurich fastness. Chelsea’s strategy has been far more reliant on player sales than any other major English club, so they have generated an impressive £859m from this activity in the last decade. In this period, they made more than £100m on four occasions. They made £273m in the three seasons since BlueCo got involved, w...

The departure of Baroness Karen Brady from West Ham has seen other departures following, with Nathan Thompson, the executive director, stepping down with immediate effect. Financial director Andy Mollett will retire at the end of the season. Tara Warren, Brady’s trusted No 2, resigned from her role as executive director in December. In light of Brady’s exit, sources with knowledge of the situation say Sullivan has no plans to step down and remains fully committed. The 77-year-old, who owns 38.8 per cent of the club, and Kretinsky who owns 27 per cent (via 1890s Holdings), are in the process of purchasing shares from Vanessa Gold — the daughter of the late David Gold. She inherited 25.1 per cent after his passing in January 2023. The deal is expected to be completed in a month’s time, which would bring Sullivan and Kretinsky to just over 40 per cent each. The pair also have a joint-option to purchase more of Gold’s shares. “This must now be a turning point — not a rebrand,” said...

Chelsea’s defeat at Brighton last night places their European hopes in even greater jeopardy.   Fans have been eager to criticise the coach, but there are deeper problems. Next month marks the fourth anniversary of the arrival of an ownership group who need Chelsea to be worth a lot of money if they are to make a success of the most brazen deployment of private equity strategy football has ever seen. Four seasons of new ownership have seen almost £2 billion ($2.7bn) spent on new signings as BlueCo undertake the most aggressive player-trading strategy in football. Financial regulations have been skirted at home and breached abroad. A second club, Strasbourg, have been added to the group. Players and coaches have been ferried between the two clubs at pace. The over £4 billion committed to the project has been added to with borrowings that don’t show on Chelsea’s books, accruing interest at significant rates. The fate of the club’s home ground, an impediment to higher earni...

Baroness Karen Brady has stepped down as the vice-chair of West Ham United.  the timing is hardly ideal, coming at such a vital stage in the season. Brady put her announcement back 24 hours to avoid disrupting Monday night’s match against Crystal Palace, although it is hard to imagine any game will feel less than crucial from here given the relegation fight. Media speculation suggests that there may be a new role for her with the Premier League, FA or elsewhere in football, although many fans would not welcome her. Brady, 57, has been in the role for 16 years and is credited with leading the negotiations to secure West Ham’s move from Upton Park to the 62,500-seat London Stadium in 2016.  She has also become a major Premier League power broker, and her departure from the club marks the end of a business relationship with the joint-chair, David Sullivan, that dates back almost 40 years. She persuaded Sullivan to buy Birmingham City and it was a groundbreaking mo...

If the dark cloud of Wolverhampton Wanderers’ horrific season has one grim silver lining, it is that they have had plenty of opportunity to prepare for the worst. In fact, for the past few months, the powers that be at Molineux have been planning for the inevitable. It should be noted, however, that the highly competitive Championship is different from the top flight and adjusting after seven years away will be a challenge. Now, with relegation finally certain, interim chairman Nathan Shi and the rest of the Wolves hierarchy have the chance to prove that the rare luxury of time has not been wasted. Their challenges are many and varied, but the key aims include: Managing a huge summer of squad changes, with sales needed to help bridge the income drop created by relegation Taking advantage of risky January sales by ensuring the bulk of Edwards’ new squad is in place for the majority of pre-season Winning around angry fans and persuading back former ...

Protests have been fairly rare at Chelsea, and demonstrations against the current ownership — particularly one held before a home game against Brentford in January — have seemingly struggled to settle on a single message. But on Saturday evening it was clear, held up on a huge white banner at the front of the march by Chelsea fans and supporters of sister club Strasbourg: ‘BlueCo Out’. “We’re very disillusioned with the direction that the club is going at the moment,” said David Cook from NotAProjectCFC, the organisers of Saturday evening’s protest. “The best way to unify (the fanbase), really, I think at this point, is to push the message of BlueCo out. I don’t have any faith in them at this point, and I think we’re left with no other option.” Protesters’ complaints on Saturday varied. Some sported signs highlighting heavy spending, and multiple fans were unhappy with player recruitment. The ownership’s focus on youth is coming under increasing scrutiny, with suggestions recently ...

The Swiss Ramble reviews West Bromwich Albion’s finances as they face the threat of a points deduction that could seem them relegated.   It remains unclear whether there will be a points deduction or if it will be applied this season given the complications that could then arise for the competition as a whole.  If they do go down, this would be only the second time in their history that West Brom had been in England’s third tier. The club has spent many seasons in the Premier League with their most recent relegation taking place in 2020/21. Since then, they have finished between 5th and 10th in the Championship, getting close to promotion in 2023/24, when they reached the play-offs.   This underlines the extent of the decline this season, so the threat of a points deduction could not have come at a worse time. Ownership change It wasn’t meant to be this way after the club was acquired in February 2024 by Bilkul Football WBA, a company ultimately owned by Florid...

At Newport County  majority owner Huw Jenkins has made no secret of his desire to find a partner or a way out. The former Swansea City chairman bought the Welsh club two years ago, but has already loaned Newport £3m without seeing any improvement on the pitch. Newport are not the easiest sell, as they do not own their stadium or training ground, and they are currently one point and one place above the drop zone with three to play. But that does not appear to have put off Nicholas Beddis, a former soldier from nearby Pontypool, who went on to build a successful career in real estate in Dubai before more recently setting up AGS Capital Global, a financial advisory business aimed at professional athletes. There is, however, another chapter in his story: a stretch in prison for an assault that took place at a Halloween party in 2012 when he was 19. Neither Beddis nor Jenkins wanted to comment on the status of their talks, but  The Athletic  understands that Beddis knows...

Former FA chief executive Mark Palios and his wife, Nicola, have been trying to sell Tranmere Rovers for more than two years. They initially thought they had a buyer in the shape of an eclectic group led by Donald Trump’s former lawyer and pop star Rihanna’s partner A$AP Rocky, only for that to fall through last year. More recently, they have been in advanced talks with an American investment firm called Ascent Capital Partners. That deal has stalled due to a combination of the EFL wanting more information on Ascent’s investors and Ascent worrying about the club’s slide towards the National League. Ascent and Palio are still talking, but the latter is looking for alternative options, too, one of whom is understood to be Morley Sports Management, the London-based firm that owns Scottish League One side Hamilton Academical and Welsh semi-pro side Haverfordwest County. The challenge for Tranmere is always the accessibility of two Premier League clubs across the Mersey. T...

It is the prospect of Spurs, one of English football’s so-called Big Six clubs, exiting the league that is capturing media attention as the Premier League season approaches its end. “There’s not much hope. There is anger, just disbelief really that we’re in this situation,” Flav Bateman, host of The Fighting Cock, a Spurs fan podcast told the Financial Times . “I think a lot of Spurs fans feel the same. We’re not even talking about it anymore.” The club’s place in the Big Six has not chimed with performances on the pitch. Spurs have not won the league since 1961, while their last FA Cup trophy was 35 years ago.   Fans complain that the emphasis on the business side has led to years of under-investment in players. Spurs have spent about £1.3bn on transfer fees for players in the past decade, the sixth highest in English football and similar to Liverpool and Arsenal, according to estimates from Transfermarkt. However, Spurs spent just 43 per cent of revenue on player wages...

The Financial Times gives its verdict on the challenges facing Spurs: 'The next three days will be crucial for Tottenham Hotspur, one of English football’s “Big Six” clubs. Having won only once in the past eight games, the London team are in the drop zone, and the expectations among bookmakers and data wonks have now shifted: Spurs are increasingly expected to be relegated. Demotion would be calamitous and unprecedented for such a wealthy club. Some roots of the current crisis run shallow. A newly appointed manager failed to improve results after last year’s dismal league finish, the worst in decades. New players, bought at considerable cost, did not deliver what was hoped for on the pitch. And injuries to key squad members piled up. In an increasingly competitive league, such things can snowball quickly. Without the experienced hand of Daniel Levy — Spurs executive chair for almost 25 years until his ousting in September — perhaps the club reacted to those problems too slo...

Premier League clubs made a combined loss of almost £800 mn last season, highlighting the challenges facing investors who have spent billions of pounds buying teams in the world’s most popular football league. Annual accounts from the 20 teams in England’s top flight covering the 2024-25 season show that 14 clubs reported pre-tax losses, despite revenues rising to more than £6.8 bn across the league from £6.3 bn a year earlier.   Chelsea, controlled by US private equity firm Clearlake Capital, reported a loss of £262 mn, a record for an English club. Tottenham Hotspur and West Ham, both currently fighting to avoid relegation, made losses of £120.7 mn and £104 mn respectively. English football has attracted billions of pounds of investment, much of it from the US, including from wealthy individuals, hedge funds, private equity firms and sovereign wealth funds. However, M&A activity has cooled recently, in part owing to concerns about the ability to generate financial returns...

Football finance guru Kieran Maguire has told a Livepool fan site that the financial implications could be huge if the club fails to qualify for the Champions League next season:  https://www.rousingthekop.com/2026/04/16/how-hard-liverpools-finances-could-be-hit-by-missing-out-on-champions-league-football/ A difficult question for Liverpool's owners is whether the slot machine is no longer paying out.

Lincoln University's student paper looks at the financial challenges that will face Lincoln City in the Championship next season with a playing budget likely to be as small as that of Charlton this season:  https://thelinc.co.uk/2026/04/lincoln-city-finances-championship/

Having brushed aside Liverpool’s creaking defence and a slot machine no longer paying out, Paris Saint-Germain faces an exciting Champions League semi-final test against Bayern Munich.   The success of PSG comes against the backcloth of a Ligue 1 which is the most troubled of the top five European leagues.   Once one leaves behind a small number of clubs, the standard falls away rapidly. From his Zurich fastness, the Swiss Ramble casts his usual forensic eye over the club’s finances, much more detail and depth available on his Substack page.  He makes some interesting comparisons with other leading European clubs which are of interest given the relative failure of Premier League clubs. Paris Saint-Germain’s 2024/25 accounts covered a season that the club not unreasonably described as “the most successful in our history”, as they won (deep breath) the UEFA Champions League, the UEFA Super Cup, a 13th Ligue 1 title, a 16th Coupe de France and 13th Trophée des ...

Football finance guru Kieran Maguire is sceptical about the basis for the financial charges brought against West Bromwich Albion.   There is no conspiracy to deceive and it may just be that someone made a mistake in adding up the figures:  https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/articles/cx2rr73g0pgo John Pelling has substantial experience in this area and was brought in by the Beggies to help with PSR issues:  https://www.expressandstar.com/sport/football/west-bromwich-albion/west-brom-john-pelling-psr-6573887

It has been confirmed that John Terry is part of a consortium engaged in detailed discussions to buy Colcbester United for a reported £14m.   His nephew, Frank Terry, is a defender in the first team squad there. Robbie Cowling took over the club in 2006 but has been looking to sell since last year.  In June the US-based Lightwell Sports Group failed in a bid.   More recently, Aspire Media Group showed serious interest, but did not proceed with an acquisition. Cowling told BBC Radio Essex that he could grow the club incrementally, but the fans weren't interested in that.   'They want a moon shot and all I can provide is a slightly bigger ladder each year.'   Now in League Two, the U's were in the Championship when Cowling arrived. Terry is working at Chelsea's Academy, but has never found a managerial role. Colchester and the surrounding area are prosperous with many commuters into London (one of my children once ran the early morning bookstal...

West Bromwich Albion are facing a possible points deduction after being charged with an alleged breach of the EFL’s Profit and Sustainability  (P&S) regulations.  The charge relates to the three years ending with the 2024-25 season, with Championship clubs allowed to lose £41.5million ($56m) over that period. According to the club accounts posted on Companies’ House, West Brom lost £7.6m in 2022-23, £37.6m in 23-24, and £18.8m in 24-25, amounting to a pre-tax loss of £64m. P&S allows exclusions from this total for “healthy” expenses, such as long-term infrastructure or community projects, which can be added back from the loss calculation.   This includes the Category One academy, which costs the club several million pounds per season in operating costs. Accounting for these exclusions, the breach is thought to be marginal. Under the EFL’s regulations, sporting penalties from the previous term must be applied in the following term, suggesting any potential po...

It’s a long way from Zurich to Newcastle but the Swiss Ramble provides his usual forensic analysis of the club’s 2024/25 accounts.  More depth and detail is available on his Substack page, but here are some highlights. This was Newcastle’s third full set of accounts under the ownership of the consortium led by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) after Mike Ashley’s long reign came to an end. In the period since that acquisition in October 2021, there has been much progress both on and off the pitch, as the club has benefited from significant investment from the new owners. Newcastle reported a £35m pre-tax profit, compared to an £11m loss the previous year, though this owed a great deal to a £133m gain on exceptional asset sales to other group companies, primarily their famous St James’ Park stadium. If these were excluded, the club would have posted a substantial £98m loss. Revenue rose £15m (5%) from £320m to a club record £335m, though this was more than offset b...

With a record crowd at the CBS Stadum yesterday Coventry City fail to gain an anticipated three points against bottom club Sheffield Wednesday, but it is just a matter of time before promotion to the Premier League is confirmed. I remember watching the 1987 cup final victory with my eldest who now lives just down the road from the Sky Blues training ground at Ryton.    She celebrates her 60 th this year and my grandson is 20 this month. The fact that 1987 still figures so prominently in club folklore speaks volumes about the troubles Coventry have been through, especially since a 34-year stay in the top flight ended in relegation from the Premier League in 2001. Low points of the despised ownership by the hedge fund group Sisu included being forced to groundshare with Northampton in 2014, and Birmingham City from 2019-21, as the club teetered on the brink of oblivion. Relegation to the fourth tier in 2016-17 was the nadir. However, Mark Robins started the recovery, le...

Liverpool fans are planning a raft of actions against the club’s owners amid “overwhelming opposition” to planned ticket price rises. Last month the club announced general admission tickets would rise in line with inflation for the next three seasons, despite consultation with the club’s supporters’ board, who petitioned for a freeze.  Inflation is now likely to increase because of the conflict in the Middle East. Now Liverpool fans, led by Spirit of Shankly, are to stage a series of protests against these ticket price rises which they say have been made in the face of “overwhelming opposition” from supporters – starting at Saturday’s game at Anfield against Fulham. Spirit of Shankly said: “This decision sits with ownership. Not just at Anfield. Not just at Chapel Street. In Boston. They have made the call. They can reverse it.” Anfield's flag group, Spion Kop 1906, said they will be withdrawing their displays from the ground for the remainder of the season after next Wednesd...

Leeds United are the only club in the United Kingdom’s third biggest and arguably most vibrant metropolitan area, enjoying a strong fan base, so it should be in the top flight.  I hope they stay up. Below is a summary of the salient points from the Swiss Ramble’s analysis of their latest accounts.    Much more depth and analysis can be found on his Substack page (free trial often available). Despite the success on the pitch, Leeds United still posted a large loss of £49m in 2024/25, though this was an improvement on the previous season’s £61m deficit. Revenue rose £9m (7%) from £128m to £137m, while operating expenses were only up £1m from £204m to £205m and net interest payable dropped by two-thirds from £18m to £6m. However, profit on player sales was £9m lower, falling from £34m to £25m. Revenue growth The main driver of the revenue growth was commercial, which shot up £15m (34%) from £43m to £58m, an incredible figure for the Championship, while gate receipts ...

Birmingham City are very positive about their financial results for 2024/25 despite making an operating loss of £39 million which they somehow fail to mention:  https://www.bcfc.com/pages/en/media-article/birmingham-city-football-club-posts-strong-financial-statement-for-24-25 The club is undoubtedly making real long-term progress under its new ownership, although performance on the pitch has been a little underwhelming. The operating loss represents a significant increase of approximately 115%, as compared to the loss of approximately £16.1m for the corresponding period last year. This compares to Wrexham’s operating loss of £14.84m over the same period but is far less than Leeds United’s £49.1m when they were a Championship club last season. Cardiff City, who were also in the second tier in 2024/25, lost £35.1m over the same period. Much of Blues’ situation can be explained by wages of £38.9m, which are up 9 per cent on the previous year from £35.8m. What cannot be ignored,...

Football finance guru Kieran Maguire says that the £10m loss at Blackburn is not that bad (particularly when you compare it with other Championship clubs not receiving parachute payments:  https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/articles/c1d9013y4zdo Maguire says that owning a football club is a bit like being the bank of mum and dad.  I know what me means, except in my case it's the bank of step-grandad, grandad and great-grandad!

Disreputable satirical magazine Private Eye is rather disobliging about the West Ham board and in particular Baroness Brady in its latest issue.   As well as her West Ham role, she is a mentor on The Apprentice and has a column in the Currant Bun. Baroness Brady was paid £1.47m by West Ham in 2024/25, up by £35,000 from the preceding year. West Ham lost £104m in that year and is currently battling relegation from the Premier League. In all fairness it should be pointed out that the directors of top flight clubs are rarely recompensed on a payment by results basis.  Just think Tottenham Hotspur where as the club goes down, directors' fees go up. In addition Brady has been involved in football since the age of 23 when she was appointed managing director of Birminghan City by David Sullivan.   Indeed, she married a player at the club. The 77-year old Sullivan is now the largest shareholder at West Ham.    Private Eye claims that 'he has assembled a board ...

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....