The Political Economy of Football V2

  Cartoon copyright Private Eye Instability in leadership seems the fashion today.  We have had the greatest turnover of prime ministers in the democratic era.  An article in the Financial Times this week revealed an increase in changes in the CEOs of companies, in part driven by so-called 'active investors'. But football has some of the shortest tenures of all.  Since 2011 there have been 23 managers at Watford and 18 at Forest with Sean Dyche managing both teams. Forest are the first team since the league's formation in 1888 to have four permanent managers in one season, although Leyton Orient hold the all comers' record with five in 2016/17. Has it brought Watford or Forest success?

The Tottenham Hotspur Supporters’ Trust has accused the club of selectively editing the minutes of their February meeting before publication, claiming that references to fan concerns — including “the risk of relegation” and discussion of the club’s “lack of ambition” — were left out. The trust has a memorandum of understanding with the club stating that they should meet twice a year. The latest meeting took place on February 3, eight days before the dismissal of the head coach Thomas Frank, at which four trust board members met with four club representatives, including the chief executive Vinai Venkatesham. The trust has claimed that there were “a number of specific points raised during the meeting which the club did not agree to include in the final published version”. The agreed minutes were published on Monday. In a statement accompanying the publication of the minutes on its website, the trust said: “As a democratic supporters’ organisation elected to represent fans’...

Those of us who have been enjoying the Winter Olympics sense that they have generally well organized, leaving aside problems with disintegrating medals.   Italy can do things with style and panache, reflected n its world beating success in luxury goods sectors, but its football clubs are something of a basket case.   Serie A is no longer looked to as the epitome of football style. From his Zurich lair, the Swiss Ramble takes a forensic look at the 2024/25 accounts of AS Roma.  Here are some highlights. This was Roma’s fifth season under the ownership of The Friedkin Group, who purchased the club from fellow American James Pallotta in August 2020. In this period, there has been a fair degree of change at Roma, including no fewer than six head coaches.    Despite all this upheaval, Roma have been fairly consistent in in the league, finishing between 5th and 7th in each of the last seven seasons. That’s not too bad, but it does represent a decline in pe...

James Bord, who led the consortium that won the race to buy Sheffield Wednesday, is being sued by a former friend and business partner over his investment in Córdoba, the second-tier Spanish football club. The Times has discovered that Bord is at the centre of an extraordinary legal dispute with Jonathan Cohen, the Canadian poker player, primarily over an investment that Cohen made in Córdoba, who are part-owned by Bord, who is also a director at the club. Cohen’s legal representatives, Holland & Hart LLP, lodged a complaint on his behalf with the district court in Clark County, Nevada, on Tuesday. In the documents, seen by The Times, Cohen alleges that Bord: • “Wilfully” deceived Cohen into thinking that Córdoba were debt-free when he agreed to invest in the second-division club in 2024 when they were actually “around $23million in debt”, which amounts to about £16.9million at the present exchange rate. • “Took hostage” a bitcoin account owned by Cohen, which was...

When I first became aware of football in the early 1950s Hearts appeared to be one of the top Scottish sides and I liked the idea that they were known as ‘jam tarts’. A famed fund manager and one of the UK’s best-known sports gamblers are backing a data-driven bid to break Glasgow’s hold over Scottish football and deliver the first league title for a team outside the city in four decades. Heart of Midlothian sit top of the Scottish Premiership with just a third of the season left, as they seek to achieve what no club has done since Sir Alex Ferguson’s Aberdeen side in 1985 and end the dominance of Celtic and Rangers. The fortunes of Edinburgh-based Hearts, whose last title was in 1960, have been transformed under a new approach, with fresh investment and expertise, that has also outsourced key elements of player recruitment to computer algorithms. Central to Hearts’ rejuvenation has been the arrival of Tony Bloom, a high-stakes poker player and chair of Premier League Brighton ...

The New York Times has taken a look at the financial implications of relegation from the top flight, although it hasn’t bothered to look at the bottom two clubs.   I don’t think that Spurs are really in danger and Crystal Palacewill surely finish lower mid-table. More likely than not, either West Ham or Nottingham Forest will occupy the third relegation spot. West Ham United A return to the second division would bring huge ramifications.   Broadcast revenues — money awarded from the Premier League — amounted to 57 per cent of their income last season. There was £131million ($178.5m) of TV money banked courtesy of finishing 14th in May, but parachute payments for a first year back in the Championship would be in the region of £49m, with EFL TV money then bumping that up to roughly £55m. That drop-off is, obviously, enormous and would likely ensure West Ham’s revenues were almost halved as a second-tier club again, once you allow for the inevitable reductions in com...