Premier League club finances – it really can’t go on like this

I imagine that a lot of very rich people have the idea that running a Premier League club is fun (what with hobnobbing with the rich and famous and being worshipped by the fans for doing such a great job) and easy (after all, the owners are billionaires and football is just another business, so how tough can it be to make a profit?)

And as for the fact that in the last round of accounts, only four out of the 20 teams in the PL actually did make a profit, that is the sort of thing that fantasies ignore.   Those 16 that made a loss are probably run by turnips who don’t understand the game. 

 There is, of course, the thought that Arsenal are indeed edging closer to a profit (although expanding the ground by another 10,000 is going to cost a few bob*) and there is something rather delightful about the curve of results which saw us rise from 8th to 1st across the years while also reducing the losses along the way.

In fact, it is rather interesting that just four teams turned a post-tax profit last season owing to the incredibly high cost of bankrolling a competitive outfit. Adding further headaches are the medieval rules that Europe is famed for when it comes to a) football and b) accounting.

Besides these rules are rules in name only.  I mean, look at Chelsea – it does what it wants and doesn’t break the rules even when it has mega losses so huge the newspapers can’t find space to put all the zeros in.  But then suddenly one season they don’t and everyone celebrates, and I am not quite sure why, but there you are.

And then if we ask about this season and next season, when 85% of income can be spent on players and agents, and the point is whispered, “but who is to say what the income is if we sell a player to another club we own, and they loan him back….”  And suddenly the whole point of the Chelsea scheme becomes slightly clearer, although there are still one or two details….

But of course sometimes clubs can get it a bit wrong like Newcastle did, and it can get messy, but then they suddenly found some extra retail operations, and their income went up by almost half again, and there’s a profit without even being in Europe!  OK, the ground was sold, but they can always go and buy another when the worry about profit and loss dies down.