Tom Lappin: Premier League also-rans most at risk as the credit crunch bites world of football

Published on Friday 19 September 2008 22:37

FOOTBALL fans have a tendency to distill all world news into its relevance to their chosen sport. Hence the global financial meltdown is worth a little attention if only to see how it will affect the spending power of those profligate English Premier League clubs.

Some are worse affected than others, and occasionally the ramifications are more political than financial. The US Treasury's bail-out of AIG and the troubled US financial giant's sponsorship of Manchester United effectively means that the US working schmuck making polyvinylchloride in the factory (we're all Warren Zevon fans here) is seeing his tax dollar contributing to Cristiano Ronaldo's hair gel budget. United fans might also be embarrassed to realise that thanks to the Glazers' extensive credit facilities in the US, it's not unreasonable to regard United as one of those sub-prime mortgages that caused the crisis in the first place. The critics were right all along. Every bad thing in the world is the fault of Manchester United.

United's brand loyalty is sufficient to ride out this storm, even if the Glazers are sorely tempted to cash in on Ronaldo, especially as footballers are a liquid asset with an unfortunate tendency to evaporate into the ether. Smaller clubs are far more vulnerable to sudden financial lurches.

Shirt sponsors do seem to be particularly volatile. This is perhaps more symbolic than significant, as sponsorship deals are a relative drop in the ocean compared to TV revenues. Randy Lerner, already on the verge of being known in the West Midlands as The Good American is a subtle enough businessman to know that the PR and goodwill generated by devoting Aston Villa's shirt fronts to a local charity is worth much more than the relative chump change of a sponsorship deal that would barely fill John Carew's wage packet.

Still, it does provide unexpected comedy when a sponsor founders. West Ham United had to hastily cover over the logo of XL airlines on their shirts last weekend after the airline left thousands disappointed with their inability to get off the ground (insert own gag here about the appropriateness of the company sponsoring West Ham).

Their opponents this afternoon, Newcastle United, sport the logo of the nationalised Northern Rock, effectively meaning that the British working schmuck, cold-selling in a call-centre, is paying his tax pounds towards Michael Owen's extensive phone bill as he pleads with every Premier League manager to end his St James's misery.

These two clubs are representative of the new malaise in English football, where the fortunes acquired by mere businessmen like Mike Ashley and Bjorgolfur Gudmundsson are simply not enough to allow them to compete with the spectacular resources of the Abu Dhabi royal family, Roman Abramovich or the extended credit facilities of the American owners of Liverpool and Manchester United (Arsenal have just added their own American billionaire, Stan Kroenke, to their board). In one sense the English Premier League is reflecting the wider world. Last week the Lehmann Brothers bank was vainly hoping the South Korean government would bail it out. These days to compete credibly at the top of the Premier League, you need to be bankrolled by a nation, or its fiscal equivalent.

For all his hundreds of millions, Mike Ashley is tragically unable to buy himself a shred of human dignity. While most wealthy Brits go shopping in Dubai, Ashley was in the Emirates this week attempting to sell his club. A wiser man might not have delivered an impassioned whinge a few days earlier bemoaning the club's woeful finances and implying that the fans were a bunch of vindictive ingrates. As a sales brochure it was hardly the most alluring pitch.

After startling promises from Gudmundsson a couple of years ago, and the astonishing, if short-lived, recruitment of Carlos Tevez and Javier Mascherano, West Ham's bubbles have faded and expired once more. Resources have been sorely affected by the credit crunch, while West Ham's budget has been squandered on overpaid past-it luminaries like Kieron Dyer, Freddie Ljungberg, Luis Boa Morte and Craig Bellamy, players whose enormous wages have been supplemented by extensive medical bills. The appointment of the unproven Gianfranco Zola looks like a measure designed to rebrand West Ham in the image of the old club, an entertaining but unassuming bunch who deliver purist football but rarely punch above their weight. Zola will be allowed to spend, reportedly, but his first job might be to cut out the dead wood and maybe having everybody in the treatment room humanely put down. The danger is that Zola, a great player, will turn out to have the managerial talents of a Franck Sauzee.

At least West Ham have a manager. Newcastle's performance against Hull last week showed the lack of any guiding hand on the rudder. The harassed caretaker Chris Hughton spoke this week about the relief of getting away from the rancour of St James's, a comment that spoke volumes. Ashley's bitter admission that he is trying to sell the club places him in a weak position when it comes to appointing a manager. The only sucker who seems willing to sip at this poisoned chalice is one David O'Leary.

He seems an eminently suitable candidate. Nobody else has such first-hand experience of working at a northern club with unwarranted pretensions, a vociferous fan base, chaotic finances and a resoundingly unpopular businessman leading it to oblivion. He's never been the most likeable of managers, but O'Leary would deserve all our sympathy if he takes this job. Or at least a chorus of Fools Rush In.