Just blame Platini for Man City's £195m loss
By Martin Samuel
Last updated at 11:52 PM on 21st November 2011
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The craziest notion is that they had any alternative. There is nothing remotely lunatic in Manchester City running up a £194.9million loss for the financial year ending May 31, nothing bizarre in a wage bill totalling £22m more than turnover. To argue other options were available in the quest for elite acceptance: that is the true madness.
It was this way, or die wondering. Manchester City either bet the farm on Roberto Mancini and this squad before UEFA’s financial fair play rules kicked in or they remained outside forever.
Across football in Europe, a giant drawbridge is being pulled up. City had one last year to get the right side of it, or risk permanent exclusion. Given Sheik Mansour’s resources, any owner of ambition would have done the same.
Can you blame him? Manchester City owner Sheik Mansour
Can you blame him? Manchester City owner Sheik Mansour
While UEFA’s financial constraints remain, the same way forward will not be open to another club. City could not wait until next year and while the cost of the project may seem astronomical, the consequences of inaction were far greater.
Had financial fair play been more thoughtfully structured, City’s development could have been less frenzied. Had Michel Platini, the UEFA president, ruled against owner investment that was given as a loan, there would not have been this clamour to spend, spend, spend.
Regulation was needed, we could all see that. The model whereby an owner could bankroll a huge spending spree beyond the means of a club, lose interest in the project and then seek repayment, putting its very existence in jeopardy, had to be curtailed. The insistence that all money invested in a club had to be in the form of a gift, not a loan, would have solved that problem.
What UEFA did by going further and linking spending power to generated income was effectively outlaw new money coming into the game to upset the established order. City then had a deadline in which to join the elite or be left behind.
Moneybags: Man City have bankrolled Roberto Mancini's signing of players such as Sergio Aguero (left)
Moneybags: Man City have bankrolled Roberto Mancini's signing of players such as Sergio Aguero (left)
The £194.9m loss is the cost of that artificial imposition, nothing else. City knocked the castle wall down by firing money at it and UEFA will shore it up behind them.
The greatest cost is elsewhere. The prospect of Everton being successfully sold dwindles by the day, despite the boundless optimism of chairman Bill Kenwright. ‘I’m searching very hard for a wealthy benefactor and I’ll find one,’ he insisted this week. ‘The doomsayers can say what they like, this is a great football club.’
Indeed it is. But who would want it, now UEFA have barred the new owners from providing the money needed to propel it towards the Champions League? If close to £200m is the cost of leading the Premier League, then at least half that is needed to break the top four.
Yet any potential successor to Kenwright could not spend it, because such sums could not be supported within the football club. It would take decades, or luck on a spectacular scale, to compete at the elite level without utilising a significant cash injection.
Enlarge Star-studded: Man City's expensively assembled squad train in Italy
Star-studded: Man City's expensively assembled squad train in Italy
And new money does not want a daily grind spread over many decades. It wants fun, success and excitement; it wants to be put on the map.
Imagine buying Blackburn Rovers and growing it organically to the size of Bolton Wanderers, and then to the size of Stoke City and then maybe to the size of Aston Villa. That would take, at a conservative estimate, 10 years. And you’re still not guaranteed the Europa League, let alone the title.
Say it was possible to grow a smaller Premier League club to one the size of Everton or Aston Villa, just on good housekeeping and clever management. How would you make that giant next step? Answer: you wouldn’t. Say you produced a string of fantastic youth players. Where would that get you? Where are the products of Southampton’s youth academy? At Arsenal and Tottenham Hotspur. Wayne Rooney is now with Manchester United. So is Ashley Young. How much longer will Jack Rodwell remain at Goodison Park?
Fair play? Michel Platini's rules will have an adverse effect
Fair play? Michel Platini's rules will have an adverse effect
The elite few will snap them up, because UEFA have decreed they will have more money to spend. Always. It will no longer matter if an oil man wants to invest in your club. Unless he strikes it beneath the main stand, his hands will be tied by UEFA.
So forget the fallacy of being propelled to glory by a brilliant youth team. Can’t happen, won’t happen.
Sir Alex Ferguson, the Manchester United manager, now admits he got Phil Jones from Blackburn on the cheap. Welcome to the future, as an elite cabal arrogantly claims the best talent throughout the league, safe in the knowledge they are now the only ones that can offer any chance of success.
There will be no point Everton telling Rodwell he can realise his dreams at Goodison Park. He can’t. We all know that.
So do not hate City for their debt. They did what they had to do because it was the only course UEFA left open to them. Blame Platini: it’s his idea.
