Never said he was penniless. He never parted with any of his own cash. Clever guy. Used bank loans, just like most owners with the possible exception of Prince Bin thingy at Man Citeh.. Turned £1 into £140m...As the late great Paul Daniels..might have said: That's magic.
Milan and Inter own their training grounds, Milan famously invested more than any other club at that point on the ultra sophisticated Milan Lab to try and prevent injuries. Id be surprised if the other Italian teams didn't own their own training facilities.
Lambo rushes in trying to be clever and misses the whole point yet again. Read through the previous posts and replies.
In the tweet he listed multiple elements that as a collective make, in his eyes, the buying of a club nonsensical. I've named an element that doesn't apply to the clubs you referenced, which therefore means they don't meet the 'no sense' criteria. If he hadn't have mentioned training grounds, you'd have a point. But he did.
The bloke was almost certainly talking about Reading, where the assets of the business side of the club have been separated out, the car parks and hotel are not owned by the club and there's currently a planning application to build 140 homes at their training ground site. As a consequence, the club has no assets, no Premier League income and costs that exceed the value of its players. This is not the case at the other clubs you've mentioned.
Plus further development around the stadium is planned. Reading has the same problem as Portsmouth had, when the whole area was owned by a former owner. Football clubs attract property developers, It is the same with us, Bartlett and then Assem Alllam, both looking at property developmemt to make money, rather than football. Clubs like Southampton turn football into a business, the property developmemt opportunies around the Stadium are limited and they do not own their training ground. So they look to make a profit from football related enterprises. The Dia"s will struggle to make money out of Reading, it has already been milked dry.
It's baffling how so many clubs end up in the position of former owners keeping the ground or owing the former owner money. How can that be allowed to happen? For what it's worth, I don't think Allam wanted to make money from buying City. I think at the time he really wanted to be the saviour, make the club profitable and build all that stuff he talked about.
I was listing other clubs that don't meet all of the criteria mentioned and adding a few to the ones already mentioned which didn't. Of course a lot of those clubs like PSG and some Italian clubs which don't own their own grounds are like Man City, owned by mega rich people who are unconcerned about these things.
I think he saw an opportunity to make money and be hailed as a saviour all at the same time. Unfortunately his ideas were postulated on the council handing over KC to him and doomed to failure from the outset.
I disagree, Assam Allam was a member of a consortium of local businessmen who were going to buy the club. The members of which, when it came to money on the table dropped out. Leaving Assam Allam with the choice of buy now and keep us from administration or wait until the club entered administration. Once the club was in administration, he would have to stand in line with all of the others again and this is what he wanted to avoid. This all forced his hand. Yes he wanted to be the clubs saviour and make money, but if that was his original train of thought, why did he start with a consortium? I think that element came after the others dropped out.
What was the reason why Allam bought City when he did, i.e. before they went into administration? Surely it would have been far cheaper to get them later, so do we know what the reasoning behind his early purchase was. (I certainly don't go along with the "I was doing it for the people of Hull" routine). Was there others ready to pounce as that is when most business men make their move, and as much as we think Allam is an incompetent fool, i don't think he has made his money by moving too early to tie things up. Toms version does sound very plausible but as you say could well be a twisted later version.
I think it probably was the 'for the people of Hull' version. He's been a **** since not long after then, but we know he doesn't mind being extremely generous if it's on his terms and he gets the credit and respect he demands. The ridiculousness only came when (in his opinion) he didn't get that respect.
You'd have to be a right nutter to think you could make money buying City in that state. I know it's Allam, but even so.
