If anyone is watching tonight's Dispatches Channel 4 programme, you will see there are people talking about how to buy and sell clubs. At one point they talk about buying Watford, and they don't CARE about these football clubs - they are just pawns in a money making exercise. And people wonder why I am suspicious about Baz!
The trouble is some fans want somebody to come and spend millions to show "ambition" so clubs get anyone in without doing real checks on their standards and practises..but it proves your better off being a well run club on a budget than risking the future of it.
I just noticed it and i will watch it on 4+1. We know why you are suspicious and we all understand that. In fact is now i am wondering where the heck he has got the money from, but i wont look a gift horse in the mouth when we need money so badly. If it turns out he has fleeced us and 'done a portsmouth' then i will agree he was wrong and accept it. But untill then i am liking what he says and does, so i am happy. A lot of the things you hear on these shows are made out to be common practice, whereas in reality they are very rare. Also dont forget, there were others interested in buying Watford, even a conviced fraudster, but they were stopped by the background checks and fit and proper tests. These tests are there to do just what they did and the people involved kicked them out the door.
Although these Thai fellows are a bit shady, they did say they would never buy a club purely to sell the groud, re-develop it and let the club go bust. They want to make a profit by selling the club on, which surely means that you need to improve the value of the club for footballing reasons. The two main issues raised so far seem to be (1) people may be able to get around laws about owning more than one club, which damaged the integrity of the competition (2) the FA and the League can have no idea who owns any privately owned clubs, so its impossible to stop dodgy characters buying clubs.
One of the main things the programme highlighted was the deliberately opaque ownership arrangements of English football clubs. This deliberate "fog" was used to hide and obscure clear breaches of rules concerning : Ownership of multiple clubs. Circumvention of "fit and proper" rule tests. It is clear that for any investor to make substantial returns on investments (upwards of 20% per annum was mentioned), that in fact someone has to pay for this profit. I believe the chief losers in this "game" are the UK tax authorities and the supporters of these teams. The programme also highlighted that only : 5 of the 20 Premier League clubs were domestically owned - the other 15 were owned by "mysterious consortia" based outside of UK tax jurisdiction. 7 of the 24 Championship clubs were domestically owned - the other 17 were owned by "mysterious consortia" based outside of UK tax jurisdiction. Southampton were one of the 17, although their owner is still listed as Markus Liebherr, who died on 10 Aug 10! I believe Watford are actually one of the 7, but I wouldn't stake much on this. Somehow my faith in Baz is unchanged - my distrust of him continues.
To be fair of busineses of their turnovers epl clubs probaly contribute more to the taxpayer than any other business with equivilent turnover- if we compared profit they would be so far ahead they'd be man utd playing against conference teams At the end of the day if foreigners want to pump hundreds of millions in to clubs who use it to pay extravagent wages- 50% of wich goes straight away in tax plus ni contributions on top- well thats fine by me!
I didn't see the prgramme but someone at work has come in and talked about it. He has said Watford were mentioned, but as a club that they missed out on! I am glad they missed out on us. As much as some people still distrust Bas, I believe he is doing it the right way. He is concentrating on the infrastructure while still making money available to build a (we hope) competitive squad. He isn't buying big-name players, on huge contracts (which has almost destroyed us twice before)... he is spending the money where it is most needed. Obviously it is a wait-and-see if he comes through on all his promises, and obviously there is the worry on where this money has come from - but at least we are not trying to buy our way up the league (Leicester, cough cough) and we won't become another Portsmouth. We seem to be doing it the right way, trying to make us a sustainable club and hopefully that will bear fruit if the financial fair play does come into the Football League
If I were a Cardiff supporter I would be sweating just a little bit. This seemed to be a guide to how Cardiff have been run so even if their "evil little plan" succeeds it appears the owners (alive or dead apparently) will ditch them as soon as possible.
Indeed it was a very interesting programme and I was very surprised to see that Watford did come up as a club that the company wanted to invest in. Owners like the ones aforementioned in the programme, who wish to invest large amounts of money into a club, built it up and then sell it on a profit, is most certainly a double edged sword. I look at Milan Mandaric who has done this sort of thing a long time before Asians like the ones seen in the programme became involved in similar practices. He does not come in for as much criticism as these mysterious owners, despite the fact that their approach to football clubs is one and the same. He invested in Portsmouth and Leicester (and currently Sheffield Wednesday), and sells them on. Portsmouth and Leicester show that this tactic can go one of two ways, either you sell them to someone like Gaydamak at Portsmouth (we know whats happened there since), or you sell them to someone who really invests in the club like at leicester. The thing is that Mandaric does not really care who sells the club to, as long as they give him a fat profit. Thus, this kind of thing can have huge short-term gains for clubs (promotion, infrastructure improvement), but it can rapidly fall into the wrong hands and all can unravel. There is also this idea of a bubble that will surely burst. This practice of buying lower league clubs, or teams lower down in the Premier League, building them and selling them on can only occur for so long before they run out of buyers who can purchase these built-up clubs. If an investment vehicle buys a club to build it up and no one is around to buy it, or they simply can't break into the Premier League, what then? At Watford, we've tried the idea of investing to get promotion, and both times it has nearly crippled us as we've failed to gain promotion, costs have spiralled and the owners wanted to pull out. Therefore, I am more than happy to have a club that is run like a tight ship, limiting wages, and promoting the brilliant work of our academy. However, does that mean we will simply be overtaken by all the big spending clubs, I mean how are we going to compete with the Leicester's of the division?
Leicester have spent haven't they? Others too - Brighton coming up & then the teams coming down don't seem to have cut their budgets - probably due to the 4 year parachute payments. Yet still I believe we will compete. Only 3 teams can succeed each season so I see many failures and we will continue to build whilst those failures will be riddled with debt - recent history shows Leeds, Charlton, Southampton and both Sheffield clubs of those examples and it's easy to see the likes of Cardiff, Coventry, Middlesborough following them. There doesn't seem to be any team that stands out for relegation yet almost everyone away from the Vic is voting for us. They are wrong.....again! As for the programme, I was glad Watford were missed and it does seem (despite reservations) that Baz is doing things the right way. He certainly isn't investing to sell on (like the consortia in the programme) is he? I'm hoping that in 10 years we can look back and be thankful that Baz arrived when he did..........(oh god I'm going to regret saying that aren't I?)
The problem is what will happen first. As long as we remain in the Championship I think we're one of the better off clubs in the division simply based on reducing our debt and the quality of our academy. The fact we're not in a position to go and spend millions on players has been to our benefit in some respects in that really good young prospects have opted to stay with us rather than run to bigger clubs. If these players improve and get regular football, which they will with us, they then get a big money move, we should get a healthy fee and we can get financially more solvent (as well as bulding the stand!!). Also clubs can only go on spending so much and then there is a very real likelyhood that the "investors" will simply pull the plug by selling to who knows what or sending the clubs into administration having bled them of every penny they can get. However, if we drop into Division 1 the pressure will really be on us. We will not have the finances to re-build, our academy link may be under threat and worst of all, we may then be very ripe for some foreign consortium to buy us with the promise of "great times ahead". It seems each season it becomes more imperative that we, at least, stay in the Championship.
