Piskie, this is selective history. I don't think I need to explain to you who Henry Norris was and how, after getting us into the first division through corruption despite finishing 6th in the old second division, he was subsequently arrested later on for attempting to bribe officials. This was over 100 years ago yet no-one seems to care about it or remember it because they're only concerned with the present and the future of the club. As for United, they were on the verge of going bankrupt and were served a winding-up order in the early 20th century, yet they relied on a number of external benefactors to subsidise them, change their name and keep the football club alive. They almost got bankrupted again in the 1930s yet were bailed out by a businessman that had no affiliation to the club. No club has a perfect history. The reality is Piskie, and it is a harsh reality, that in future generations to come, no-one will be bothered about how dodgy the owners were at clubs like City and Chelsea because, rightly or wrongly, it won't be deemed relevant. We are no angels, United aren't either and neither are the aforementioned clubs who get castigated so much.
And that's without mentioning a club who spent years rolling in the profits of a football based lottery game which was played by millions around the country every week. I rather suspect that if Manchester united or Chelsea were bankrolled by Camelot it's thiose supporters who would be among the first to complain...
Its a little different tbh. These were clubs, organisations in the early stages of their existence. There was no £100million windfall from winning trophies and sponsorship was thin on the ground. Most of the clubs today exist because locals banded together to raise funds for stadiums, players, kits and travel. They effectively operated like non league sides do today. To compare that with multibillionaires pumping 100s of millions in, falsifying income and the rest, not to mention the questionable, and frankly disturbing histories of the new super owners, is absolutely mental. Some of these owners are using clubs as advertising boards for their country, a country where human rights dont exist, where certain types are tortured or killed for nothing. Disgusting country. One of the worlds most corrupt organisations gave one of the worlda most corrupt countries the world cup.... Sack that, they did it twice. These parasite owners happen to hail from those countries. Its wrong on so many levels, football is the least of them. If you think it's fine, ask yourself, where are your morals?
Yeh but the RS are just morons. They complain about everything, even themselves. Best to ignore them or chuck bottles of piss at them, though they may confuse it for an act of charity.
As UIR has said, the circumstances and landscape of football were vastly different 100 years ago. You can't really compare the likes of Norris to Abramovich and Mansour. Even with Norris' investment in Arsenal (£125,000) for a club that needed help to develop, it doesn't come anywhere near the amount that was invested into Chelsea and City. Even scaling up the relative amounts, Norris' investment was worth around £15m-£30m by today's standards, a drop in the ocean compared tot he £1bn pumped into Chelsea. Even then it wasn't buying instant success for Arsenal, Norris' investment helped to build Highbury and his brilliant appointment of Herbert Champan sowed the seeds of Arsenal becoming a successful club in the 1930's. But this was a full 20 years after Norris had first bought Arsenal. It was a slow process of development, unlike the massive 'get rich quick' approach that Chelsea found themselves in when Roman decided to sink his fortune into Chelsea. As for Norris' corruption, there's no evidence whatsoever that Norris got us into the first division due to corruption. True that he lobbied the league for Arsenal's inclusion, but the only allegations of 'corruption' came from Spurs as they weren't selected to be included in the league (despite finishing bottom and being relegated) Even then, there were no allegations from Spurs at the time, they waited nearly 15 years later, when Arsenal started dominating under Chapman, before making their spurious allegations. Spurs complained about Arsenal at every given turn, when Norris was appointed and when he wanted to move Arsenal to Highbury, if they were so sure of corruption at our promotion, then why didn't they complain at the time ? In fact, there is a reward available for anybody who can prove that Norris used corruption to get Arsenal promoted, unsurprisingly that reward still goes unclaimed to this day. Norris was banned from football for making a payment to himself from Arsenal's coffers and rightly so, not dissimilar from George Graham getting sacked for taking bungs. (although the punishment was perhaps more severe) He blotted his copy book, but was rightly dismissed from Arsenal. But that shouldn't negate the fact that he helped to lay the foundations for Arsenal to flourish into a big club. Businessmen and investors have furnished clubs across the land and given them a leg up for decades, there's no one club who have 'earned' all of their own money to get where they are and some have been saved from going under by rich businessmen. But the difference with Chelsea and City is that it's never been done on quite that scale before. They were literally transformed from mid table nobodies to ultra rich champions overnight. Such was the level of money pumped into those clubs that it skewed the whole landscape of football, to the extent where UEFA had to step in and bring in rules to try and prevent it happening again. Not only did they warp the whole transfer marker, but wages went through the roof and agent/player power was given unprecedented status. Clubs were held over a barrel and the sanctity of contracts and loyalty went out of the window. My personal opinion is that Chelsea's success is arbitrary, they didn't do anything to earn their way to the top, they just happened on the fortune of a rich businessman who fancied a play thing. Abramovich was considering buying Spurs before he decided to buy Chelsea, who were a distinctly average club before he came along. Their success is built singularly on the huge amount of money that Abramovich pumped in from his personal fortune. It was only up until recently that Chelsea were posting operating losses of hundreds of millions of pounds each year, totally unsustainable without the money from Roman. History will record that this is how Chelsea got their trophies. They are nothing with Roman Abramovich.
This certainly wasn't the case with United in 1931 and the amount of money paid to bail your mob out then was relative to the time. It is questionable how much £100m now would be back in the early 20th century. I'm not equating the two. I don't even support what the likes of RA & Mansour are doing. I'm saying one way or another all clubs have a dodgy history and have done things that aren't necessarily done in the right manner. To criticise them whilst ignoring the history of other clubs that have dodgy histories too is just hypocritical. Never disputed this once. I don't condone it and find it morally reprehensible. Never claimed it was fine either. The point wasn't about the scale of how bad things were, it was the point that football fans aren't concerned about where the money comes from as long as they see success on the pitch. Is it right? No. But all billionaire or multi-millionaire owners have done bad things to get to where they get to in football. Usmanov and Kroenke both have very shady pasts, for example. But sports fans benefit from their ownership and decisions at the club. The harsh reality is that in the future, in 20/30 years time, people are not going to care about how the money they got from previous owners was blood money or exploitation because all they care about is on the pitch success. You can't just say one thing is bad and the other isn't just because it may not be on the same scale.
How have you worked that out? In any case, as I said to UiR, it's relative to the money being spent at that time, the economic climate and spending in football has always vastly superseded inflation, you're drawing a false parallel. It's not as simple as you're making it out to be. Whether it was instant or not, did we or did we not rely on an external benefactor to subsidise us, essentially re-start the club after going into liquidation and change our name and location? He managed to attract the likes of Herbert Chapman to our club because he doubled his salary, and I assume did this with the other players at the time to get them to join Arsenal so that we would compete for honours. On top of that, he was alleged to have used extra financial incentives to attract players and staff to the club on top of the maximum wage at the time which was circumventing the rules. This is all a lot of investment from someone who still had an allegedly very shady past. It was over 100 years ago so I doubt there would be any solid evidence, especially from a person with high status and authority back then, but I think it is telling that we were promoted at the expense of other clubs under his stewardship and in the late 1920s he was banned from football for life. This would suggest he had a corrupt past and would have got us into the first division as a result of bribery. How do you know they didn't? You don't know they did or didn't any more than I do. It was over 100 years ago! I'm fairly sure he did more than just that. A man of his power and influence would not be dismissed for merely using money from the club for personal use. There may be no hard hitting evidence for it, but he must have breached a lot of rules to be banned from football for life. The allegations, if true, would not be surprising. It was actually a lot harder to prove things then than it would be now. And you could say the same for Mansour and Abramovich with Chelsea. I'm struggling to see the difference here? You don't know this for sure unless you do an analysis of all the different clubs that have benefited from investment from owners instead of from their own self-generated revenue streams. It's very difficult to compare different time frames of owners who injected cash into clubs for gaining success from the 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s to now. And how has that worked out for them? This did not start under Chelsea and Man City. They exploited the situation and exacerbated the current circumstances, yes, but they weren't the root cause of it all. The first part of this is subjective. Others would argue that that's how most successful clubs came to prominence. The exact set of circumstances may be different, but the whole principle of being bailed out and getting excessive financial pumping from a rich person has happened for years. United, Arsenal and Liverpool have gone through periods where they've had poor finances and were helped out by rich people, so you could argue they were fortuitous too. I don't understand why it's one rule for us and another for them. Again I will ask - do you think their fans will care in 20, 30 or 40 years time? They don't even care now and football fans won't care either, just as they don't really care about Henry Norris. It will all be deemed an irrelevance, rightly or wrongly.
Chelsea qualified for the CL before Abramovich put any money into them, they steadily rebuilt under Bates after going backrupt. The money came from Harding, a lifelong Chelsea fan
Unlike United, who hawked themselves to anyone who could do a few keepie uppies at old trafford like a cheap dockside slapper, then, when that vaudeville act fell through, turned to foreign money with which to buy success after decades without. Only Arsenal among the top 4 have done it with sustained success, the other three all relied on foreign money to get up there. Glass house and all that.
You do realise that you are a joke on most boards? That keeper you have is better than de Gea have you given Madrid this amazing insight
Arsenal have been successful my whole life, all the others have been in the lower divisions in that time and have relied on foreign investment to regain their former glories, Arsenals success is what attracted Kroenke (nothing to do with the Emirates, that's their stadiums sponsor), who is their major share-holder. United sold out first, the others just followed suit so they could play on a more even playing field. Just be glad you didn't end up with the same type of 'billionaires' we (WHU) did with their Icelandic wallpaper money.
Nicely broken down. To be honest its the opposing fans that complain about these artificial cash injections as it has a direct affect to their superiority. I'll admit, its peeved me off no end how Chelsea artifical changed things, but it was more down to the effect it had to Arsenal. There is no doubt in my mind,had this not happened we would have won something a lot earlier. It changed the Prem landscape and altered the status quo (add City to this). But there is clear hypocrisy in this, clubs that have more history are given a pass for getting free handouts and unfair financial advantages. Take Real Madrid and Barca, they've been doing it for many years and continue to get now. I dont see many people complaining about these two, in fact I see a load of people wearing Barca and Real tops.
I outlined in my original post why Chelsea and City were different. All clubs have had investment, it's just never been done on quite the scale that abramovich did. It was so much money, that it didn't just change the fortunes of Chelsea, it skewed the whole landscape of football, transfers, wages to the point where UEFA had to step in to try and prevent it happening again.
Blackburn and Forest did similar, both were lower division clubs who acquired wealthy owners that bought success, Newcastle are another, though they failed to win anything. As to UEFA and the laughable 'FFP', It was designed to make sure the same teams that are winning now continue to do so by ensuring no one else can compete with them.
I'm not contesting that other clubs have had investment from rich owners, it's the scale on which Chelsea and City did it which was unprecedented. I do agree that FPP had the effect of protecting the rich clubs and preventing any of he smaller clubs from doing a 'Chelsea'
I'm sorry Piskie, but I just can't see the distinctions you're making here. I honestly don't see how it's any different. I think we're going to have to agree to disagree on this one, mate
