Why is it all about the money?

[mustapha_teabreak]

Because football is all about money these days, it was never an issue in the past, there was no such thing as administration and clubs' futures weren't put into jeopardy by the owners reckless spending.

It may be because we have experienced administration and got out of it relatively unscathed, but that has made our fans nervous about the amount of money we have spent on players and wages.

I also blame football manager we all think we know the inner financial workings of a football club on and off the pitch because we have played that game, and never gone into administration doing so. This makes people think they are qualified to assess and judge the accounts of a club better than multi-millionnaire business men.

I don't know if the lack of transparency also makes people more interested in it, back in the day you never had an undisclosed fee, we all knew how much we paid for a player and the actual money they were on. All this speculation on Matt Mills did he cost 5.5 million or 3.5 million or was it a package deal that could be worth 5.5million, it just adds to the debate.

Finally the fact that players are on such astronomical wages that they earn more in a week than most do in a year, and it is on the back of our hard-earned money that they do that, it will obviously bring out more frustration when players aren't putting in the effort that we think they should.

I think it is a combination of all of them and other factors such as the current economic crisis that make money a very important factor in everything we do, but more so in football when it is such obscene amounts.

my dear captain, clubs went out of business before the pl was formed. if you've read F&F which i'm sure you have you'll see we nearly went out of business in the 1920's due to money problems (and that's when players had a wage cap), and we've been clsoe a couple of times before we went into admin.

more recently, the prem, bosman and champions (sic) league have accelerated the gap between rich and poor clubs, and we've seen a lot more clubs gamble (leeds, pompey, rangers) to advance rather than using prudent spending plans.

realting this back to the op, the spiralling cost keeping up with the jones's has let's be frank put the price up on even average players and has put an undue burden on them.

[Captain...]

my dear captain, clubs went out of business before the pl was formed. if you've read F&F which i'm sure you have you'll see we nearly went out of business in the 1920's due to money problems (and that's when players had a wage cap), and we've been clsoe a couple of times before we went into admin.

more recently, the prem, bosman and champions (sic) league have accelerated the gap between rich and poor clubs, and we've seen a lot more clubs gamble (leeds, pompey, rangers) to advance rather than using prudent spending plans.

realting this back to the op, the spiralling cost keeping up with the jones's has let's be frank put the price up on even average players and has put an undue burden on them.

But why did we almost go into administration? Was it because of gross financial mismanagement and people effectively gambling the future of the club on success, like we did with new stadium, and like Risdale did at Leeds securing loans based on the fact they would get in the champions league when it was by no means a guarantee.

My understanding was that we nearly went bankrupt due to the first world war and not financial incompetence, and that is a massive difference, as with other clubs such as Middlesbrough it is not clear whether it was the incompetence of the owners or just a set of circumstances that were beyond their control that lead to their collapse, but in recent times you can trace back the financial failings to greedy or stupid owners.