Foreign owners welcome, but the spirit of community must live on in the club they try to make great

It may not have quite been a case of the butcher, baker and candlestick maker being at the helm of English football’s top clubs. But, by and large, the list of the 22 chairmen as the fledgling competition got under way read like a Who’s Who of men that had made their mark in business, often in the local community, before seeking a new challenge.

And if the man in charge didn’t fit that description, it usually meant the club had been passed down through a family over the generations as had been the case at Manchester United and Ipswich Town.

Today, the landscape has shifted significantly with exactly half of the 20 top-flight clubs having overseas owners – a trend that has extended to the Football League, with almost a quarter of Championship clubs belonging to investors from abroad.

For Greg Clarke, this has been a welcome development – and one he puts down, in part, to the global pull of the top flight.

He said: “I think we have seen a bit of a spin-off in terms of the Premier League. It is a global brand business, similar to Tesco, Rolls-Royce and Sky in that it has been heard of wherever you go.

“We are seeing that people look at the Premier League and think, ‘Wow, we want a bit of that’. It is exciting. But because the entry ticket to the Premier League is so large, it means that just tipping up at a top-flight club and trying to buy it means a huge investment. Because of that, the Championship and, to be fair, some League One clubs are seen as a more economically attractive route into the Premier League.

“People think, ‘I can go in there, invest and build the club up then I have a realistic chance of getting to the Premier League’. There is nothing at all wrong with that aspiration.”

Such a plan is why Leicester City, the club Clarke has supported all his life, are under Thai control and spending big in the quest for a place in the top-flight. As a fan, Clarke is hoping the Foxes can win promotion. As a guardian of the game, however, he admits to feeling slightly uneasy with the potential consequences.

Asked specifically about what is happening at Leicester, he said: “The driving up of wages is a worry. I am a romantic and we might live in a world where the top echelon of bankers and business people earn hundreds of times the average salary but I don’t have to like it.

“There is a lot to be said for a more equal society. That doesn’t mean I am a big fan of going back to the barricades and electing a supreme Soviet. But if you are stood there watching a player and he is earning so much that you have no chance of ever aspiring to such a lifestyle, it is infinitely harder to develop that empathy.

“That is why I am a big fan of us developing community-based clubs. So, I am always slightly saddened by any club who transforms itself into a huge spending machine. I am not saying it is morally wrong or unethical, just that there’s a high chance of it going bad because there are only ever three clubs that go up from the Championship but more than three clubs are spending a lot of money.”

With such fears in mind, the Football League insist on spelling out what is expected of any prospective new owner.

Clarke added: “I am not anti-overseas owners. But I am, however, very keen that our owners are highly ethical owners as they have a duty of care. Even if a club gets 20-30,000 through the gate, there are probably another 100,000 or so in the town who turn up now and again.

“Even my Mum, who has been to two games in her life, asks how City have got on. That is because the club is part of the community.

“It is important that people who come in understand the moral obligations of owning a community-based club.”

Rise in ticket prices is result of expenditure by clubs, as Clarke offers sympathy to loyal supporters

A MAJOR accusation aimed at the Premier League since the landscape of English football was ripped apart by its formation is how it has led to not only sky-high wages but soaring ticket prices.

A glance back 20 years to the 1991-92 season, the last under the old four division set-up of the Football League, underlines just how much deeper fans are being asked to dig to watch their team today.

At Chelsea, for instance, supporters wanting to watch a Category A fixture in that final season – basically all the London clubs plus Leeds United and Manchester United – had to pay £20 (upper), £25 (middle) and £10 (lower) in the East Stand, the only one that is still open at a redeveloped Stamford Bridge.

For the equivalent fixture in this season’s Premier League, those same seats will set a fan back £69 (upper) and £50 (lower) with the middle tier not being available to fans wanting to attend individual games.

Away fans at Stamford Bridge face an even more eye-watering rise with the £9 admission price of 1991-92 (admittedly to stand up on a terrace with no roof that was some distance from the nearest goal) having soared to £56 and £59 for the big games this term.

It is not just at Chelsea or in the rest of the Premier League where the cost of football has soared, either, with just last month seeing Huddersfield Town fans opting to boycott their team’s trip to Sheffield United in protest at what they saw as exorbitant pricing.

Terriers supporters were upset at being asked to pay £28 for a seat that, just a couple of weeks earlier, had been occupied by Bury fans for exactly half that sum – the difference being explained by the Blades, in common with many clubs, categorising home games and the more attractive ones being priced accordingly.

The upshot of the boycott was just 1,549 away fans being present as Lee Clark’s side triumphed 3-0, almost two-thirds less than the travelling army that had made the short trip down the M1 to Sheffield last season for Town’s win at Hillsborough.

As a confirmed football supporter since boyhood, Football League chairman Greg Clarke admits to having sympathy for both fans and the clubs when it comes to the thorny issue of ticket prices.

“It is one of those questions when neither side are wrong,” he admits to the Yorkshire Post. “There is merit in both arguments. Fans, largely, are struggling to make ends meet. I am not being patronising about low economic demographic fans, there are a lot who had big jobs that are out of work now. Or two incomes in a household that have been reduced to one.

“People are cutting back on foreign holidays and away shirts, and Christmas presents. You have to sympathise with the decisions families have to face.”

In these harsh economic times, it is not just football finances that are coming under increasing pressure. Clarke added: “I was speaking to one of the heads of the big banks and he was, metaphorically speaking, howling like a wolf about his credit checking and how in the past it had been geared towards giving priority to policemen, nurses and public sector workers.

“They were seen as a safe bet. But now those people are losing their jobs with the cuts and he was saying, ‘We have given credit cards to the wrong people and could have big problems down the line’. Honest, decent folk are struggling to hold on to their houses so I sympathise with them when ticket prices seem to be high.

“But I would be even more sympathetic if any of the football clubs were making money. If we were like the utility companies with their huge profits and putting prices up, then I would be asking what’s going on.

“There are two sides to every argument. Both sides are struggling and arguing over a few quid, which I understand.”