Financial fair play, Toon aspirations and the Stoke game
Posted on October 28th, 2011 | 36 Comments |
The mid-week League Cup defeat was disappointing but without a time machine* we can’t change that now, so it’s time to get jiggy about our upcoming game against Stoke.
This in fact is the attitude of Davide Santon, who had his first start for us on Wednesday. Santon said:
“We hoped to get into Europe through the League Cup but now we must look to the league for that.
“We need to aim for a top-four spot. We have a fantastic squad. But we have a lot of very, very big games against very good teams coming up and we need to put all of our efforts into doing that now.
“We lost Wednesday’s game, but we’re in a good place in the league. That is where we are concentrating now. We need to keep going and carry on winning.
“The most important thing now is that we show our fighting spirit and come back strong from the defeat.
“It was my first full game, we lost but there is a spirit in the squad that is fantastic. We need to pick ourselves up and make sure that we win at Stoke.”
Methinks Davide is being a little hopeful if he’s suggesting we’re capable of a top 4 finish, which in fact got me to thinking about how long the richest clubs will continue to dominate the top spots and be the only ones with a realistic chance of winning the League.
UEFA is planning to address this matter with its ‘Financial Fair Play Rules’, which will apparently mean that clubs will have to balance their books. The main requirement is that clubs break-even and this will come into effect for the 2012 financial reporting period and sanctions against clubs that break those rules will first be seen in 2013/2014.
But I’m yet to be convinced and wonder if there’ll be enough loopholes to allow the richest clubs to remain dominant via accounting trickery. Perhaps I’m being unduly pessimistic, but I find it hard to believe there’ll be a time when the likes of Manchester City will not have an advantage due to the financial clout of Sheikh Mansour.
We shall see, but for this season it’s going to be roughly the same story as it was last season with the usual suspects being the only ones in with a chance of the title and/or Europe. I can see Man City winning it this year, although if there’s one thing I’ve learnt from the last 20 years of football it’s that you can never write Man Utd off. Either way, they’ll take the top 2 spots and Chelsea look likeliest to take 3rd. I’m also prepared to bet the rest of the top 6 is made up from the richest of the remaining clubs: namely Spurs, Liverpool and Arsenal.
I’m a little more hopeful after that and think we could be part of the third group of teams vying for positions 7 to 10, along with the likes of (maybe) Everton and Villa (and I have a suspicion QPR might just be there too).
Anyway, back to the point in question. Stoke will be a tough game in my opinion. They have yet to lose at home in the League this season and it’s always a hard to place to go and take points. But it will be a good test of our ‘bouncebackability’. Losing comes hard after a stretch without it, so this is a big test of character for the lads.
Let’s hope we pass it!
*Although if the time machine used by Rod Taylor in HG Wells’ classic is anything to go by, we can build one with an old umbrella and an armchair.
What a surprise Lawro has us losing 2 nil to Stoke!