James White
At this time of year there is very little for football fans to read about when it comes to actual action on the pitch. The pre-season friendlies have just got started and are inevitably, always somewhat drab affairs with players just getting back to fitness after their summer breaks of sun, sea, booze and over indulging. This leaves newspaper editors struggling to fill the back pages, so the only solution is to fill them with rumours of player transfers.
Like every summer all the clubs in the Premier League have been linked with almost every player on the planet. The only difference this season is there are also many rumours about that there will be a lot of top stars leaving. After the success of English clubs in this years Champions League it’s only natural that the top players have been noticed by many big clubs across Europe, however with the money available to Premier League clubs, the top teams very rarely lose their best players unless they want to, that is until this summer.
Arsenal have already lost two influential players from the previous campaign Flamini (Free) and Hleb (£12m). They also look set to lose last season’s topscorer Emmanuel Adebayor. Chelsea seem to have similar problems with Lampard, Drogba, Wright-Phillips and Makelele. All have been strongly linked with moves away from The Bridge, Carvalho has openly stated he would consider a new challenge and record signing Shevchenko is also likely to move after an unsuccessful two years at the club. However unlike Arsenal, Chelsea have the funds to replace any of their stars as proved by a reported £48m bid for young Brazilian star Robinho.
Even the English and European Champions are not immune to what is going on, with the ongoing saga that is Cristiano Ronaldo. It seems like only yesterday that the name “Ronaldo” was automatically associated with the burly Brazilian forward, I even remember people saying “Not Cristiano – the proper one”. Yet over the last two seasons Cristiano has established himself as the only “Ronaldo” worth talking about, winning almost every team and individual award available.
Despite all this success it seems you can’t open a paper without reading an article from either Spain with Real Madrid officials claiming the Portuguese winger is joining, or United’s representatives stating the player is going nowhere. Obviously a lot of these stories are complete fabrications as they contradict each other but we still all read them. I even read a story a few weeks ago one national tabloid stating Rafael Benitez had demanded £50m from his bosses in order to sign 3 players in the form of David Villa, David Silva and Daniel Alves. I read the article from beginning to end despite the fact I knew £50m would not be enough to land these 3 stars of La Liga and the latter of the3 had already joined Barcelona.
In my pursuit of anything football I also found a site for fans to post rumours of player transfers they have heard. The site is constantly full of stories from papers or posts from people who obviously play too many football management games but does that stop me from reading it? Well what do you think? Over the last few weeks there has been a big discussion on the site between Everton, Tottenham and Newcastle fans over which club is the “bigger” of the three. This started me thinking “what actually constitutes a big club?”
The first answer that sprung to mind was history, trophies in the cabinet. Yet this argument falls down when you look at Manchester United. Obviously, under Sir Alex Ferguson the gulf in silverware between Liverpool and United has almost completely closed and as a Liverpool fan unfortunately it seems only a matter of time before United takeover the mantel as the most successful club in England. At the moment even though Liverpool are still the most successful club in England, United are undoubtedly the biggest.
So what is it that makes Manchester United the “biggest” club in England, possibly the world? The answer is there is no one given factor. The truth is, in ascertaining the size of a club there are many things that must be considered. Success, money, fan base, location and European football are some of the main factors to be weighed against each other.
Winning trophies on its own is not enough to make a club big. In almost every league you have two or three dominant forces that will always be the biggest clubs in their country. Celtic and Rangers between them pick up pretty much every trophy available in Scotland year in year out. Both have European trophies and massive fan bases but the truth is that their location, north of the English border, and Scottish football is just not fashionable therefore there is no money in the league. Rangers have never won the European Cup and Celtic, despite being the first British team to win it have only won it once. So is European success the key?
Until 1999 Nottingham Forest were the second most successful English club in Europe when Man Utd joined them on two European cups and it was only the season finished when United finally overhauled them. No-one needs me to compare the size of the two aforementioned clubs. Another good example of this is Arsenal and Chelsea. There third and forth biggest clubs in England, yet neither have won that elusive prize. Another team that has is Aston Villa who fall into the second tier of clubs.
Over the last 4 years Chelsea have made the step up from the second tier of clubs to the first despite the fact before that they had only won the league once in their entire history. The good thing about Chelsea’s growth is it’s clear to see how it has been achieved. Money, plain and simple. Roman Abramovich has pumped in so much cash it makes all other fans envious. Winning their second and third league titles in successive years coupled with the money available for transfers and wages, plus the attraction of London and offer of Champions League football every season has allowed the club to become a major player in attracting big name players from around the world. Yet Chelsea still fall short of the other three as their success has so far been short lived, and despite the talent on display the Blues still struggle to fill the modestly sized Stamford Bridge.
That leaves fans. Most big clubs are located in “footballing cities”. The people who live in these cities inevitably support their local club. At first glance you would say that would give the teams that have a city to themselves an obvious advantage. Almost every football fan in Newcastle supports the Magpies as they are the only team in the city, whilst other cities like Liverpool and Manchester have two major clubs. London of course has many. The problem behind this theory is that these one club cities usually have very low populations, so the fan base is usually very similar. Local fans are a given, what sets a club above the rest making them a truly big club is attracting fans from all over the county and world! This is where teams like Real Madrid, Barcelona, AC Milan, Liverpool and Manchester United come into their own. Their names are global brands. No matter what city in the world you are in it is no surprise to see a local walk past wearing a shirt from one of these clubs.
The more boxes you tick the “Bigger” the club is. Manchester United’s board of directors knew they already had history and fans, and used both factors to propel the club through the 90s and this decade, growing their fan base further, increasing the club’s income and, due to Sir Alex Ferguson dominating all domestic competitions, to stand aloft at the top of English football. Liverpool, Arsenal and Chelsea seem to be following, using United as a model for their own business plans.
This leaves a gap to what I previously referred to as the “second tier” clubs. Clubs such as Newcastle, Aston Villa, Everton, Tottenham and Manchester City. All these clubs have had success in the past, are fairly well know across Europe and have good support. Unfortunately, the bulk of the support for these clubs comes only from the cities they are based in and only their older fans can remember success in either the league or Europe.
To settle the argument that got me on this train of thought, which club is bigger Everton, Newcastle or Tottenham? I see it like this. Sure they are very similar in size, they all excel in certain areas but lack in others. Truth be told if you were a player coming in from a foreign country to ply your trade in the Premier League, with offers from all three clubs, which would you choose? Are you going to spend your winters in a wet and windy Newcastle on big wages? Would you take the smaller wages on offer from Goodison Park or would you take the big wages and capital city life Tottenham could offer? Truth be told Tottenham are the bigger of the three, not due to money, history or fan base simply because of where they are!
But when it comes to scrapping for second and third place in a second tier of clubs, does it really matter? At the end of the day all are striving to enter that elite group.
