Well, compare to any other English side, i don't think they have
a serious problem attracting players... they were in for Owen
Hargreaves and the player himself practically said he wants to join
them and how honoured he was that they were even considering him
only for his present club not to allow the transfer... And there is
their other target Gareth Bale... Many clubs have come in for him
strongly including gunners and spurs... Spurs even went as far as
promissing him a first team place and even had a $10m offer on the
table... Despite that, he is still keen to go to man u whose offer
was only $8m. Off course in the end, it was down to Southampton's
boss George Burley who wants him to stay for another season or at
least till the end of this.
On ticket sales... They are probably the only club that have a
76,000 stadium and usually full on match days... Compare to Chelsea
who have only a 42,000 stadium yet find it difficult to fill it on
almost every match day.
Merchandising, well they were the highest-ranked of eight English
clubs in the top 20, their annual revenue of £167.8million and
excludes transfer fees, value added tax and other sales-related
taxes, they are still making more profits than any other club.
Their AIG deal is worth £18million a year so i think their
endorsements are still pretty healthy not to include their Nike
deal. TV money from the Premiership will be around £50million, the
Champions League should see income of at least another £20million
while the average crowd at their EPL matches this season has been
75,776, bringing in around £2million in ticket sales for every home
match.
As to your "down as a footballing team in essense" I cannot
understand as to how much higher must one be if topping the league
at present is not enough... Sure they didn't win the past 2, 3 yrs
but every team will go through a bad period... They had their fair
share of injuries to their key players over the last 2, 3 seasons
just like chelsea is experiencing in this... No team is invincible,
what goes up will come down eventually and during the 90s, they
didn't swept aside competition in the local side... If anything,
Arsenal were always around and they had to fight to the end in most
seasons to capture the league title.
In Europe, every year there are at least 5 to 8 teams who are more
than able to win the CL. Their chances are just as great if not
better than united's. So there is no reason to say that they should
win it by right. And on the local side, Chelsea is only being
sustain by RA money, how long can they last is anyone's guess...
Arsenal's youthful team may be great on their day but they still
lack consistency and that is a very big problem. Then there is
Pool. They are a serious contender. Once the money filters in, i
think they may do well with Ah Ben still in charge.
But hey, the English league has always had a Big four for a long
time already, before chelsea came along Spurs was consider one of
the Big four, Then there was Everton before that... So there is not
going to be much changes, it could be Nottm Forest, Ipswich or even
Wolverhampton there and there will still be a Big four competing
amongst themselves.
