My God this is what it has come down to - absolutely heartbreaking!

[CharlieMansonsSquint]

By: The Financier
Date: 14 February 2008
Chelsea have joined the top five richest clubs on the globe according to Deloitte’s annual financial review of football clubs around the world. They join Real Madrid, Manchester Utd, Arsenal and Barcelona. However, a report in The Independent newspaper (14/02/08) has labelled Liverpool’s status in the rich list as “relative tiddlers”.

The Merseyside club earned some £133.9m for 2006-07 while Chelsea’s income was put at £190.5m for the same period. However, using a system that compares ‘like-for-like’, the figures for the top five are as follows;

£236.2m - Real Madrid
£212.1m - Manchester Utd
£195.3m - Barcelona
£177.6m - Chelsea / Arsenal

Chelsea’s income for the accounting period saw an increase of 28% which will offset the club’s losses – a figure that has come down year-on-year for the past three years.

The figures read;

2003-04 - £ 87.8m
2004-05 - £140m
2005-06 - £ 80.2m

Nick Harris report for The Independent goes on to say, “The data does not inspire Liverpool's hopes of challenging United, Chelsea or Arsenal any time soon. It also highlights the massive gamble Hicks and Gillett have taken in borrowing £350m. Without Champions' League income (£25m-plus), Liverpool would be losing large sums, something Hicks and Gillett cannot sustain.”

Harris also predicts that, with the new television deal money to be counted in the Deloitte reports for next season, clubs like Manchester Utd will be challenging Madrid for the title of the world’s richest side, with both Chelsea and Arsenal in hot-pursuit.

Another potential excuse in the making then.

We seem to be making a living off them recently.

I find it fascinating that as a football fan I'm supposed to have even a passing interest in the workings/opinions of these Thatcherite slags.

Is it part of the "game" now, if it is I think I’ll chuck it.

That’s why our club has been taken over once, and maybe will be again in the space of a year, because we don’t have enough money.

What does any of this have to do with the game of football? And I mean physically, the game played on grass by 22 blokes?

I'm not interested in what Manchester United PLC earnt last year, so why tell me and claim it's part of the game?

Good of them also to encourage these clubs to compete to earn more money, in turn ripping off the fans even more to do so.

I hope the stock market crashes and it sends these *******s scurrying to their hedge funds like the cockroaches they are.

So money men, please take your grasping cunt ways and ****ing do one before you destroy the game. Go a rob some other cunts soul.

[DannyMan2006]

London clubs earn more match day revenue simply because they charge a helluva lot more. This, however, is not because they are greedy. It is because it costs a helluva lot more money to run a club in London than it does in the North West.

Costs of Policing, stewards, day to day people who work at the club, security teams brought in, all cost London wages.

If deducted the cost of running the club of gate receipts, I would doubt you would see that much of a difference, unless of course there is a difference in stadium capacity and amount of corporate boxes.

Once LFC get the stadium in place, we'll be cruising.