There are lots of factors to be considered when you look at who will be spending money and they are not all football related.
The first question relates to FFP and if that will be relaxed because if not then all clubs are restrained by the same financial strait jackets as before.
The second question relates to the wealth and earning power of the clubs owners. We have seen that in the case of two American owners (Utd and Arsenal) they have used their Premiership clubs as cash cows. Going forward it is unclear yet how well any individual owner will come out of this crisis financially and if they will need to draw money from one asset to prop up another. This is true of all clubs not just those named above.
The big clubs are undoubtedly getting hit harder than anybody as they have huge squads with enormous wage bills, their earning capacity on match day is greater, their , their sales of gear in club shops is greater, I would think their earnings are cut to a tiny fraction of what they were, I would this is especially true of Utd, City and Liverpool in particular.
Liverpool will also be down about 40m as a result of their exit from the CL.
Regarding Everton, we are getting hit as hard as anybody. If Usmanov does have a real interest in pushing Everton to the forefront of world football then there will never be a better opportunity to do so as it certainly is going to be a buyers market in the coming window.
Yes good post mate. Generally speaking all American owners want to use it as a cash cow, though they have different ways to do it. However in a downturn, any implied value in shares will be hammered and it may be that they seek to cover this by monetising the playing assets. The difficulty is going to be that the playing assets prices will be collapsing.
I happen to think the article is partly correct. In a collapsing market with less cash assets become a useful commodity. I think this was more common in an era with less money, so swapping may become a useful way of doing it Crucially for FFP it may prevent a big loss showing on the balance sheet (as you can write pretty much whatever value you want for both players).
I also think loans will continue. This trend was being brought in before this crash, so you can only imagine it gets accelerated several times over after. Essentially the value in older players has collapsed, so if someone covers their wages it's about the best you can hope. Expect to see more 2 year loan deals to get people to the end of contracts.
That being said, cash will not disappear. Clubs are going to need cash to run. For American owners, who will not be putting money in they are going to need cash. That means sales. The interesting question may be, if FSG planned on needing to sell Mane to raise funds before this crash, what happens if they planned to get say £120m and they only get £50? It may facilitate them needing to sell a 2nd player. If this happens more broadly, a declining economy then starts to collapse. On the 2nd player you may only get£35m.
In this context FFP makes little sense. It was an inflation busting mechanism, and will only further heighten difficulties in a deflation. Anyone familiar with the 1929 crash will know, the orthodoxy of the Federal Reserve in refusing to shift from inflation busting procedures adversely multiplied a damaging situation. Likewise, the detail of FFP is going to worsen this crisis. Every club is going to be in debt, and they are all going to be reliant upon sales to show a profit. Yet if everyone tries to sell, and few want to buy, prices just tank (and prices are already tanking due to the huge reduction in money available).
I won't repeat in too much detail, but in the Liverpool thread on the other page I put in about a club (I strongly suspect Liverpool) losing £9m a week supposedly. This is catastrophic. It implies they are losing almost all of their sponsorship revenue. It would suggest they have ver open opt outs, and it may be that even when football re-starts it will be hard for them to get the full value. They also have a wage bill circa £300+ that needs paying. The two can't match up.
At every level, this is a moment for Usmanov. If you are prepared to be a buyer in this context, and put money in, you will be getting a whole lot out. Not just because the price of players will probably halve (if not more) but because the wider context is a shrink. If everybody else is only offering loans or exchange of players, and you desperately need cash, suddenly the guy with Cash, offering even 30% of what you might have got 2 months ago becomes very tempting.
This crisis could work out very favourably for us, and for Moshiri/Usmanov, who have poured money in vain at the project (largely because inflation have minimised it's affects) could find themselves in a wholly different situation now.
