Piijt
Player Valuation: £20m
Liverpool and Chelsea are in crisis, Arsenal's season is stalling and Manchester United owe more money than a Societe Generale trader. All the while, Aston Villa, Everton and Tottenham make confident strides towards the top. Are the Big Four doomed?
Manchester United are up their eyeballs in debt and forking out £60 million a year in interest alone on the £660 million owed, yet still they spend huge sums on players. One bad season, one year without Champions League money, and the whole edifice could come tumbling down.
Liverpool have a manager who has no support from his board and is slowly losing the fans and players. They have finally got a world-class striker but face another dogfight just to finish fourth and haven't won the league for 18 years. Their owners face open revolt from the fans, who have put their faith in a Dubai-based company providing no guarantee of better management.
Chelsea's vast wealth means they overpay for players, yet the superstars they truly crave - Kaka, Messi, Ronaldinho - do not want to come. Roman Abramovich has ploughed over half a billion into the club but his revolution has stalled. Peter Kenyon may get Chelsea to break even by 2010, but he has brought an end to massive transfer spending - and to on-pitch success for the moment.
Arsenal's problem is that they do not spend enough money on players. They could afford to blow £20 million on Karim Benzema but Arsene Wenger will not spend it. Wenger's genius for developing kids means he rarely splashes out on the finished article. His biggest signings are "project" players like Theo Walcott or Jose Antonio Reyes.
Senior players leave the Emirates Stadium every summer - Thierry Henry, Patrick Vieira and Sol Campbell were past their best, but experience has a value that reaches beyond the pitch. Alex Ferguson has kept the declining Ryan Giggs and Paul Scholes, and would never have axed Vieira or Campbell. As a consequence, he does not encounter the dissent shown by William Gallas, Emmanuel Adebayor or Nicklas Bendtner.
It is almost miraculous that Arsenal contend for honours so consistently, but can you really hope for prolonged dominance when you are always in transition? And all the time the spectre of a debt-led takeover hangs over the club.
So, that's it. The Big Four are all doomed. Right? Well, no. Liverpool's squad is too good, their fans too numerous and their attractiveness to investors too great for any serious decline to occur.
Arsenal's present board has 'locked down' against Alisher Usmanov's takeover and in any case the Russian is backed by David Dein, who would make damn sure Wenger stayed.
Chelsea will probably muddle through and there is no immediate sign that Abramovich wants to sling his hook, while - for the moment - all is going swimmingly at Old Trafford under the hated Glazers.
But certainly, the pretenders are extremely well-equipped. Villa, Everton and Blackburn have the kind of stability and unity that Liverpool and Chelsea can only dream of.
Tottenham and Manchester City also have the makings of a bright future but their fans have seen too many false dawns to get too excited. (OK, that's not true - let's put their unquenchable optimism down to the resilience of the human spirit).
In the 1990s, the money at the top of the game put success beyond all but the elite - this decade's trend for foreign ownership and massive investment means any club can become a contender almost overnight.
It might not be the egalitarian utopia the purists crave, but it means the game is more open now than it has been for a long time.
Manchester United are up their eyeballs in debt and forking out £60 million a year in interest alone on the £660 million owed, yet still they spend huge sums on players. One bad season, one year without Champions League money, and the whole edifice could come tumbling down.
Liverpool have a manager who has no support from his board and is slowly losing the fans and players. They have finally got a world-class striker but face another dogfight just to finish fourth and haven't won the league for 18 years. Their owners face open revolt from the fans, who have put their faith in a Dubai-based company providing no guarantee of better management.
Chelsea's vast wealth means they overpay for players, yet the superstars they truly crave - Kaka, Messi, Ronaldinho - do not want to come. Roman Abramovich has ploughed over half a billion into the club but his revolution has stalled. Peter Kenyon may get Chelsea to break even by 2010, but he has brought an end to massive transfer spending - and to on-pitch success for the moment.
Arsenal's problem is that they do not spend enough money on players. They could afford to blow £20 million on Karim Benzema but Arsene Wenger will not spend it. Wenger's genius for developing kids means he rarely splashes out on the finished article. His biggest signings are "project" players like Theo Walcott or Jose Antonio Reyes.
Senior players leave the Emirates Stadium every summer - Thierry Henry, Patrick Vieira and Sol Campbell were past their best, but experience has a value that reaches beyond the pitch. Alex Ferguson has kept the declining Ryan Giggs and Paul Scholes, and would never have axed Vieira or Campbell. As a consequence, he does not encounter the dissent shown by William Gallas, Emmanuel Adebayor or Nicklas Bendtner.
It is almost miraculous that Arsenal contend for honours so consistently, but can you really hope for prolonged dominance when you are always in transition? And all the time the spectre of a debt-led takeover hangs over the club.
So, that's it. The Big Four are all doomed. Right? Well, no. Liverpool's squad is too good, their fans too numerous and their attractiveness to investors too great for any serious decline to occur.
Arsenal's present board has 'locked down' against Alisher Usmanov's takeover and in any case the Russian is backed by David Dein, who would make damn sure Wenger stayed.
Chelsea will probably muddle through and there is no immediate sign that Abramovich wants to sling his hook, while - for the moment - all is going swimmingly at Old Trafford under the hated Glazers.
But certainly, the pretenders are extremely well-equipped. Villa, Everton and Blackburn have the kind of stability and unity that Liverpool and Chelsea can only dream of.
Tottenham and Manchester City also have the makings of a bright future but their fans have seen too many false dawns to get too excited. (OK, that's not true - let's put their unquenchable optimism down to the resilience of the human spirit).
In the 1990s, the money at the top of the game put success beyond all but the elite - this decade's trend for foreign ownership and massive investment means any club can become a contender almost overnight.
It might not be the egalitarian utopia the purists crave, but it means the game is more open now than it has been for a long time.
