The art of acquiring and running a football club

We are getting more and more info as the sale of the club is seemingly creeping closer.
Besides the Davids and Intermarket (that jack-in-the-boxed), Tony Fernandes is rumoured to be ready to be involved in some way in a takeover.
That, of course, started a discussion on whether Fernandes is loaded enough to pull such a big deal off. But in a way that is beside the point. You don’t really have to have any money of your own. What you do have to have however, is a good relation with a bank or two.
Of course it does help if you do appear to have a few quid so the guys at the bank believes you are worthy of their services, and are willing to keep the interest down.

But let’s not get the actual wealth of a bidder be confused with if he is really going to back the club!

At the time BG bought us he was the wealthiest man in Iceland second only to his son. So there is no doubt that at the time he was a good backer. But we learned that he, as so many other owners of football clubs, actually didn’t bump us with any cash of his own. He made sure that we could borrow money, money that was never his and as the song goes “all he left us was a loan”.

So, regardless of the financial figures associated with the next owner, what is really important is that he does not do a Glazer or a Abramovich on us.
Glazer transferred a substantial part of the debt he took on for buying ManU over to the club. So in reality ManU ows banks money for the purchase of itself! This kind of money moving is not easy to figure out either, as is indicated by the time it took for journalists to find out that Abramovichs £736m backing of Chelsea was in the form of loans. Interest free loans (as it appears) but nevertheless loans. So much for sugar daddies…

So, even though the funds of our future owner makes a difference, the way he uses these fund, in the West Ham context, is the real issue.
I for one is more interested in a father that provides the mash and sausage he can afford than a daddy that feeds me sugar he got against my own future earnings.