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A UEFA report shows that, of the total debt owed by all the clubs within UEFA's umbrella - which is all of continental europe, Turkey and most of the islands like Cyrpus and Malta, 50% of it is owed by 18 cubs in the English Premier League. Portsmouth and West Ham were excluded because their finances are in such a mess that UEFA wouldn't actually allow them to compete in a European competition, should they have qualified. So if you took the full Premier League, things would look even worse.

Basically, for the last decade or so, outgoings (mostly player wages) have been growing at twice the rate of incomings. To put it bluntly, English football is [lifted], financially. We may in fact see a premier league club (Portsmouth) put into administration this week, despite having an income in the 100's of millions of pounds.

UEFA are proposing a european wide rule that clubs may no longer spend more than their income unless it is on 'capital projects' like new stadiums or youth academies. If I was a footballer I'd be a bit worried. The gravy train may be about to hit the buffers in a fairly spectacular way.

I agree with the UEFA proposals, and think it should be brought in ASAP.

I'm an Arsenal fan, and I know that Arsenal make a profit. I remember them announcing record profits late last year. Having said that, they do have a lot of debt - but that's because they built a new stadium, which doubled their ticket revenues.

I feel sorry for the Man Utd fans - the club is being exploited, and I hope it's not going to explode into a horrible mess for them.

I wonder how the story would look if you took Manyoo and Liverpool out of the equasion though - the articles states that the two of them combined are 25% of the total debts of the premier league.

Well manchester city and chelsea no longer have any actual debt since each respective owner turned their "debt" equity.
Manchester untied have £700 million of debt, Arsenal have a large debt, Liverpool have around £300 million of debt.

West ham have since been bailed out.
Alot of debt is tied up elsewhere in the premier league teams.

Harry Redknapp former portsmouth boss has come out and stated that it doesn't add up. The money that the club have recieved in transfers seems to have dissapeared into thin air so it is likely that someone was taking money out.

I would go as far to say that is Manchester united don't have a new owner within 2 seasons they will have a debt of £1 billion and be facing administration in 5-8 years time.

Considering 'arry was taking a 5-10% cut on every transfer in and out of Portsmouth and whilst he was here there were one hell of a load of transfers. I can think of one place a large amount of the money that has dissapeared had gone to.

Spurs (the MIGHTY Spurs that is) although feature quite prominently in the transfer market each year are actually a well run club. Thank god.

Spurs have spent £167.6 million since Jan 2008. That sort of spending is unsustainable for a club the size of Spurs.

I still think that the money from TV rights should be split a bit more evenly between the four leagues. Not a lot more, but at bit more. At the moment a lot of lower league clubs are struggling to pay the weekly bills, but premiership players are paid more in a week than some people earn in ten years. Even in if they cut their wages by half, they'd still earn tens of thousands a week and there'd be more cash for the poor clubs.

Spurs are a well run club and generate lots of income without being saddled with massive debt. Also although we spent a lot over the last couple of years we also sold a lot (Berbatov and Carrick are good examples).

http://www.football-finances.org.uk/spurs/index.htm

Actually I like that idea. I am not a fan of football, but I appreciate that many are. If this stabilises the game and even helps the national squad then that is good.

Sours have a few Jewish directors and as such are more cautious. That has helped them financially, if not on the pitch. Though as loans will be tough for the big clubs now this will erode their advantage allowing better run clubs more chances.

Not really telling me anything I don't know, sadly. Bolton are effectively owned by Eddie Davies, a somewhat reclusive businessman based in the Isle of Man. Not quite as disreputable a character as Gaydamak but still not a very healthy situation. The way he effectively took over the club - by the club issuing a huge number of new shares and selling most of them to him thus rendering the existing shareholder's equity down to effectively nothing - went down very badly with a lot of fans who had, while not a lot of money (we're not that mad), at least some money invested in the club. We still have those shares and thus get access to the club accounts and the AGM but when one bloke effectively has 90% of the shareholding there isn't really a lot of point.

Aside from the finances of the club, I doubt there are many fans who have much positive to say about Phil Gartside, regardless of how much he is paid. Aside from initially persuading Sam Allardyce to take the manager's job some years ago I can think of nothing at all he's contributed that has been positive and there have been at least two things (the 'sale' to Davies and the allocation of Carling Cup final tickets a few years ago) on his watch that were utter debacles. Now he seems to spend little of his time on the club and most of it on even more outlandish schemes to propose to the FA.

Jon