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TF90M is delighted to proudly unveil its latest columnist. Joining the team, we welcome Joshua Oware who will occupy the role of our Business and Current Affairs Correspondent. Highly regarded and vastly experienced, Joshua will bring you hard-hitting articles that deal with the key issues affecting “the beautiful game”. We hope you enjoy his first article below. It is now wholly apparent that the global financial turmoil, currently dominating world politics, conversation and wallets, has found its way into our ‘beautiful game’. The epiphany wasn’t delicate either, simultaneous financial chaos was coupled with serious problems encountered by Newcastle Utd, West Ham Utd, and Liverpool FC, to name but a few. Is this the height of the problems for the Barclays Premier League? If not what consequences could the Premier League incur? Only recently the Premier League received another right-hook from the global markets, as West Ham’s owners were left reeling after the credit crunch engulfed yet another helpless victim - Iceland’s second-biggest bank, Landsbanki. The bank was plunged into receivership recently, and of course many would ask what that has to do with the Premier League and one East London club, but it just so happens that the West Ham chairman, Bjorgolfur Gudmundsson, is a major shareholder in both West Ham and Landsbanki. Furthermore, this was not the only problem that West Ham had to deal-with, a week earlier their prime sponsor, the XL Leisure Group, had gone bust; leaving West Ham ‘sponsor-less’ and ‘budget-less’. It does leave you wondering how a certain Mr. Zola is feeling, having joined the club as manager in between the two disasters, and having been promised ‘significant’ transfer funds for the January transfer window. “It is very unlikely he will be willing to put in more money to buy players this January window," vice chairman Ausgeir Fridgeirsson said on the matter. Pandemonium for Premier League clubs doesn’t end there; Tom Hicks and George Gillet have been forced to postpone the construction of Liverpool’s proposed new stadium at Stanley Park (Liverpool) due to funding complications brought on by the adverse affects of the Credit Crunch. Liverpool FC released the following statement on the matter: ‘…Like many other major development projects in the UK and overseas, we are affected by global market conditions and as such work on the project will be delayed in the short term…’ a rather subtle way of admitting how powerful the underlining financial anarchy is. Moving to the wider picture, the essence of the Barclays Premier League seems safe, at the moment, with the Government induced £50bn rescue plan. However the clubs within it should be slightly nervous. With external sponsors and investors collapsing they are becoming ever more reliant on money brought in through shirt-sales, advertising and tickets. However, with the economy in reverse and house prices tumbling, we are bordering on recession. As a consequence, families are having to tighten their financial belts and the worry for football has to be that, non-essential expenses will be the first to go, and for football that could mean them. All of this external business turbulence is amplified by the underlying debt in the Premier League, as the Football Association chairman Lord Triesman claimed, last week - the domestic game is £3billion in debt – and warned that a top club could go bust in the current economic crisis. These facts go to show just how influenced, how related, and even how contaminated, the sport of English football is by business. It is true to say that football is no longer just a pure-bred sport, it is now, sadly, a further extension of the grasping network of global business and the global economy. And the bad news for football is that, if this crisis can bring down some of the worlds largest banks and businesses, its amoeba-like nature could easily engulf many of our football clubs. By Joshua Oware
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