FootBiz newsletter #58: Man United and Arsenal financials plus questions for Nasser Al-Khelaifi

There is a story from the first weeks of David Moyes’ reign which came to symbolise how over his head the Scotsman was in taking over a club as big as Manchester United.

After a whirlwind few days in the bright lights and thick air of Bangkok, much of it spent in traffic or at commercial engagements, United had arrived in the comparatively tranquil surroundings of Sydney, Australia.

With a hotel right across from the world-famous Bondi Beach, Moyes suggested that the team might pop over the road and stretch on the sand before training. As Patrice Evra described it, “he wanted the players to relax, to get out of the prison that hotels can become.”

United’s own security team did push back on the idea, suggesting the squad would be instantly recognised, but Moyes said he had done similar at Everton before with no issues.

“Yes, but you’re at Man United” replied one of the security personnel.

It was that line which came to mind over the last 24 hours with the drip, drip, drip of stories around the Old Trafford club and how relentless the pressure is on those in charge.

As you may have guessed, the stretching on Bondi Beach was a (well-intentioned) disaster.

“Within five minutes, about 50 people started running towards us as word spread,” Evra recalled later in his autobiography.

“Security, who were furious as the situation began to spiral out of control, tried to stop fans who were barging right into the session, but they had no chance — Man United were training right in front of people in a public place. Mounted police arrived to restore some order. It was a shambles and we had to leave for everyone’s safety.”

However big you think some of these superclubs are, they’re probably bigger. Football is a curve and they’re on the steepest bit. Having most recently managed Preston North End and Everton, Moyes had not fully grasped how big Manchester United was and it contributed to his rather swift and unfortunate demise.

Sir Jim Ratcliffe was no stranger to a camera before he bought 25% of one of the world’s biggest clubs, but he now appreciates the difference in the level of scrutiny he, his decisions and his companies receive.

Consider INEOS’ early exit from their partnership with Tottenham Hotspur, reported yesterday. The latest is that the two parties are negotiating an “amicable” termination at the end of the season, which nobody would have cared about until INEOS bought into Manchester United, and then decided to fire the manager, then didn’t fire the manager, and then laid off a load of people, and then hired a sporting director, and then eventually did fire the manager, and then they fired the sporting director after hiring a new manager and you get the picture. Everything is a story at United, so now everything is a story at INEOS too.

Oh, and also because INEOS exited another partnership agreement in far more acrimonious circumstances with the New Zealand rugby team. United fans who never had an interest in the petrochemical industry are suddenly wondering if their white knight has the money to help them get back on top.

Then yesterday, their quarterly financials were released which brought forth another wave of coverage. Needless to say, we have more details on those below.

And then my favourite piece of journalism this week, where Sky News’ Mark Stone doggedly pursues (video in the link) Avram Glazer - on his way in to see President Trump, no less - to ask Glazer if his family will be selling their majority stake. Stone originally asks Glazer for “a quick word” and after much chasing, Glazer gives him one of the quickest in the English language in response to his overarching question - “no”.

You might think you would be allowed to go and hang out with the president of the United States without being harangued about your football team several thousand miles away wouldn’t you?

As a wise man once said on Bondi Beach: “Yes, but you’re at Man United.”

Table of Contents

• Man United and Arsenal financials

• Ligue 1 crisis deepens

• La Liga spending update

• Brentford financials

• Crypto scam could end Argentine battle

• A correction

• Refereeing jobs

Crikey, long intro. But promise me you’ll stick around for the story on the Ligue 1 soap opera today because it’s a belter.

Man United and Arsenal financials

The financial impact of Manchester United's managerial and executive changes this season were revealed in the publication of their 2024 Q4 accounts yesterday, which showed that the sackings of Erik Ten Hag and Dan Ashworth cost the club £14.5million.

United paid out £10.4m in compensation to Ten Hag and his staff in October just four months after giving the Dutchman a new contract, while the club's decision to poach Ashworth from Newcastle as sporting director was even more disastrous, costing them £4.1m for 159 days in the job.

The pay-offs contributed significantly to losses of £27.7m for the last three months of 2024, with United's financial performance hampered by the club's absence from the Champions League, although that also led to a 13.2 per cent reduction in their wage bill, year on year.

Arsenal’s player wages in contrast have soared in the last 12 months following their return to the Champions League, as revealed in their annual report published yesterday. The club's wage-bill increased from £234.8m to £327.8m last season, although their revenue also grew to £616..6m, resulting in a modest loss of £17.7m.

Arsenal's wage-bill is now comparable to that of Manchester City and United, which were £413m and £364.7m respectively in 2023/24. Liverpool and Chelsea have yet to publish last year's accounts, but their wage commitments are similar.

Another significant revelation in the accounts is the increase in money owed to the club's owners, Kroenke Sports and Entertainment, to £324m. Such shareholder loans could attract a market rate of interest for Profitability and Sustainability Rules calculations in future, depending on the outcome of an arbitration case brought by City against the Premier League.

Ligue 1 crisis deepens

One of the ongoing sagas we have been covering regularly since FootBiz began is that of the botched Ligue 1 broadcast deal, which has left every French club not named Paris Saint-Germain under serious financial pressure.

The disastrous negotiation itself completely nerfed LFP president Vincent Labrune’s power, with even the milder critics suggesting that he was in thrall to PSG chairman Nasser al-Khelaifi and the stronger ones (bonjour, John Textor) claiming Labrune was the Qatari’s lapdog.

Well, on Wednesday L’Equipe published highlights from the minutes of the fiery July Zoom call where Textor and Al-Khelaifi’s relationship truly exploded into… whatever it is now. But it was a lot more than that, this was a true battle royale between club owners that rarely sees the light of day, and not a great look for one of the most powerful men in world football.

If you have a subscription and can speak French, then consider reading the article itself which is long and while you can Google Translate the bulk of it, L’Equipe have put the biggest zingers on to graphics so you’ll miss some of those.

France 2, the TV channel, later released a four-minute mini-report with video and audio from the meeting. A surprising amount is in English so if you watch you will probably get the sense of it, but overall a pretty terrible showing for Al-Khelaifi, of whom questions will once again be asked about his conflict of interests - most notably, how was the head of one of the bidding companies allowed to be in (not to mention take over) the meeting discussing whether the clubs should proceed with the bidder?

I feel like I can’t do it justice so please do watch it for yourself or read the full text but some of the notable quotes:

• Lens owner Joseph Oughourlian returning fire after Al-Khelaifi told him he knows nothing about media: “I think that you need to understand a concept that clearly has escaped you at BeIn, or at PSG, or at both, which is called 'conflict of interest'. You bully everybody!"

• Lyon owner Textor after Al-Khelaifi had dominated the meeting: “We’re running out of time, maybe someone other than Nasser should talk… you’re being a bully.”

• Nasser’s response: “John, stop talking, you don’t know anything, you are cowboy from I don’t know where.”

• Jean-Pierre Riviere, chairman of Nice, at the end of the meeting: “Once the Board of Directors has made its decision, it is important that we do not show any divergence in the press. There you go, we had discussions, some were for, some were against perhaps, but let's show unity to show that, for once, we are going together… we must keep was said in this space secret."

Errrrm, about that last bit.

La Liga spending update

Barcelona's financial restrictions have eased slightly with La Liga increasing the club's Squad Cost Limit for the rest of the season by €37m to €463m.

The Catalan club's transfer and wage spending has been tightly controlled by La Liga due to previous overspending, leading to ongoing legal battles over their ability to register new players, most notably Dani Olmo and Pau Víctor.

La Liga operate a real-time spending cap which is updated at the start of every transfer window, with the figures published this week those that were given to the clubs at the end of December. They are not made public until the window has closed to avoid impacting the market.

Real Madrid have the highest wage cap at €754m followed by Barcelona and then Atletico Madrid, who must operate within a spending limit of €314m.

In contrast Sevilla's spending capabilities have been cut further to a miniscule €684,000 with their budget severely hit by their failure to qualify for the Champions League.

Brentford financials

In a rather more modest corner of the Premier League Brentford have also published their financial results for 2023/24, which demonstrate the continued importance of player sales to their business model despite all the plaudits they receive.

Bizarrely Brentford's turnover was exactly the same as the previous year at £166.5m, but with the wage-bill increasing significantly this led to a loss before player trading of £29m, compared to a £4.4m profit 12 months earlier. A £25.2m profit on player sales did however enable the club to cut their losses to £7.9m before tax.

A longer-term look at Brentford's accounts shows the club's £114m wage bill has almost doubled in two years from their first to their third season in the Premier League. With match-day income severely limited by the 17,250 capacity of the Gtech Community Stadium and broadcasting revenue fixed until 2029, smart recruitment and sales will continue to be their only route to being competitive in the top-flight.

As usual, Brentford are one step ahead and they have already banked £67m for next year's accounts through last summer's sales of Ivan Toney and David Raya. Brentford's accounts also contain an intriguing footnote, as they reveal that the club received a tax credit of £3.23m from HMRC for an unspecified research and development project.

An investigation published by The Times earlier this week revealed that Premier League clubs have claimed government funding in tax credits related to science and technology worth millions over the last few years, with Brentford the latest to take advantage.

Crypto scam could end Argentine battle

A twist in the battle for the soul of Argentine football, where the country’s president Javier Milei has tried to force through a change that would allow clubs to convert from non-profit social institutions into for-profit entities.

The Argentine football association had resisted at every turn, with only a few clubs in favour of the proposed changes that Milei insists would lead foreign money to flood into the country.

It was already looking difficult for Milei, but after embroiling himself in a crypto scandal this week there is renewed confidence from insiders at the association that the president won’t have the support (or possibly the presidency) to ever put his libertarian stamp on football.

For those who missed it, a brief summary:

President Milei posted on social media promoting a new cryptocurrency called $LIBRA, claiming it would help Argentine businesses. Only, of course, it wouldn’t as was never meant to as it was a grift from the same people who recently launched the $MELANIA coin.

But lots of investors/rubes piled in after the president backed the project and put their money into $LIBRA, raising the total market cap to around $4bn briefly before all the insiders behind it started cashing out, profiting to the tune of over $100m while investors were left with something worthless as the coin lost 92% of its value. As it’s crypto, these pump-and-dump schemes (sometimes called rug pulls) are far more loosely regulated.

Milei later deleted his tweet, then claimed he didn’t know who started the coin, then later admitted he may have met them, then later admitted he was an advisor but didn’t profit from the coin, then gave a television interview where he uttered the immortal line: “I didn’t promote the scam, I only shared it.”

A federal judge is now investigating and opposition leaders are calling for impeachment, so the football stuff has taken a back seat.

A correction

On Tuesday we mentioned DAZN had sub-licensed Club World Cup rights to TelevisaUnivision.

These are only for the US market in Spanish, however, and not for Mexico. As things stand, DAZN will broadcast the Club World Cup in Mexico.

Refereeing jobs

Ever complained about officiating, VAR and all that and felt you could do a better job?

Well the US Soccer Federation is advertising for a Director of Refereeing Strategy & Operations. Job description is here.

As with most things refereeing it’s likely a thankless task but I’d imagine you probably could snag a couple of World Cup tickets so it’s not all bad.