Mark Samuels

There’s a debate on the finance of football taking place now on BBC News and a bunch of other public broadcast channels (actually, is such repetition a new way for the Beeb to cut costs in light of announced programme cuts?).

The debate’s been quite interesting so far. Not brilliant, but quite interesting. The most pertinent fact has been that 53 English clubs have gone into administration since 1992. That’s unbelievable; administration has simply become a business norm for football clubs.

Now – given the travails of Portsmouth – everyone is saying the debt associated to British football clubs is far too high. Apparently, everyone has now recognised that debt is wrong; it’s a means of cheating your way to success.

But if it wasn’t for Portsmouth, and the wider global financial crisis, would anyone have cared less? Numerous clubs have bought their way to success, unbalancing the balanced playing field of top flight football. When I was kid, I genuinely used to think the Villa had a chance of winning the League every year. Now, such thinking would be just folly – and it’s got nothing to do with the wisdom of age, and everything to do with the level of debt swilling around in football.

So, while I agree football needs to get its house in order and apply good governance (which seems to be the watchword for tonight’s debate), I can’t help thinking it’s far too little far too late.

My wife knows nothing about technology. She doesn’t have a Facebook account and watching her search the web is more frustrating than watching Aston Villa fail to score in four successive Premier League matches.

She cares nothing for the bits and bytes of technology, like much of the world (an oft forgotten detail). But she did mention that she’d heard Apple had released some new technology.

“The Apple iPad,” I said, recognising that while she cares nothing for Steve Jobs’ latest device, she is equally unable to avoid media hype. The iPad – depending on your chosen review – is either a big phone, the greatest innovation ever (since the last Apple innovation, anyway) or the saviour of the publishing industry. Such hype suggests we’re all about to start reading books and papers on our iPads ; my wife’s response to that suggestion?

“Reading is all about relaxing, so why would anyone choose to read a computer screen?”

Quite (now get your own Facebook account and stop using mine to connect with your mates).

Football is a business. Actually, it isn’t – it’s a sport. But there’s a chance you might have forgotten, given the media’s obsession with football clubs and their cash concerns.

There’s one type of cash concern in football, like Accrington Stanley struggling to survive. And there’s another, where big clubs are struggling to stay as big clubs. Take Liverpool, for example.

Ex-footballers gracing screens with their oh-so-obvious banter keep telling the watching populace that Liverpool “simply have to qualify for the Champions League”‘ because of cash concerns and a need to attract the best players. But it’s a sport and I couldn’t give a stuff about who needs to be in a specific competition because of business issues.

Then there’s the big club justification – “Liverpool are a massive club that deserves to be in the Champions League”. Liverpool, of course, are a massive club with a “brand” (another dreadful term that has become associated to Sky-era football) that commands global recognition. Good for them. But such prestige does not mean Liverpool – or anyone else – has a divine right to be successful.

Look at Leeds, Newcastle, Nottingham Forest, Derby, Sheffield Wednesday, et al – all of whom are big clubs, finding they have no divine right to be in the top flight, never mind Europe.

Football is cyclical, you see and teams drop from the elite. Nothing is more sure. Liverpool are struggling, Manchester United have their own financial concerns – Manchester City are spending big, Spurs are on the up. Things change.

Look at the Villa. We were the biggest club in the world in the late ninteenth and early twentieth century; we were the global “brand”. Post-Second World War football in Aston has seen some high points and quite a few low points. At the minute, the Villa are thinking about being successful again. We shall see.

But no club has a right to success. And no club “has” to be in any competition, despite what the pundits would have you believe.

So, there’s this theory. I stole it (I think) from Times journalist Daniel Finkelstein. It’s a pretty good theory and allows you to see the final Premier League table months before the season ends. Sceptical? Then, let me explain.

Order the Premier League teams after they’ve played 12 games (this process is harder than it sounds, because most sites don’t allow you to look at tables retrospectively – which means you have to keep the League tables for a couple of weeks).

Once you’ve worked out the maths – and every team in the table has played 12 games – you’re left with an ordered list. And this table, give or take a place or two, is likely to be the final Premier League table. Still sceptical?

Well, I heard about the theory a couple of years ago and – give or take a bit of movement – the theory was sound. There’s normally a couple of big changes (Hull dropping like a stone last year, Spurs zooming up the League). And as I said before, you have to have an accepted error of one or two places around most teams.

Which – if you look at the table below – is either Champions League or nothing (if you’re an Aston Villa fan, like me). And it’s time to get excited if you’re a Chelsea or Spurs supporter, and time to look away if you’re a West Ham, Pompey or Wolves fan. Anyway, here’s the [predicted] final table for 2009/10 (goal difference after 12 games in brackets, followed by points):

1. Chelsea (21, 30)
2. Arsenal (21, 25)
3. Man Utd (11, 25)
4. Tottenham (6, 22)
5. Aston Villa (8, 21)
6. Man City (7, 21)
7. Liverpool (9, 19)
8. Sunderland (1, 17)
9. Stoke (-3, 16)
10. Blackburn (-9, 16)
11. Burnley (-10, 16)
12. Fulham (-1, 15)
13. Everton (-5, 15)
14. Wigan (-9, 14)
15. Birmingham (-4, 12)
16. Bolton (-11, 11)
17. Hull (-15, 11)
18. West Ham (-4, 10)
19. Wolverhampton (-10, 10)
20. Portsmouth (-8, 7)

I’ve been updating my blog. Well, actually I’ve done some of the updating. The vast amount of grunt work has been done by my good friend Jonny – he is a very decent egg. The end result of this updating process is that the blog has been moved from one platform (Mr Site) to another (WordPress).

I am currently uploading old content to WordPress. Re-publishing this old stuff in a backwards chronology is a bit like living your life in reverse style – dead features lists have been re-born, Wimbledon is still rubbish. And Aston Villa are still about 6th in the Premier League (again).

I was on holiday in Norfolk last week. Very nice it was, too. I hung around on the beach with my family and counted crocodiles with my daughter. That second bit was in a zoo, by the way – not on the beach…

Fading in and out of network coverage, I spent most of my time in East Anglia without the information conduits that provide my daily fix of Aston Villa news (the Worldwideinterweb), pointless babble from people I don’t really know that well (Twitter) and pictures of people I once knew doing REALLY CRAZY THINGS, like drinking (Facebook). I’ll be honest; I missed all that online rubbish.

I mean, it’s good to go without stuff you like once in a while. Like having a period without booze, dropping your reliance on email and web stuff can leave you feeling cleansed and healthy. My lovely wife – bored with my continual logging on – used to challenge me to have internet free days (IFDs).

I’ve done a few IFDs. They’re OK, but you spend most of the day thinking about how you can stop yourself from logging on. Which means you’re just as internet-obsessed as usual, only you’re thinking rather than actually doing.

A seven day IFS (internet free stretch) allows you to move beyond thinking/stopping/doing. There’s that first period of twitchiness, but you slowly get used to having no online access. In fact, you start to rely on other conduits; in Norfolk, I bought a newspaper every day and read it cover to cover. And I even used Ceefax on our non-digital TV. Yeah, man – old school.

Anyway, I’m back home now and the first thing I did was turn on the computer. I discovered I’d missed out on absolutely nothing, but it was nice to have ‘new faithful’ back. It’s tragic, I know. But I am a sucker for all that online crap.

Hope you had a nice Christmas. Here are my ten New Year resolutions. I can’t keep number 10 – I just have to hope it is realised. Have a good one:

1. Tidy the house regularly. Rather than just when visitors are coming.
2. Stop using the internet so much. I spend a lot of time looking at rubbish.
3. And actually phone people.
4. Eat less yeast.
5. Try and enjoy fruit.
6. Keep my beard trim. Perhaps.
7. Encourage my daughter to wear a coat. And prepare to admit defeat.
8. Get fit, or something.
9. Complete Mario Galaxy.
10. Mid-May, celebrate the Villa winning the League.