How about this for dribble.

I am 54 years old & been a supporter all my life. When I was a boy you went to the match, and even the pro footballers got payed an average wage or less. The only thing that hindered or helped the club was the fitness of the players, and the quality of the training. Now look!

Manchester United’s dominance of English football, on and off the pitch, is underlined today with the release of a financial survey that shows a £45m leap in United’s year-on-year income. Thanks in large part to last season’s Premier League and Champions League double, United’s turnover grew by 21 per cent in the 2007-08 season to £257.1m.

Manchester United is by far the highest earning club in Britain, ahead of Chelsea (in second place, income £212.9m in the same period), Arsenal (£209.3m) and Liverpool (£167m).

The figures are the latest form the Football Money League report by Deloitte, it shows Real Madrid remain the world’s richest club, ahead of United in second, then Barcelona, Bayern Munich and Chelsea.

Only a drastic slump in the value of the pound has prevented United from the title of world’s richest club from Real. Real Madrid’s income for 2007-08 rose four per cent to, £289.6m when converted at the June 2008 exchange rate of £1 = 1.2632 euros.

The same exchange rate as in their previous report (£1 = 1.4856 euros, from June 2007), United’s latest income would have been 381.9m euros against Real’s 365.8m euros.

United will provide more details of their
results in due course, including data on large profits, but Chelsea are expected to remain conspicuously quiet this week about their own results.

A press conference and briefing, scheduled for Friday, has been indefinitely shelved, and it is understood that this is partly because of the sacking of Luiz Felipe Scolari. His pay-off, of around £7.5m, would not have been in the 2007-08 accounts but would have prompted embarrassing questions about Chelsea’s huge and ongoing losses.

An annual loss of £74.8m in 2006-07 on turnover of £190.5m meant the club had posted cumulative losses of £384m in four years. Haemorrhaging of money at such levels has always heaped ridicule on the long-standing claims of Chelsea’s chief executive, Peter Kenyon, that the club can break even by 2010. Yet further losses in the tens of millions are expected in the 2007-08 figures. And combined with the latest change in manager
and wobble in form (and the financial ramifications of both) any suggestions of financial self-sufficiency soon are hollow jokes, as, increasingly, are Kenyon and Roman Abramovich themselves.

As the Deloitte report points out, Chelsea’s annual income growth of 12 per cent (£22.4m) in 2007-08 was driven mainly by increased TV cash, but the club needs new successes with its match day and commercial revenues to deliver future growth and keep pace with its biggest European rivals.

See what I mean it’s all about the money, But the true fans want it all to be about the skill.

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