They increase the commercial revenue in all possibly areas in and out of the ground and globally so they are putting less in themselves, creating more revenue which is going where exactly obviously given what they are doing with the players and management its not going there, so where is it going?
The thing is a club should be self sustaining, the AC Milan style model of fat cat benefactors plowing in 100's of millions of pounds of their personal wealth into a football club is dangerous, not in the short term, but in terms of the human life cycle. That money or that benefactor with all the cash and good will won't be around forever, for example if an aging Berlusconi was to have popped his clogs 5 years ago, where would Milan be now?
Its also actually happened at Nottingham Forest and the new owners have already set my alarm bells ringing by immediatley sacking Sean O Driscoll, their looking for a " legendary manager" apparently.
Mick Mcarthy was interviewed for the job. (No sniggering at the back)
It's a problem that, going back to AC Milan, have recognised and they have started to make inroads into resolving, which has culminated in the club selling two of their biggest stars this summer, all to arrest the slide of the massive losses they where making year on year. (The swiss ramble website goes into more detail than I ever could)
My point is as a fan you WANT your club to be self sustaining, you don't want to rely on some sugar daddy to prop you up year on year, the club ideally should be making enough revenue to finance the day to day runnings of a club AND still have enough left to compete in the transfer market.
Now in the days of massively over inflated transfer fees and ridiculously astronomical wages, it is forcing every football club owner and board member to make some hard choices, you need to invest in the team to improve your club, but investing too much on player x's wages could tip the finances over the edge if you don't get european football or in the case of teams like Portsmouth and Leeds, don't avoid relegation.
So where do you strike the balance?
It's a very fine line that can be crossed in the space of one season, who would have ever thought Leeds at the start of the 03/04 season would have been relegated from the Premier league? With the talent they had? Fowler, Viduka, Robinson, Milner, Kewell, Smith and Radebe, yet still it happened.
What I like about are owners is that they are TRYING to make us as competitive as possible revenue wise, TRYING to reach that sustainable cycle of a club supporting itself rather they relying on a benefactor. That is the golden goose, an entity that sustains itself so to speak.
This is what I see the owners trying to do (in my opinion) its not a bad thing, wealthy owners who plough all their money into a club only last as long as their bank balance or their life cycle, as we are seeing currently with Manchester City, but also witness the implosion of Glasgow Rangers as evidence of what happens when the well runs dry.
If FSG can get LFC to the point it can sustain its day to day running costs AND afford to net spend £20-30 million on player transfers (not including player sales) within the next ten years, then the clubs future for the next generation will be assured and as a happy coincidence we will also be competitive with the top 6 teams around us, which in turn will lead us to being competitive in Europe's premier competitions.
We have to accept at the moment, in the short term, it will take a consistent and significant over performance of the player's, manager and coaching staff to overcome the likes of the Manchester teams and Chelsea.
We are competing with Arsenal, Newcastle and Tottenham for that fourth slot in the short term. However if the owners can lay the revenue building infrastructure now AND get it correct along with keeping us competitive in the big games and cup competitions then the future will be bright, not as rosy as we would like RIGHT NOW but as fans we have needed to adjust our expectations somewhat over the last 4 years.
FSG will make mistakes, as do we all, but we need to judge them by their intentions, the direction they point the club in and their long term vision, not just their performance over the last 18 months which hasn't been perfect, but it hasn't been awful either.
Kenny's return and seeing the team win a trophy in its first full season under FSG ownership cannot be seen as a catastrophy no matter how disappointed some fans were with our league performance and transfer policies.
Adjusting our expectations in the short term is perhaps the biggest challenge our fan base has had thrust in front of us since the reign of the cancers reached its nadir, but as Macca pointed out earlier, we need to keep that vigilance we gained from that horrific experience but we also need to give the new incumbent's time and patience to let the seeds of their plan bear fruit.
That requires a significant show of faith over the next 3-4 years, its a huge challenge, but we pride ourselves on being one of the most patient and probably, best set of fans in the world, its going to be interesting to see if we can live up that name.
