Wealth gap makes it mad to tax every PL club £50m

ABILLION quid. And he said it as if it were nothing. Maybe it is to the Government that wrote off £8.7billion in unusable PPE equipment last year. Maybe if you work with Chris Grayling, who awarded a £14million ferry contract to a company with no ferries, blithely giving people’s money away becomes second nature.

Even so, one billion. And when Nigel Huddleston, the sports minister, put that figure out there he didn’t even make the distinction between rich and poor. They were all the same, those Premier League clubs. The sovereign wealth of Manchester City and Delia Smith at Norwich. The new set of American venture capitalists moving on Chelsea, and the Bloom family historically present at Brighton.

Huddleston issued his threat to tax an extra billion from the Premier League clubs to prop up those below, with no real indication that he understood, or had even given the most cursory thought, to what that would mean across the pyramid.

For the pyramid does not simply exist throughout English football. There is a pyramid in every league, too. There are haves and have-nots, wealthy benefactors and clubs living hand-to-mouth. Stoke’s owners have wealth of roughly £7bn but play in the same league as fan-owned Luton.

Forbes estimates Peter Lim’s wealth, combined with that of the former Manchester United players who comprise the Class of ’92 and own Salford City, as just south of £2bn. That no doubt comes in handy in League Two.

So Huddleston’s threatened £1bn donation through a Government regulator would fall on 20 clubs and, as he did not state otherwise, we can only presume equally. So that’s £50m each. At Manchester United, that’s what they paid for a right back, Aaron Wan-Bissaka, in 2019.

At Newcastle, Burnley, West Ham, Norwich, Wolves, Aston Villa, Brentford, Brighton, Leeds, Watford, Crystal Palace, Southampton and Leicester, that’s more than their record signing. Often a lot more. At Norwich over £40m more; at Burnley and Brentford £35m; at Brighton £30m.

And this ignoramus thinks a Government regulator could just seize £50m from each club without destroying budgets, balance sheets, the recruitment process and, of course, competition.

For take £50m from Manchester United and they’re a new right back down. Remove it from a club such as Brentford whose record signing is Kristoffer Ajer, £14.1m from Celtic, and that is the entire transfer kitty gone. Maybe for more than one window.

Clubs could be relegated and all because slow-witted ministers think the Jack Grealish transfer epitomises Premier League spending when, in reality, Rodrigo to Leeds for a record £27m is far more representative.

Still, didn’t take long did it? The Government only made its plans known at lunchtime on Monday, Boris Johnson had barely finished his timely photo opportunity at Bury — the club that has come to represent all football, rather than being viewed as the outlier it was — when Huddleston was throwing his weight around.

The Premier League, which already gives more than £1.6bn to clubs below — albeit with half as parachute payments to the relegated — must cough up £1bn more, or the regulator would do it for them. And yet no discussion of the Champions League wealth that divorces the Super League elite from the rest every year. Why does Huddleston think West Ham blew £45m on Sebastien Haller?

The Premier League is six clubs given every financial advantage through their gilded, protected existence among Europe’s powerful cabal, and 14 straining every sinew to stay with them. To then make no distinction, to think £50m taken from Southampton is the same as £50m from Liverpool is not just financial illiteracy, it demonstrates a complete ignorance of how competition works.

It leaves the Premier League’s small fry less able to compete at the top end but ever more vulnerable to those below, who they will now literally be paying to challenge them.

Delia Smith’s wealth is roughly £27m. Yet her club Norwich would be donating to Stoke, where the owners are worth £7bn. And the party of business is championing this, do not forget. They see it as a big vote-winner, buying a round with someone else’s money.