Portsmouth and Newcastle United summer takeovers could be disasters
With the credit crunch and the ever increasing debt in football, this summer looks set to be filled with a lot of high profile club buyouts. West Ham have recently been taken over by CB Holdings and Portsmouth and Newcastle look set to be the next clubs to be taken over in the English game. However, could these potential club changing decisions actually end up being worse in the long run than good?
Portsmouth’s expected takeover by Dr Sulaiman Al Fahim is one of the summer takeovers that could all end up in disaster. Al Fahim helped in the purchase of Manchester City last year and is the figure head again in the bid to buy Portmouth from Alexander Gaydamak. The deal will releave Portsmouth of their reported dire financial position and allow them to progress once again into Europe.
However, the timing of this purchase seems to be against Portsmouth with several key players out of contract at the end of last season. These players including Sol Campbell, Hermann Hreidarsson, Kanu and Sean Davis. All of whom were vital in their attempt to fight off relegation, but with the club unwilling to offer new contracts to players until the takeover has been completed how long will these players wait before they accept a deal at another club?
To add to Pompey’s problems Glen Johnson is expected to move to Liverpool, along with a cut price Sylvain Distan and Peter Crouch not wanting to commit himself to Portsmouth next season until the situation at the minute has been resolved and he gets answers.
If these players were to leave and look to play football elsewhere Portsmouth would be very short on numbers and would need to start desperately looking for players to balance the outgoings. You could argue that the older players wouldn’t be that hard to replace, but that’s fine if you’re letting only a couple go but Portsmouth are letting almost a whole squad go. With a total 18 players from the youth to the first team out of contract, no pernament manager and a new stadium to pay for, Portsmouth could be in for a whole lot of trouble next season and could halt their progress as a club.
The takeover is expected to go through before the start of the Transfer Window on July 1st (although Fahim’s people say that it could go into July as well), which gives Portsmouth time to replace the player, but a manager would want to bring in his own signings to the club and if the new owners decide to look to someone else and not Paul Hart, and don’t already have someone lined up, then they could miss the opening couple of weeks of the transfer window.
Then you have to consider the type of players they’d need to look at to bring in, players like Matthew Upson would be unlikely to want to take a sideways step and Miguel also unlikely to choose Portsmouth over a team in Europe in Aston Villa. In the end Pompey may have to look to Championship players and unknown foreign players who would take time to settle and to perform in the Premiership.
Stability at West Ham
Another club with a question mark over their head still is West Ham. Their recent buyout by CB Holdings is supposed to be the end of their financial trouble and no longer need to look to sell players in order to buy. However, when you look at the deal more closely you see a lot still hasn’t changed. CB Holdings is just another branch of Straumer, the previous owners of West Ham.
The difference being that CB Holdings is now completely owned by the Icelandic Government after being nationalized. Previous owner Björgólfur Guðmundsson was the owner of Straumer and by the end of his tenure as West Ham chairman, was supposed to be upto £300 million in debt. CB Holdings may not be as much in debt as Guðmundsson was but they still have debt associated with their name, but it gives the Hammers some breathing room.
With the signing of Jiminez expected to be completed later this week West Ham at least have a leg to stand on when coping with the debt, with valuable players, an almost packed staidum and a youth system always producing good players. They may not have to sell players this summer but next summer is a different story.
Newcastle United in disarray
Third on the list of high profile takeovers is Newcastle United. It’s no secret Mike Ashley wants to sell and he’s given the fans every reason for why he should sell. Singapore-based Profitable Group has confirmed its interest in launching a takeover bid for Newcastle in an expected £100 million purchase. By all acounts this is good news for Newcastle fans and the club in general, they can finally look for some stability in the club which could’ve helped them last season.
However, again the timings seem to be against Newcastle and the team. Mike Ashley will be looking to make as much money out of the club as he can after accepting a £34.4 million loss on what he paid for the club, and with the entire Newcastle team up for sale he is sure to look to this in order to fund the loss he made.
This could end up being another bad decision though, Mike Ashley doesn’t want to appoint a new manager until a deal is sorted so they can bring in their own manager, and without a manager there’s no one out there looking to replace players that Mike Ashley is selling and by the time a deal is sorted and a manager is put in place it could be too close to the start of the season to bring in anyone in the hope of boucning straight back up. Newcastle could end up in the position Leeds are in in a few years time if they don’t sort of areas of the squad quickly.
No one knows what to expect from a club after a takeover deal has been put in place. It could end up being the best thing for the club, as in Aston Villa and Randy Lerner, or the worst thing the club could do, as in Newcastle and Mike Ashley. The recession is biting into clubs hard, with many League 1 clubs and below supposed to be dangerously close to administration. Darlington being the first club to show signs of the recession at the end of last season.
Takeovers will come thick and fast over the next couple of years as owners look to cut their loses and run, and clubs as a result may end up going backwards rather than forwards as a result.
Topics: English Championship, English Premier League, Newcastle United, Portsmouth, West Ham
Football News 24/7
Matty Upson going to Portsmouth being a side ways step? Tut Tut! West Ham are a far superior club to Portsmouth you cheeky little bugger!!!:(
June 16th, 2009 @ 15:32what poorly researched rubbish. Crouch and Distin are under contract and going nowhere. Davis, campbell and Hreidarrson have been offered deals. Davis has decided to move on and good luck. We have a manager lined up and transfers lined up. even so we should have 8 weeks to sign a few players. the 18 out of contract contains 3 first teamers, two of whom are over 35, and a lot of expensive dead wood who never play, which gives the new manager a clean slate to work with. Your analysis is cobblers.
June 16th, 2009 @ 15:34Mike Ashley has been the worst thing to happen to Newcastle United in its entire 127 year history. His drawn out departure just prolongs the misery and increases the odds that we go the way of Leeds United.
June 16th, 2009 @ 15:43which manager have you lined up then?
June 16th, 2009 @ 15:44This sounds like the same derisory drivel spouting from the sun newspaper regarding PFC. They call it an exclusive – mainly because no-one bar a few gullible souls (hint) give any credence to it. Mike is right in all he says – as to the itchyvertigo comment – wait and see,like everybody else!!
June 16th, 2009 @ 15:55You do realise that Johnson is the best player in his position in the country and his talent is wasted not playing champions league which can also only benefit the national football team as well.
Therefore the following comment of yours makes about as much sense as if you have said nothing :
“To add to Pompey’s problems Glen Johnson is expected to move to Liverpool”
Surely to god you can actually print something better than this
June 16th, 2009 @ 16:17@mike hall
Can you please inform me what was poorly researched in the comments you are referring to? Not once did I say Distin and Crouch were out of contract. Distin has been connected to rumours of a cut price deal to Liverpool with only a year left on his contract and Crouch has made comments recently about not being happy with the lack of information and is also being linked with a move away. Plus about the 18 players, I didn’t say they were all first team players I said ’18 players from the youth to the first team’. Whether it’s dead wood or not 18 players are a lot of players who could possible leave.
June 16th, 2009 @ 18:19‘The takeover is expected to go through by July 1st’ where have you got that from? I haven’t seen that, as far as I am aware and what has been stated all along is it will go through in the summer, no exact dates, is this so on July 1st you can right another inflammatory article when it doesn’t go through? You even counter act your own statement by saying his people think it could go on longer, so who said before July 1st? A ‘news’paper ‘source’? ‘his people’?
Also Kanu ‘key in the relegation survival’ what do you base that on, he has hardly played this season. Crouch asking questions about long term ownership isn’t really the same as refusing to commit himself, I am sure you could probably find articles of him saying how much he liked it at Portsmouth too BUT hey that don’t get you your site hits does it. He has 3 years left on his contract and I can’t imagine Crouch going on strike or refusing to play unless he gets a move – so unless we decide to sell him its not an issue.
We do have a lot of players out of contract but Campbell, Davis and Herman are the only 3 that have featured lately.
All we ask for is a balance in reporting not Armageddon tabloid sensationalism.
June 16th, 2009 @ 19:33Possibly the worst written tosh I’ve had to read. Just rehashed paper nonsense. The bit about Newcastle’s owner Mike Ashley doesn’t make any sense at all… and what the hell have you got against that Pompey lot?? Sun readers like you shouldn’t be given pens or keyboards, then you’d be a lot less dangerous.
June 16th, 2009 @ 19:56Really – where is this article is going. A disaster if this takeover goes through? Compared to, say, no takeover? Not sure how “could these potential club changing decisions actually end up being worse in the long run than good.”
Shame on you Mark Harrison for such a load of drivel.
these potential club changing decisions actually end up being worse in the long run than good?
This does seem to be another piece of Pompey negative journalsim
June 16th, 2009 @ 20:10@ Hedge159
How is highlighting the facts negative journalism?
June 17th, 2009 @ 13:01“Can you please inform me what was poorly researched in the comments you are referring to? Not once did I say Distin and Crouch were out of contract. Distin has been connected to rumours of a cut price deal to Liverpool with only a year left on his contract and Crouch has made comments recently about not being happy with the lack of information and is also being linked with a move away.”
You go on to say that if they move on we could be short of numbers. As they are under contract, they won’t move anywhere until the takeover is completed and we decide we don’t need them any more. Therefore, it is irrelevant. The takeover will conclude and we will decide if we want them any more or can do better.
“Plus about the 18 players, I didn’t say they were all first team players I said ‘18 players from the youth to the first team’. Whether it’s dead wood or not 18 players are a lot of players who could possible leave.”
So taking out the three first teamers the other 15 don’t play for us. IN what way is it a bad thing if they leave? Djimi Traore was on 22k a week, Lauren a reported 40k per week.
The people running and buying Pompey are not stupid you know. Peter Storrie was saying only last night that we have transfer and managerial targets lined up and ready to roll when the deal is done. Bear in mind al-Fahim signed Robinho on the first day at City.
The whole premise of the article is wrong. If our takeover does NOT go through we have a problem. WHEN it does we should have 8 weeks of the window left and a core of players that includes James, Distin, Kaboul, Belhadj, Mullins, Hughes, Diop, Kranjcar, Crouch, Utaka and Nugent, plus some kids like Matt Ritchie and Crainie, the England U21 right back. SO we need to add five or six players and get some loan in. So what?
June 17th, 2009 @ 15:14