Football Madness

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Ellis Cashmore, professor of culture, media and sport at Staffordshire University, says that many Premier League clubs are "spectacularly inept" as businesses: "In many cases, wage bills are 110% of turnover. You don't need Micawber logic to realise the result is misery. But banks seem prepared to prop them up on condition that they prune costs."

Cashmore imagines a bank manager and a club owner in conversation. The manager tells the owner the club is £10m in debt and must minimise its outgoings.

"We're opting for a cheaper supplier of food for the executive boxes and giving them supermarket wine," the owner says. "We're outsourcing the programme publisher, using poor quality paper and adding 20p to the price and we're paying our cleaners rock-bottom wages."

The manager points out that the footballers' wage bill is more than £100m. "Yes, but they're different," the owner says. "If we don't pay them, their agents will just take them to a rival club."

"Fair enough," says the manager. "Pay your players as much as it takes. But screw the cleaners."

Meanwhile dont know about Chelsea but the salary package of Ivan Gazidis, Arsenal's chief executive, which in 2012-13 was £1.925m. Daniel Levy, executive chairman of London's other underachieving Premier League football club, was paid £2.2m in 2011-12, the year of the club's most recently published accounts. The package was paid by Spurs's parent company, Enic International, which is registered in the Bahamas, is tax exempt, and owned by currency trader Joe Lewis, then recharged to Spurs.