With Manchester United winning the Premier League with games to spare and Aston Villa suffering the worst season in decades, the difference between the two conurbations’ footballing achievements has never been more stark. Professor John Samuels , of the University of Birmingham and author of The Beautiful Game is Over investigates why.
So now we know Manchester United will finish this season as Premier League champions, and Manchester City will be runners up. The positions were reversed in the previous season.
Where are the clubs from Birmingham, the city which likes to think of itself as Britain’s second city?
Aston Villa have finished this season fighting for their Premier League survival, as they did the previous term. Birmingham City were once again a mid table club in the second tier of football – only West Bromwich Albion, the club with a small part of its grounds in Birmingham, were a team the region could be proud of.
The relative status of football in the two cities has not always been like this. Not that long ago, in 1980/81, Aston Villa were champions of the old first division. In that year there were five West Midland clubs in the top tier. In 1982 Aston Villa won the European Cup, and in the first year of the Premier League they finished second.
Why have things changed so dramatically? Will the position in the future be any better for the Birmingham clubs?
Unfortunately the answer to the second question is no. The present competitive imbalance in the game will get worse.
Success in the football business now depends on access to money because winning on the pitch in the long run depends on attracting the best players.
The best players, with the help of their agents, receive the highest wages and all the evidence shows that a club’s position in the Premier league at the end of a season is very closely correlated with the size of the club’s wage bill.
Given a club’s expenditure on wages it is possible to predict with reasonable accuracy that club’s final league position.
In the three years (starting in 2007/08) when Aston Villa finished sixth in the Premier League, their wage bill was the seventh highest in the league.
In 2010/11 they still had the seventh highest wage bill, and finished in ninth place. But other clubs were overtaking them in terms of the size of the annual revenue they could generate.
Villa could not afford to continue to pay the 2010/11 wage levels – 90 per cent of their annual revenue was spent on salaries. They decided that in order to survive they needed to downsize, to reduce their wage bill, and as would be predicted they slid down the league table.
Can their stated plan of developing a youthful and progressive squad bring them success? The fans would hope so, but the evidence is not encouraging.
The plan might have worked in the past when there was a maximum wage and perhaps players were more loyal before the Bosman ruling. Now clubs find it hard to keep their good young players.
They can be lured away by the high wages being offered by the handful of elite clubs who need to build up their squads in order to be able to compete in lucrative competitions.
The new UEFA Financial Fair Play rules and the proposed Premier League Financial rules will not help restore competitive balance. In fact they could well make the inequality worse.
The rules favour the existing elite clubs, they will entrench the top clubs dominance. The half baked Premier League regulations will hit smaller clubs proportionately more than the large clubs.
They will not help the Birmingham clubs to break into the elite group.
The reason the Midland clubs cannot afford to pay higher wages is because they cannot generate a high enough annual revenue and they cannot attract a needed “benefactor.”
In 2010/11 Manchester United’s annual revenue was £331 million, Aston Villa’s was £92 million, and that of West Bromwich Albion £59 million and Birmingham City £56 million. This is a very big difference, and this can only become even greater.
In 2011/12 Manchester United generated £117 million from commercial and merchandising; more than that year’s annual revenue of Aston Villa from all sources, including match day receipts and TV income.
If the new Premier League rules are introduced commercial income will become more significant. It is not proposed to control how increases in income from this one source are spent, and they could well be spent on higher wages.
Like it or not, football is now primarily about making money. The fans do not like it, but the owners and players clearly do. Football clubs are now primarily vehicles, either for selling products or for increasing the status of the owners.
The success of a club is dependent on the annual revenue it can attract or on the money put into the club by the owners.
There are three main sources of annual revenue, commercial and sponsorship, television and other media, and matchday receipts.
The Midland clubs are not good vehicles for selling products either globally or nationally and so have lagged behind with sponsorship, the TV income from Premier League games is reasonably well distributed but of course the Midland clubs have not benefited from the TV income from European games and their home grounds are quite small and not often full.
For various reasons the Midland clubs have not attracted the ‘right’ type of wealthy investor.
Why have the Birmingham clubs been left behind by their Manchester rivals and does it matter? It would have been very difficult to keep up with Manchester United: those running the club from the 1950s made some wise decisions in terms of investment in people and property.
Even they, however, have come close at times to some disastrous decisions over managerial appointments, near dismissals and new owners.
Manchester City’s success can be put down to luck, but in truth it was more than that.
When Sheikh Mansour purchased the club in 2008 he gave as two of his reasons for buying that particular club the fact that they already had the use of a large modern stadium, and the fact that the name Manchester was, all around the world, associated with sporting success.
Manchester City had the use of a stadium – paid for largely with £78 million of lottery money and £49 million of Manchester City Council funds – because those who governed Manchester City Council were being smarter (or more willing to take risks) than those who managed Birmingham City Council.
They attracted the Commonwealth Games to Manchester. They said the Games would be self-financing, they were not.
The leaders of Birmingham’s council had tried for a long time to add to their global image, by being known as a city for sport, and to be home for a world class stadium or arena.
They bid for the 1982 Commonwealth Games. In 1986 they were selected ahead of London and Manchester to bid for the 1992 Olympics – but failed in the final selection round.
They were beaten in 1990 by Manchester in the choice of the UK city to bid for the 1996 Olympics, Manchester failed to obtain the Olympics, but the experience gained was important in helping them attract the 2002 Commonwealth Games. These games boosted that city’s profile, as well as resulting in a number of modern sports facilities.
Perhaps risk taking is the key to the success of the one city and not the other. Birmingham’s council leaders must be given great credit for regenerating the city, in particular, the Symphony Hall, the ICC, the NIA and the NEC. But since then they have had little success.
With Centenial money Birmingham built Millennium Point – which few people visit.
In Manchester or close by was built the Lowry Gallery and the Imperial War Museum.
Manchester has 37 kilometres of tramway, Birmingham have yet to build one kilometre. Birmingham does have a new library costing £190 million, but the Manchester area has attracted the BBC and now has the very impressive National Football Museum. Birmingham has talked about building a major sports stadium but for various reasons little has happened.
To return to football, the main responsibility for the failure of the Birmingham clubs must lie with those who have made decisions at club level over the last 50 years.
They have failed to cash in on the phenomenal growth in interest in the game globally and to benefit from being based in a city with the second largest population in the country.
The leadership has at various times been bad, and has at most times been prudent.
The failure of the Birmingham clubs does matter, not just to football fans.
It is a missed opportunity to promote the city, to help build up the brand name. The new plans to promote Birmingham emphasise the cultural aspects of the city and its heritage.
What of the competition? Liverpool is already promoting itself as having been a ‘European City of Culture’ and it is now a UNESCO World Heritage City with it is claimed “an unbelievable music and sporting heritage.”
A new study on Greater Manchester has revealed that in 2010/11 football contributed around £330 million in gross value-added to that region’s economy.
The leader of the council referred to “the enormous contribution to the life of the city “made by the football clubs” in a global environment where we are competing with the cities around the World for investment and jobs, this is an enormous competitive advantage.”
The leader of the Birmingham City Council could not at present make the same claim.
Will a future leader be able to do so?
The image of the City of Birmingham could be better.
The perception of the city is not good, partly perhaps because of a bias in the London based media. If the football clubs had been successful, there would be more pride in the region, there would be more glamour.
Like it or not sporting success would increase the value of the brand name. Birmingham is not associated with success. Unfortunately as far as football is concerned it is now too late.
There is not competitive balance in the game.
The European Fair Play rules and the talked about Premier League wage controls will not help close the gap.
The clubs that are now rich will continue to be able to spend more on wages than the other clubs.
The Premier League proposals, if accepted, will help maintain the status quo. That is why the elite clubs are happy to embrace them.
Birmingham will remain a second class city as far as sport is concerned – unless there is an unexpected black swan event.
