The Gilded Glass Ceiling: How PSR & Capital Loops Lock England's Cartel in Power

Welcome to the Athletic FC podcast with me, Kate Mason. After Villa in Newcastle, I've seen their scores torn apart this summer. Today we'll be looking at the Premier League's competitive balance and asking why clubs hoping to challenge in the Premier League have to sell in order to compete. Here to get into this with us. In studio, I'm joined by the Athletic Senior News reporter Matt Slater. Hello, Matt. Hello, how are you? Very well, thank you. Lovely shirt. This is a debut look for you. I have worn it a couple of times before. I haven't worn it for a while because it's quite hot and it's actually cool when I got up this morning in Maxfield and it was perfect. Walking from Houston to here, I'm a bit hot and sweaty, so I perhaps should have left it a few more weeks. Thank you for taping the shirt in this. The heated arena of this studio and down the line, the big man in the big apple. In New York, we have reigning sports journalists of the year. Adam Crofton, good to see you, Adam. Hello. Thank you for wearing that shirt for me, Matt. It's very nice of you to dress up. No, it was for you, Adam. I noticed you haven't reciprocated it. No, we're still early here, so it's still a coffee run t-shirt kind of weather, I would say. Crofton in pajamas here every Thursday. That's the kind of thing that you can enjoy on Thursday's show, on the athletic FC. Matt and Adam are going to be with us every week, it's all most weeks. Anyway, I don't want to commit you to not ever having a holiday again talking about the big stories in the athletic studio. What are you looking forward to getting into most on this, Matt? Well, we're probably talking about the business of football, so that could be anything from kind of takeovers. There's an awful lot of football clubs for sale. Why? Why is that? Who's buying them? Why are some of them taking so long to be sold? Those are sort of issues that I'm interested in, but of course there's a load of politics floating around. People may have picked up on this fever issue. The man at the top has had a bad month, so I think we'll probably talk a little bit about that as well, but it's the start of a new season. There's a lot of new things about the season. They've got new financial rules, new managers. We're going to have a new champion, probably not. I think we'll be okay for topics. It's going to be predicting the primary league champion right off the bat. We're not sure about that. Adam, what are you looking forward to getting into in the next couple of weeks? Well, next couple of weeks think we'll be loads because we're going to have this big, we've got kind of three weeks of premier league and then we have kind of six months of international games between September, October, November, which gives a lot of space for different things. If people have ideas who are listening that they'd like us to talk about, they could also, I guess, put those into the comments, but I think that the most exciting things tend to be the things we don't know yet, and the things that will happen that we will react to, which sounds like a cop out, but it's also true. Let's get into what we're going to be discussing in the main today, then, a premier league competitive balance, and it's really been put into the spotlight by Astamilus' hectic late summer transfer trading. Now, they, of course, won the upper league and then finished fourth last season, but then Yuri Telemann's look at Dina, Morgan Rogers, and Ezri Konser have all been sold, and this week there have been even more deals that David Ornstein and Jacob Tanswell have been across, including Wally Watkins heading to Al Hilal, Nicholas Jackson coming in as a replacement. They've also been making offers for Crystal Palaces, Jean-Philippe Matetta, and by Levercuzin's Christian Coffan, we're reporting as well, this is a big eight. They're in talks to Sign Raffer layout from Milan, and Emmy Martinez has been offered to Chelsea. It's a massive list, Adam. It feels frantic just reading it out. How does it feel with the club? Well, there's two ways of looking at it. One way of looking at it is you've still got probably probably our tetra aside, maybe level, you know, the best manager in the league. So you've kept the most important person at the club, and he has committed there for quite a long time. So you could say, you know, there were a squad that had been together a long time that needed some regeneration that they've got good fees for players who are in their late 20s, mostly apart from Rogers, or sort of entering their 30s. That'll be good for the wage bill. You can sign younger players again with resale value. That's all the model. The other way of looking at it is a team that are just one of the Europa League that's in the Champions League has had its heart ripped out, and has been stopped from going from kind of, I guess, level three to level two to level one by what they might argue are, you know, a set of rules over time that inhibit progress that make you hit a glass ceiling. I think that conversation goes beyond Villa, Newcastle maybe feel that way as well. There's been other teams over the years that do, and then at the same time, they see these very, very big rich clubs, Chelsea, Tottenham, with kind of more historic build-up of revenues, be able to have some really terrible seasons and still go out and spend a fortune. So that's kind of the very simple argument. There's nuances to it, but I think that is how probably a lot of Villa and Newcastle fans in particular feel about the way the Premier League's been run. Okay, so to drill into that second point there about the big six and the way they've been able to dominate this league, perhaps not in performance terms, if you're thinking about Tottenham at the moment, have been called the Cartel in the context of how they managed to have this dominance and spend this money, and perhaps teams like Villa have to balance the books more carefully. You spoke with Premier League Chief Executive Richard Masters last week ahead of the season. What does he think about the competitive balance issue? Well, it's a tough one for him to answer. I think he finds these questions difficult at the best of times because I'm not here to defend him carte blanche, but he works for the clubs. He's not the NFL commissioner, he's not a kind of main character, he's not meant to be. He very rarely speaks on the record for a start, that's a big clue. And his job is to sort of do what the clubs want him to do. And this story we have with financial fair play rules is quite an old story now. They kind of reintroduced in about 2010-2011, UEFA did it first, and I've just remembered why they did it, and the Premier League quickly copied. At the time, there was widespread concern around insolvencies in the game. I'm talking about cross-Europe, but in our own country, Portsmouth, the Premier League Club, Rangers, a very, very big brand, one of the founding members of the Champions League back in the 90s. Both of those had insolvencies, and the other big concern was the amount of money clubs, old tax authorities across Europe, basically football was using the public purse as a kind of interest-free overdraft. So that's where we start. So we have financial rules. The clubs decide we have financial rules, and don't forget a lot of the owners are coming from the states where there is an assumption that you're going to make some money, that this is a proper business, that the owner does not just repeatedly put their hand in their pocket, as we seem to have decided that is exactly what the owners for, and that's the starting point. Okay, so just remember that in your anger, and I'll also add one more caveat, that yes, both Villa and Yucas are at the moment or on the wrong side. They're the aggrieved party at the moment. I understand both their cases that completely do, but we have seen so many clubs, and we could do a whole pod on a list of clubs that have had amazing looking owners, wave of Chinese money, a Saudi prince, a Gulf, whatever, an oligarch, who was amazing, and was good for it, and so they weren't. And what did they leave behind? They left the club that was running too hot, and was immediately plunging to crisis. So those are things, I think you have to have that in the back of your mind about what the regulators of the game, the Premier League, your Afer and so on, so are trying to do with these rules. So to go to Adam's point, we have the rules, the financial fair play, they were pretty much stacked in the big clubs favour. One's with historic fan bases, global revenues, big stadiums. What that meant was that they were, they could have a bad season or two. Everybody else, you know, your broadcast money is basically performance related. The higher you finish up the table, the more money you get, the more you qualify for the Champions League. Right, so that is the performance rated bit. The big, the cartel, if you like, the elite clubs, they can have a few bad years because they have big commercial revenues, big stadiums. So right now, Newcastle and Villa are that club, they're the clubs that say, well, we're disruptor clubs. We have owners who are good for it. We have repeatedly, particularly Villa, four years in a row of European competition, you know, Europa League champions. And they're saying, well, what more can we do? Right. Spurs have just gone back to back seven teams. They're rubbish. We've massively outperform them. They did win the Euro. Okay, so yeah, okay, the year before. So that's for enough. But, you know, they're okay. That's a good point. But the point is, back to back seven teams. And look what they've been able to do, you know, Ternarly, Fernandez, etc., etc. You know, they've absolutely gone big. Whereas Villa have been running basically a neutral net spend for a few seasons now. Now, Villa's problem, of course, is they've been paying big wages. They've been the seven biggest wage bill. But it does look like, if you're a Villa fan, there is a structural obstacle, which if we were talking about banking, IT, any other service, any other sector would be a massive problem. How do you allow a new company that is doing well to burst through this glass ceiling? Because if there is a structural obstacle, that's a problem. That means your sector is broken. Instinctively, you'd say, but it's probably not right that incredibly wealthy owners should come in and be able to immediately spend their way in if these clubs have been... But if it's a good for it. If it's a sovereign wealth fund, if it's a couple of billionaires, which Villa's owners are, you know, there's an argument to say, let them spend, right? Great for tax revenues. The Premier League kicks out huge tax receipts for our country. It's an amazing soft power export. So the argument would go, this is fine. Let them go. But then the counter-argument is all the things I said at the beginning. We need some safeguards. We do need to worry about some competitive balance and blah, blah, blah, blah. Villa, at the moment, I think of the two. And there's been some clubs before this, Leicester and West Ham, who've been sort of banging up against the glass ceiling. But Villa, I think it just seems particularly egregious because they've been good for a few years in a row now. And they are really struggling with this sort of net spend issue. And they have been gutted this year. What they need to do, and what people like Richard Masters would say is that our rules do allow aspiration. You just got to do it smart. You just got to do it gradual. You've got to basically expand your stadium, expand your commercial revenues. It will come in time. I just think Villa fans are thinking, well, it was done four years in a row and we're still seeing clubs like Spurs, you know, pillage our team. Yeah, I suppose Adam, it's not like they're buying Danny McNamara from Charlton, is it? You know, they're still being linked with Raffa Liao and, you know, with respect to Danny McNamara. But you take my point. So I talk to me about your perspective on this. Yeah, I think what's particularly sort of unfair for Villa is basically, you know, when Richard Masters, for example, hypothetically says you need to be really, you basically need to be the smartest guys in the room in order to get on. What that kind of ignores is that clubs like Manchester United, arguably Chelsea, maybe Manchester City over the last 18 months with some of the ways they're transfers have gone have kind of been allowed to be the dumbest guys in the room and get to have another go, get to have another go, get to have another go. There's no consequence, basically, over time for bad decisions, unless you are one of those clubs that is growing and emerging. So, you know, Manchester United can buy, you know, Alexis Sanchez, Paul Pogba, who, whichever mistake you want to talk about for the last 10, 15 years, and then they get to do it again the next summer. If Aston Villa were to make deals like that, they are like once in a three or four years that they can do a summer like that. I mean, Tottenham's going to be interesting in the sense of what they've done this summer is that they're once in a blue moon splurge, or are they going to be able to do it again next summer because of where the commercial revenues go? Lovely use of blue moon, there's a little pun for the careful listener. But would you not, again, this is talking about building to the future. Some clubs we've seen have these peaks and troughs of buying as you're discussing, I think, Adam. But equally, if we talk about business generally, would you not say that the name of a brand in business, more in more general business people do get to die. If they build a blue chip brand, that is something that they can use to attract better talent, even if they're not performing you on yet. Of course, but it's different when you're saying you cannot spend, or there will be consequences. It's basically saying you cannot go into the market and compete at that level. I'm taking that sort of a bit of an extreme, and it's not quite as severe as that, but you're kind of being told you can't kick on. I think that's the frustration. I think the other thing that makes it difficult is the Premier League would point to look at what Brighton have done, look at what Bournemouth have done, look at what Brentford have done, the bees, the bloody bees. They are simultaneously like a blessing and a curse, they're a blessing in the sense of what they do is brilliant. But they also don't appear to have aspirations actually to go and win the Premier League. Their aspiration appears to be where they are, between 5th and 10th, for them is a great season every year. There's nothing wrong with that, but what they don't have is that potential because of the way these rules are kept to actually go that one step further, borrowing a miracle season. I think that's where a team like a villa, maybe Newcastle a couple of years ago before their models started to change a bit, would kick back and say, how do we go further? But I don't know if you agree. Do you think that's fair, Matt? Yeah, I do. I just want to go about to care your point. They've always been big clubs, right? I remember Plattini talking about this when he brought financial fair play, and the people of other people since have made the same point as well. City clubs started beating town clubs in the 50s and 60s. Once you started saying you can keep the gate receipts. Once upon a time, it was the clubs of the biggest stadiums used to win, and then it was the clubs in the biggest leagues because they had the biggest TV revenues and blah, blah, blah, blah. So this is not a new thing, but far bit from me to big up, another podcast, a rival. But there's this one called The Rest Is Something Or Other. I don't know, but they got a lucky hit earlier this week. They managed to get Alex Ida Severin, who's the UEFA boss of Alice the Campbell. I've never heard of it. Some guy interviewed. I didn't know what he was talking about, but anyway, Severin was so good. There was so much material, and he was asked about financial fair play, and he made this point. Look, closing the gaps from the bigger leagues is hard. It's difficult. It's basically impossible under EU competition law. But he said, stopping the gaps from getting too much bigger is what we've been trying to do. Now, I think, you know, that's more debatable. I can sort of see that that's kind of what they're trying to do at UEFA level. But he's acknowledging that we are not talking about North American style kind of gaming the system, sharing the talent round. Like you came last last year, you get the best player this year through the Jaff draft. You know, big city club in New York and LA, you are sharing your money with Green Bay and Oklahoma City, small marketplaces. That's what we're doing. That's socialism in North American sport. We're not doing that over here. So these measures are difficult. And I think that kind of gradual that idea that you can get that by being smart and Adam's absolutely right. And I think it is frustrating if you are a villa or any of those kind of disrupt our clubs, we have to be perfect. We can't make mistakes in the transfer window. So that I get, but it's really interesting to me that villa are expanding their stadium. They've been looking really hard on that. They're doing the North stand now. And if we do just to, you know, I'll just, you know, just to make a point because I'll be talking fans getting frustrated now because we haven't said it. They did, basically as an institution, spend an awful lot of time, effort and money addressing a really important issue. They're stadium. They have the best stadium in the country. They're possibly the, you know, one of the best stadiums in the world in terms of a football stadium. And that is what is insulating them from their rubbish football team. Yeah, and not just good for football, but also you can host. Yeah. JC. Yeah. Exactly. Grace of that you've mentioned North American controls. Because we actually have one we made earlier. We have North American. We have North American. We can bring into the studio. The athletics Hanuman Villa, great to see you. Hosted the athletics world cup streaming show with Amazon during the World Cup is so good to have you over from the States. I'm thrilled to be here. It's so fun to see the studio set up and actually be here where the magic happens. Yeah, you've been here for the start of the Premier League season. What are you up to with the athletic? I am helping cover essentially football over here in the Premier League for the American fan who just got into it after the World Cup. So I've, I've loosely followed the Premier League, maybe like someone over here would follow the NFL kind of know the teams know who wins each year. But after the World Cup, I was like, I want to follow this. I really want to get into this. I want to know what's going on. Understand the finances, the culture, the teams. So I've come over here sort of as an avatar for our audience to learn more from the experts here about the Premier League and about how international club soccer works. So I'm very excited. I know a lot about finances over in the States for the NFL, the NBA, the MLB, but I'm finding out so much about how differently it works in ways I never would have expected. So well, it'd be great to get your take on some of what we were just discussing them because we're talking today. Our topic is kind of competitive balance. But of course, the controls, the spending controls is a question that we're discussing. Now that's something that we see a lot of in the US in sports. Oh, yes. Each league has its own rules about spending controls. But most leagues in the States have salary caps. I'm sure you're familiar with that and things like that to help keep parity in the leagues. NFL has a lot of parity. Part of it is because if you lose, you get a good draft pick. So we're rewarded for losing, which I think is quite controversial over here. But I am curious that Major League Baseball is the only league in the States that doesn't have a salary cap. Some people say that doesn't affect parity because of other rules, but look at the LA Dodgers. I mean, it's kind of crazy over there. So I'm curious if you could walk me through. The Premier League doesn't have something like a salary cap. What are the ways for an American to understand if there are safeguards for parity or if that's not even a concern? I'll have a crack at that. Okay. We could literally do an hour on the Premier League that people would stop listening after about five minutes on the Premier League's rules. We don't have a hard salary cap. It's funny that actually the English football league right now is trying something in leagues, league one and two. So the third and fourth tier, which isn't even a hard cap, it's still a soft cap. So it's kind of percentage of your revenues. And the players union here are going to sue them. It's very, very hard to get anything like that, you know, through. So what we do have is we have what we would call a soft cap. So it's not a here's a number. I know in the States, everything is revealed. You know, there's flaws, there's ceilings. A first year player is going to learn this to draft. We don't do any of that. None of that. What we're saying is you can spend a percentage and it's 85% in the Premier League of your turnover. So you know, match tickets, broadcast commercial revenue, sponsorships, and also an average of your player trading profits, you know, because we mind cell players, we don't trade them. So that's all the money you've got coming in. You can spend up to 85% of that on your, on what you're putting on the field, your player wages, your coaches wages, this is the complicated bit, your amortized transfer. So just think about how you would, how you would account for a transfer. So basically your transfer is spent. So that's what we do. Now, just a one little wrinkle in teams that play in Europe are operating under a same system, but with a smaller percentage. Europe's stricter. You can only spend 70%. Got it. Okay. Okay. Makes sense. So that doesn't make sense. Don't say it makes sense. I understand what you're saying. It's different, but it doesn't make sense. That is kind of wild. So there isn't really a way. I guess that is the only rule to try to keep parity between teams. If you're not in Europe, you get to use a little bit more, but you're going to have less. Correct. Okay. Okay. I'm actually curious. I know that clubs over here operate a lot more to break even level than say sports in America, which are huge, huge for profit. I'm curious why we've seen so many American owners come in and buy teams here. If it's sort of, what is the draw? I think Adam should ask this one because he's an honorary in America. Yeah. Why are they buying this product? Well, as with certain industries, they see a lot of growth still, even in something that seems to be already having grown quite a lot. They see, although you're absolutely right, many of these clubs make significant losses. Very few are profitable on a yearly basis. So on the surface, you would say, why would you want to buy a business that keeps losing money? Why are you investing in a business that keeps losing money? Where you have to put in a lot of your own money in order to sustain it. And also, if you don't put in tons of your own money, you are seen as cheap and abused by fans both in real life and on the internet. If you're not prepared to go and spend $70 million pounds out of your own pocket on a midfield doing the last few days of pretty arbitrary trading periods as well, which creates a lot of pressure, both to sell and to buy. Now, I think the argument that I might give your take on this as well, I guess, as to why Americans are investing in this club has probably changed a bit over time. I think now, with just to use the catchal term of the way that AI is going and the impacts that that may have on so many industries, I think sports is seen rightly or wrongly, particularly live sport, as something that is robust, resilient, that will continue where interest will only get bigger. There's the pretty kind of San Francisco AI bubble argument of, oh my god, people aren't going to have to work as hard. They're going to have so much time. They're just going to spend all their money on sport and watching sport, which kind of ignores the fact we may not all have any money to actually pay for the thing, but by that point, but that is one of the arguments that you'll see on going round on LinkedIn and things like that. Then there is just the point of valuations and how valuations have risen. When you look at what Fenway Sports Group, owners of the Red Sox in the States, spent to buy Liverpool a few hundred million back in sort of 20, was it 20 early 2010s, and now we're talking about valuations with the Bezos buy-in and Savarin buy-in of around what five to six billion. You can see that growth over time, and if you run something smartly, there are terms that you can get. Those are a couple of the arguments at the moment, and then the other bit is rich people love buying things, and they love buying things that are scarce. There's only a handful of superclubs in the world. We get to see a club and it will take a big change to their presidential systems for like Real Madrid and Barcelona to ever go properly on the market. The scarcity of owning a Real Madrid or Manchester United, etc. So that puts you, you can't be knighted in the States because you chose to break away from us a long time ago. So foolish. But what you can do is own one of the biggest sports teams on the planet, and so I think those are probably the three things that stand out to me as to why people are still doing it. And to Adam's point about being able to have something that's rare, we obviously have spoken in the past about the concept of sports washing. I'm not necessarily calling it that here, but there are questions about perhaps they see the fun time that Ryan Reynolds, etc., having a rectum and think, well, that looks like a nice way to create a lot of goodwill in a whole new space, man. Absolutely. I'm seeing reasons why people buy sports teams, and many of them are the same as the reasons they're buying them in the States as well. It's fun. It's quite cool. These people are competitive. Sometimes it's giving something back to where they're from. Sometimes it is more, you know, they're either washing their reputations, you know, because of something that their country has done or their business does, they might have a BDI on the property assets, loads of different reasons. I think there's one that other that we haven't mentioned that this works on both sides of the Atlantic. It's really tax-efficient for these billionaires. You can get so you can get to like run, you can basically run these companies as if they're lost making, even in the States where they're not lost making. Right. They do that. And you can write off their hell of a lot of tax. Right. Exactly. I'd love to be able to write off a hell of a lot of tax on that. I'm curious if you have any input on the whole Mark Walter situation, selling the Lakers. Is that going to affect Chelsea or is he such a minority owner? It doesn't matter. Well, we have been talking about and we've written about it and we think it's fascinating. He also owns a part of the cricket team here, which is a small investment. He owns an F-1 team as well. So it's a big issue on both sides of the Atlantic. We realize that the focus is the dodges. Of course, we do because it's one. It's his favorite club. It's, you know, it's they're making the weather right in baseball. They're the sort of topics. So we get that. He is a minority owner at Chelsea and he's been a pretty quiet one. He's very close to your line with Todd Bowley as he is on your side of the Atlantic too. They are selling. They are. They might not be, you know, they might have a sales sign outside. They might be probably talking about it, but there's absolutely no doubt that they are getting out. And they really only have one buyer, which is their partners at Chelsea, Clear Lake. Oh, right. Now, I think the fascinating thing there is our Clear Lake, going to say, oh, sorry, Mr. Partner, you seem to have a little bit of trouble back at home. We're going to give you a really nice price for your shares, right? Or are they going to say, yeah, you're a distressed asset. We're going to absolutely screw you because you must sell. Yeah, I would think that. Right. But there ain't. But I would as well. But here's the interesting thing. Yeah. The Chelsea investment is not going very well for any one. Clear Lake have their own problems. They're a private equity fund. There is a danger. They send a message out to the market. The optics are, we bought in at two and a half million. We now just buying, picking up these shares here at a valuation of a billion, billion and a half. What does that suggest for how this investment has gone? So I think there's quite a bit of a balancing act going on there as to how much Clear Lake is going to take advantage of the situation. Right. Well, great to see you, Hannah. I hope you've enjoyed your trip to London and we'll speak to you very soon. Thank you so much. A pleasure to be here. It's what we've been talking about so far in the show as centered around the Premier League. The goal for teams like Aston Velo and Yucasa is, of course, to try and not only become challenges in the Premier League, but also then consolidate regular Champions League appearances. And it feels as though we've seen Adam a real concentration of Premier League clubs trading among themselves with the additional kind of boosting cost that that seems to relate to. How much of a concern is that for the wider European game? I think it's a disaster for the wider European game, to be honest. I don't know if it is a trend that is going to continue. If it's just a moment in time where there is, I think there's a couple of reasons for it. One is that a lot of the, particularly the Inverse and Commerce big Premier League teams have become quite distrusting of kind of basically taking punts from abroad. I don't mean foreign players here. I mean, players who are playing, you know, abroad. And obviously there's major exceptions to that with, you know, really sort of big name players like Barcola from PSG that's going to go to Liverpool, possibly Alvarez, if he goes to Arsenal. But what we're starting to see is basically your kind of, your Chelsea's, Man United, Man City, to a lesser extent, Tottenham. I think all of Tottenham's business this summer has been Premier League-based players. Pretty much. They're basically saying, Hey, you guys in the middle and down the bottom, you try them, you test them, we'll take them. And we'll kind of, we'll just cut out that bit in, you know, of trying to be smart, we'll spend a bit more, probably because there's a premium, but we can afford it. And then on the other side of it, those players we don't want, we'll sell them to you as well. So we'll get the money back in many cases. So Chelsea have signed Morgan Rodgers from Aston Villa and have now sold them Jackson and Gornetro. And it's going to be very interesting to see how you wait for actually look at that one over the next year or so in terms of whether it's seen as exchange and the impact that that has on profit and how you can put that in your books and everything. I'm sure, you know, both clubs would say entirely separate and obviously Emory has been after Jackson through a long time as well. But I was, I was just working it out last night. It took quite a long time for Premier League teams, spending on players registered to Premier League clubs last season. So that includes players like Matthias Fernandez from West Ham and Gomez from Wolf, Sevilla. That spending is now at over 1.4 billion by Premier League clubs on players who played in the Premier League last season, right? So that's almost two billion. That's going to be over two billion dollars by the end of this window, just washing around the Premier League. Now what is the impact of that on the rest of Europe where the TV deals are a lot smaller, where there isn't that capital injection being given by owners, that's a lot of money being kept basically in the Premier League. Now I don't know if that's a deliberate strategy by Premier League owners to try and keep as much money as possible within its league to retain the strength of the league, whether it's merely coincidence or not gave to sort of conspiracy realms here, but that is going to give the Premier League a big compessive advantage, not only for this year, but the years going on. I don't know, Matt, has anyone that you've spoken to said this is intentional by the Premier League or it's just a trend that is happening? Yeah, I've not heard anyone make that argument. I completely agree with you. This is a massive issue for the rest of Europe. If the story of the last, let's say 10, 15 years, is the Premier League has been the richest league for a while, but the rest of almost maybe being able to hang on a bit because of the daftness at times. There's been this sort of transfer of transfer spending from Premier League to France to Belgium to Portugal and elsewhere, right? If that's nice to dry up, and I'm particularly thinking about the French League, which has been this huge talent factory, that's a massive problem for them because their domestic TV detail is already bad. Their league is completely dominated by PSG. There's real issues there. There's definitely a problem outside of English football. It does seem as also that this could be again another issue for English football regulators to worry about as well. If we are saying that these big clubs can afford to be bad for a couple of years because of their historic advantages, they do get to test players elsewhere. They get to say, well done, Brighton. Well done, Brentford. Well done, Bournemouth. You have discovered a Premier League ready talent, someone who's robust enough for our league. Yeah, we'll have him now. Thanks very much. So I don't know. That wouldn't be a problem if almost like the first things we were talking about weren't an issue where those clubs are almost compelled to sell. If a Brighton or Brentford or Villa or whoever it might be, could retain that talent and go on their journey. That wouldn't be a problem, would it? But at the moment, the system seems to be saying, yeah, you can be only so good and then you must release your best players further up the chain and that will never be you, by the way. So I don't know. There are definitely some sort of competitive structural issues to worry about there, but I think of the two, the more acute, the one that definitely just seems to be like a big flashing light right now is the rest of Europe going, I'll hold on a minute, where's our billion every transfer window from English football? Is that what you see as going at him? Yeah, and I don't know if it's just, we've seen some big bets in the last few years by some of the some of the big clubs on, Tottenham spent a lot of money in Serie A, didn't they? When Paratiche was particularly prevalent, didn't really work. Man United spent a lot of money on the Dutch market when Eric Tenhaag was there, didn't really work. And I know certainly when any of us came into Manchester United, the view was, we need to stop, we need to reduce our risk. You know, we are spending a lot of money on transfers, a lot of money on wages. So Mateusz Karnier, we've seen him do it for a couple of years at Walls and the Premier League. Brian and Burma, we've seen him do it for a couple of years. On a consistent basis, we protect our returns, right? That's very logical. But it's just that the concentration of it just right across the league is clearly, you know, as I said, to all of Tottenham's, I think eight deals this summer now have been from within the Premier League. I just see Ipswich are going to sign someone from Biolevercuse, which is like amazing. In many ways, it's just just the level at which like even lower Premier League clubs are able to just kind of pick off some massive clubs in Europe. So it will be a worry. The only thing I would say is, and this is one of the things that protects competitive balance in football. By being the most popular and the most participated in sport in the world, it means there is an incredible supply of amazing players. And that will always sort of shield football, that little bit from, you know, it's not like there's only a hundred good players in the world and they're all in the Premier League. And actually the best players in the world still aren't in the Premier League, right? We're being complaining about not enough superstars, you know, they're still going to go into Real Madrid, Barcelona and Bayern Munich. But it just feels more and ever, more than ever, I should say, like you've got the Premier League and a handful of superclubs. And that's kind of the rotation. Where it could have an impact is kind of the Champions League knockouts, group phase. I think people might start to get a bit bored of this season. I think the first year where, you know, a couple of teams didn't do so well early on. You had that little bit of fake jeopardy near the end, oh, well, Madrid, make it was a bit exciting. I think after the second year of it, people kind of come to the view, everyone's going to be all right, that kind of expects and needs to get through. And it adds a couple of games on. And I am not optimistic about that group phase where there is a real lack of jeopardy. And I think if you diminish the potential of some of those, as I say, middling to upper European clubs and their potential to kind of disrupt those superclubs in that group phase, I think it creates quite a weak product. Adam, Matt, thank you so much for this week. We will be seeing you again next week. I'll be back tomorrow with the tactical preview show. Don't forget to subscribe if you haven't already. I will see you very soon. Take care.