October saw the economic crisis hit the Premier League, with several football club owners suffering losses to their financial assets. Each club would deal with this differently – West Ham had already sold off players in the summer to reduce their wage bill and were again saying that they had no money for transfers in January, Portsmouth were pretty much in the same boat, Newcastle were still up for sale and Chelsea had started a series of cost-cutting measures as Roman decided to make Chelsea self-sufficient as soon as possible.
Not all clubs were affected though – Barcelona would make a bid for the Miami MLS franchise, Tottenham established a partnership with MLS side San Jose Earthquakes and also unveiled plans for a new 60k-seater stadium while Arsenal continued to announce ‘record’ profits, not that it would get Wenger to buy anyone to spark life into Arsenal’s title race.
In international football Brazil would win the FIFA Futsal World Cup, Scotland made the headlines for the wrong reasons with Chris Iwelumo missing the simplest of goals while England powered through their World Cup qualification group although the ‘can England win the World Cup’ discussions were some time away.
The month would end with Zabeel Investments pulling out of their offer to buy Charlton because of the English media circus, Liverpool looking like genuine title contenders after a long, long time, Juande Ramos unable to turn Tottenham around and eventually getting the axe, and then seeing Tottenham play Arsenal in a thrilling 4-4 draw that most fans mistook for a genuine revival in the club’s fortunes.
Also See:
Soccerlens 2008 Writing Competition
A Modest Proposal For The Resolution Of Club v Country
Top 20 Most Expensive EPL Non-Starters
Didier Drogba – The Sleeping Assassin
The Money Wars
Back to Soccerlens’ 2008 Review.
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