Peter Kenyon – Throwing Stones From Glass Houses

As the public and financial face of the Blues, Kenyon has managed to do this through incurring both the wrath of opposition fans through the brash approach he takes to his job, plus Chelsea’s very own supporters who have brandished him as Roman Abramovich’s ‘corporate snake in the grass‘ due to the underhanded role he played in the ousting of such popular figures as former managers Claudio Ranieri and Jose Mourinho.

For many followers of the beautiful game actions such as these have come to symbolise all that is wrong with the modern, financially driven sport that football has become, with the romance of the past being sucked out of the game by increasingly money hungry clubs and cold hearted players.

However, even for a man such as Kenyon who is used to courting controversy and bad press on a regular basis, his comments of recent days have created a whole new wave of displeasure when, commenting on FIFA’s 6+5 rule and its potential to increase competition, he stated “if you look across Europe, other major leagues are dominated by one, two or three teams, so it's too easy to say this is a Premier League issue.

“Other teams in England should be knocking on our door - teams like Tottenham, Newcastle, Aston Villa, Everton. It's more about them getting their houses in order, rather us coming down to their level.”

That the man who presided over a club that recorded the greatest financial losses in football history when Chelsea’s records showed that from June 2004-June 2005 the club posted a deficit to the tune of £140m feels the need to state that other clubs need to ‘get their houses in order’ quite simply beggars belief.

When financial auditors Deloitte looked at the Chelsea ‘house’ that Kenyon speaks so proudly of, the billions of Russian owner Roman Abramovich have provided the finances for a club that is currently paying over £120m per year and rising on players wages and has a total debt of £620m.

It would however be tremendously unfair to burden Chelsea alone with the tag of football’s only club so firmly in ‘the red,’ as this picture is also repeated on a similar scale when Deloitte came to look at the financial health of Chelsea’s fellow members of the ‘Big Four,’ with Manchester United having debts estimated at £605m, Liverpool £328m, and Arsenal a ‘paltry’ £268m.

Indeed, with financial practice such as this it is quite apparent that if  Everton et al. were to seek the help of Peter Kenyon and the rest of the Premiership elite it would be akin to asking someone like Robert Maxwell for pension advice or the board of ENRON for stockholder information.

Whilst it may not be uncommon for businesses to run on such levels of debt, it is clear that such figures are simply not feasible in the long term and are not healthy components of football as it is today, with UEFA president Michel Platini vowing to end this often irresponsible financial behaviour by arguing that clubs who operate in this fashion are “cheating to win,” as well as promising that UEFA are going to “fight very seriously to restrict entry to its competitions from clubs that are in debt.”

Furthermore, for any people not doubting the damage that can be caused by clubs overstretching themselves financially in the style that Kenyon seems to implore them to do, they should look no further than the terrible plight of the once great Leeds United for a startling example of what can go wrong.

Buoyed by the burning ambition of ex-chairman Peter Ridsdale, the Elland Road club embarked on a reckless spending spree as the Whites chased the dream of Champions League and Premiership glory. However, after missing out on qualifying for the riches of UEFA’s premier club competition for the 2002/2003 season this turned very quickly in to a nightmare the club is yet to wake up from, with this once proud team now finding themselves about to face up to the stark reality of a second campaign in a row in England’s third flight.

Rather worryingly for Chelsea fans, without Roman Abramovich’s intervention in 2003 this could have been repeated in south west London as ex-chairman Ken Bates directed the Blues to within days of a similar financial meltdown before the Russian’s dramatic cash injection, and could very feasibly occur in the future if Abramovich decides to pull the plug on his football play thing.

As such, it would seem that the steady growth model favoured by Randy Lerner at Aston Villa and  Bill Kenwright at Everton is a much safer long term bet for football than the often unregulated cash splurges favoured by many of Europe’s top sides, with the Toffees fourth place finish in 2004/2005 showing that financial responsibility and Champions League qualification are not mutually exclusive terms.

Furthermore, the recent resignation of Everton chief executive Keith Wyness has opened up a vacancy in the Liverpool club’s boardroom that could present Kenyon with the opportunity to instantly correct all of the criticism he has received in recent days. Sadly, there would however seem to be as much chance of this happening as Chelsea breaking even as projected by the ex-Manchester United C.E.O. by 2014, as well as Michel Platini’s plans to discipline any clubs flirting with debt actually coming to fruition.