Criminal Wanted: Thaksin and Pojamarn

Fantasy football is fun but the reality is funnier. Nobody could make it up. A Premier League referee is suspended because he did not tell the authorities that, allegedly, he owes £60,000 yet the four leading clubs will kick off the season this weekend £2bn in debt and hardly shouting it from the rooftops.

There was a time when anyone could take over a football club without having to prove he could run a whelk stall, let alone a country. Who else but Manchester City could find themselves in the singular situation of being owned by a former prime minister of Thailand who has fled a corruption hearing back home, denying all charges and leaving behind £800m in frozen assets with no undersoil heating? Meanwhile Thaksin Shinawatra has been snapped shopping in Guildford, that notorious refuge for former Asian rulers on the run.

Before Thaksin turned up at City some of their supporters doubtless associated Thailand solely with Siamese cats and thought it was still being run by Yul Brynner. The Premier League has mumbled about waiting for the outcome of the Thaksin's trial in absentia before deciding whether he is a fit and proper person to be in charge at Eastlands. Either way, Richard Scudamore must be thanking his lucky stars that Robert Maxwell did not buy Manchester United while learning to float.

Football always did swim against the tide. As the country enters a period of financial restraint the Premier League has spent another summer tightroping it, like Blondin, across a financial Niagara Falls. Leaving aside the fanciful sums which clubs are said to be willing to pay - like the £78m Chelsea are apparently itching to spend on Kaka - the sums actually agreed still beggar belief.

Robbie Keane, for whom Liverpool have paid Tottenham £20.3m, is a proven striker but he is 28, had barely played Champions League football before Wednesday night, and will need to form an instant and prolific partnership with Fernando Torres to convince Anfield's arguing American owners that Rafael Benítez has not paid too much for too little.

Reports that Sir Alex Ferguson was considering bidding £20m to bring Thierry Henry to Manchester United from Barcelona may have been designed to gee up Dimitar Berbatov's move from Spurs. The notion of Ferguson parting with such a sum for the former Arsenal man, who will be 31 tomorrow and has had problems with sciatica, is indeed fantastic. Yet this is a world in which the English transfer record remains the £30.8m Chelsea paid Milan for Andriy Shevchenko two summers ago, since when the Ukrainian has shuttled between treatment room and bench while making only sporadic appearances in matches.

The usual noises are being made about football's extravagance at a time of economic hardship, but it was ever thus. At the beginning of the 1980s the nation was being told to tighten its belt yet Manchester City still spent £1.43m on Steve Daley and £1m on Kevin Reeves; these were then huge sums and to the majority of clubs below the top level, would be huge sums still. Garry Birtles, one of the sales of the century, moved from Nottingham Forest to Manchester United for £1.25m and came back two years later for £300,000. He cost United roughly £86,000 a goal.

Yet wages rather than transfer fees are the main drain on the modern game. Players are often accused of greed when they reject contracts which would bring them several times in a week what the average wage-earner gets in a year. But it is a bit like the world of film and pop stars, where vast sums are so regularly earned and spent that within these circles they become the norm. As footballers approach 30, moreover, they sense that their future earning power is limited so they go for as much as they can while they can. It is less a matter of greed than gut instinct.

Not that it is all about money even now. To play at the top level and win international caps players need to appear regularly in the Champions League. The likes of Berbatov and Gareth Barry know that however well they perform for Tottenham and Aston Villa, the chances of their making the Champions League while staying put are remote. Once they have reached their late 20s they have to make a move, which Barry will probably do eventually even though he cannot now play in the group stages of this season's Champions League having appeared for Villa in a Uefa Cup qualifier on Thursday.

This is what the polarisation of the Premier League has brought about. Manchester City, meanwhile, will be thinking more about a line from The King and I: 'He had a thousand dreams that won't come true . . .' And wake up in a cold sweat.

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2008/aug/16/premierleague.manchestercity