Matthew Bazell
The vast majority of the world’s most successful football managers have one thing in common, which is that most of them do not have, or require, a degree in economics.
Wenger’s celebrated economics degree is a distinction which is a major part of his ‘kudos’ and one by which many fans seem overawed. On various occasions, I’ve heard admirers of his attempt to use his education in finance as a tool to prove his greatness and cut down any argument for change. I will be the bearer of bad news to Wenger’s followers, because it needs to be pointed out that having an economics degree has zero connection with being a top football manager.
My uncle has a degree in economics and he is also one of the top FA coaches in the country - his two distinctions are not related. If you were to take my uncle’s economics degree away, he would be no less of a football coach. Alex Ferguson does not need an economics degree to work out the simple maths of a football transfer budget: here’s £70 million, go out and spend it on good players. That is not rocket science, in which I don’t care if Wenger has a qualification either.
I’m a GCSE grade G in maths, yet by my calculations even I can work out that the £60,000 a week he pays to Sebastien Squillaci is bad economics. I can also conclude that the £7.5 million he pays himself a year is not in consistency with the club’s wage structure about which he preaches.
By my valuation, £62 for the cheapest Grade A game goes way beyond any degree of economic fairness to the common fan. ‘Le Master’ defends the ticket-pricing structure and moans about the fact that the crowds doesn’t get behind the team, yet surely a basic economic and social hypothesis would conclude the obvious; if you price the common man out of football, in favour of bankers, media moguls and marketing executives then things won’t be as loud.
Over the New Year period, at a time when we were fifteen points behind Manchester United, Wenger’s economic know-how in league table analysis led him to believe that we were still in the title race. Again, my basic grade G maths skills led me to a different conclusion.
Wenger uses the upcoming UEFA Fair Play rule as an excuse why he doesn’t spend more in the transfer-market. But even someone with a grade U in maths could easily work out that you can spend profits and be within the UEFA Fair Play threshold. Even if the Fair Play ruling had been in full effect over recent years, Arsenal could have spent tens of millions more on better players and would not have made a loss. You do not need an economics degree to work that out!
Considering that many of the new breed of season-ticket holders are made up of accountants, bankers and maths teachers, I can understand that a manager who is obsessed with money and spreadsheets can be of appeal. As Wenger’s priority is to maintain profit over everything, I can see how a degree in economics could come in useful for such a role. That might be beneficial to him, the board and the shareholders, but as football fans it serves us no purpose. So the next time this economics degree gets used as a tool to beat the Wenger drum, question it deeply as being a potential negative as opposed to a positive.
Matthew Bazell is the author of Theatre of Silence: The Lost Soul of Football.
