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US values govern EPL firings
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FOR the second time in a week, American owners of an English Premier League club have acted swiftly to protect their investment by sacking a manager.
While some observers questioned the strategy of firing Bob Bradley, whom Swansea City had hired just 85 days earlier, co-owner Jason Levien got on with the brutal business of directing the search for the club’s third manager of a troubled season.
Wales boss Chris Coleman, former Manchester United winger Ryan Giggs and ex-Birmingham City manager Gary Rowett, himself surprisingly sacked by the second-tier club’s Chinese owners this month, are among the favorites.
Managerial departures ahead of January’s transfer window have become familiar.
Crystal Palace sits just two places above Swansea in the table and acted decisively last week to bring in Sam Allardyce as its new manager, after British media said Swansea expressed interest in hiring the former England boss who has become a specialist in extracting clubs from relegation trouble.
Palace also has American co-owners in Josh Harris and David Blitzer, who helped provide the finance for a 50-million-pound (US$61 million) injection into the club last December.
Harris and Blitzer know Swansea’s Levien well, having all been part of the same investment group, along with the actor Will Smith, that paid US$280 million for the Philadelphia 76ers in 2011.
Levien subsequently sold his stake in the basketball team, moving more heavily into football as managing general partner of Major League Soccer team DC United before forming part of the consortium that paid 110 million pounds with partner Steve Kaplan for a 68-percent controlling interest in Swansea last July.
Investment from across the Atlantic has flowed steadily into British football of late with six of the EPL’s 20 clubs now listed as having at least one American owner, with United (the Glazer family), Liverpool (John Henry), Arsenal (Stan Kroenke) and Sunderland (Ellis Short) forming an elite sub-group inside the world’s richest league.
They are all chasing the huge rewards available to winners, with accountancy firm Deloitte forecasting that last season’s surprise champion Leicester City, owned by Thai businessman Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha, will enjoy revenues of at least 155 million pounds in the 2016-17 financial year, regardless of this season’s performances.
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