Obviously the main areas of interest over the summer have revolved around finances. Those clubs with money and those clubs feeling the strain of having none. For every Manchester City there is a Portsmouth, for every Notts County, a Chester City. The summer has seen some intriguing developments, but surely none more astounding than the arrival of the Munto consortium in Nottingham, offering Sven Goran Eriksson the chance to end his exile from club football.
I've previously mentioned the decline of Notts County, from the top tier of English football in the mid-1980s, to almost going out of the football league and out of business several times since 2000. As a football fan there are two things to think about in the Notts County equation. Firstly, what are the implications for the team themselves, and secondly, what does this mean for the game as a whole.
The Notts County team finished near the bottom of the entire 92 team league pyramid last season, but seems to have been picked specifically for the potential they have. They are the 2nd team in a major city so have a large potential audience, have a ground much larger than most of the teams in the division above, were owned by a fan group and therefore had no chance of any major cash injection, and most importantly were so low that the only way was indeed "up".
Whatever your view of Sven Goran Eriksson, and I for one would consider him a one-dimensional tactician as a manager, he certainly has the contacts you would need when looking to re-build a club. It's interesting that he's seen fit to join such a project, regardless of the £2m salary, which I'm sure he doesn't need anyway after his England pay-off. He's rumoured to have taken shares, a seat on the board and a performance related contract.
The incumbent manager Ian MacParland has, for now, retained his job in charge of what, at league 2 level at least, is an all-star equivalent of Manchester City squad. Their strikeforce alone were all plying their trade 2 leagues above just season ago, which is apparent from 9 goals in their first 2 league games.
It will be interesting to see how MacParland fares if results start to go a little awry, or Notts aren't running away with the league come Christmas. Come to think of it, the case will be almost identical for Mark Hughes if City aren't achieving their goals by transfer window time. Undoubtedly both clubs will have the finance in place to make extensive signings to strengthen the charge for play-offs/promotion or European places (or even the title), and will want to make sure the right man is in place to carry them onwards. It is difficult to see how either could fail with bottomless pits of cash to spend, but there will still be a test of their respective coaching abilities.
Strangely a stated objective of Munto is to get Notts back in the Championship within 5 years. Strange because it's not overly ambitious, if anything it's somewhat conservative, but it does seem that the UAE backers are looking to rebuild the club as a whole rather than gloss over the longstanding cracks with superficial (and transient) signings.
Whatever happens with Eriksson, and however long he stays, the spotlight shining on Notts County has almost certainly saved the world's oldest football league club from the ignominy of relegation to the blue square premier or administration. Who would have thought that they'd be mentioning Pavel Nedved and Luis Figo in the same breath as the magpies.
Whilst a new generation of football fans in Nottingham will randomly grow up enjoying the glitz of the black and white half of town for a few years, it can't be a bad thing for football if one more club is saved from going out of existence, and more clubs benefit from Notts being able to throw a few Emirati pounds around.
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