One in Seven fans won’t be renewing their season tickets

We’re all a bit hard pressed these days - each time we turn the ignition keys we face spending the equivalent of the GDP of a small African nation, and a loaf of bread now costs the same as a two bed semi in Bradford. While the Premier League’s finest are rubbing our noses in it by spending like it’s going out of fashion, it appears that the clubs themselves are about to become the latest victims of the nationwide belt tightening. According to Scott Mowbray of Virgin Money, nearly one in seven fans are refusing to renew their season tickets this year.

The worst affected club are West Ham, as 25 per cent of their faithful will now spend Saturday afternoons standing around in Jane Norman at Lakeside while the missus tries on dresses she won’t buy. This defection may be due to the fact that certain factions of Hammers fans are dissatisfied with Curbs and his boring brand of football, or it could be that the average ticket price is around £780

Annual Deloitte report reveals fiscal health of the Prem

Yesterday, the number crunchers at Deloitte released their annual report regarding the games’ finances in the 2006/07 season. The reams of data tell us that Premier League wages have now topped the £1billion mark, with each Premiership side dishing out an average of £48.5m to their staff (with Watford’s £17.7m at the bottom of the scale, and Chelsea’s staggering £132m at the top).

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While revenues have never been higher (The Premier League brought in €2273million in 2006/07, almost twice as much as the closest financial competitor, The Bundesliga), many clubs are spending far more than they are generating. Of all the teams in the top two flights, Derby’s situation was most troubling, as their wages/turnover ratio stood at 125 per cent. That means for every £100million that came into the club (and that’s just turnover, not profit), they were spending £125million on keeping the team in place. Of course, this figure is skewed by the performance-related bonuses given to Rams players for winning promotion, but it represents part of a trend that Deloitte partner Dan Jones believes will ‘lead to a continuing flow of insolvency cases’.

The financial housekeeping in Derbyshire leads a lot to be desired, but bank mangers in north London are considerably less aggravated. The famed wage structure at Arsenal puts them in a healthy third place in the league of wages/ turnover ratios (with 50 per cent), but based on this criteria, Spurs’ 42 per makes their structure the most economically sustainable in the top two flights.

As ever, there was no time last night to revel in the joy of a Paul Scholes stonker, because while football is being played, behind the scenes people in dark suits are having business meetings, and those meetings are very important - they include “guesstimates” and “sushi”. Here’s what may or may not have been talked about in some of those sweaty deep-into-the-night think tanks:

Kamel Ghilas to Arsenal
Arsene Wenger’s team of dehydrated football forragers have once again resurfaced in their mining helmets with soil on their faces muttering like crazy people about an Algerian man called Kamel. At the moment he plays casual football for Portuguese side Vitoria Guimaraes, but next season he looks set to be entertaining Arsenal crowds, who love sexual football and Cesc Fabregas.

Antonio Valencia and Wilson Palacios to Manchester United
Yes, Ferguson will be on the hunt for bright young talents, currently dominating other first teams, to strengthen his reserves, and these two might be just the ticket. They do it week in, week out for Wigan, but can they do it perhaps once every three/four months for United when Nani, Anderson, Carrick, Hargreaves, Scholes, Ronaldo, Giggs, O’Shea, and Fletcher are all injured? Or it’s the Carling Cup?

The best sports on the telebox tonight

As the Rams stare their 30th league game without a win in the face, tonight could be an exercise in damage limitation. Yet the bookies seem to think the Gunners won’t go easy on Paul Jewell’s battered team, and are only offering 12/1 for a 4-0 Arsenal victory. If you’re betting on the correct score, an Arsenal win-to-nil seems like the safe way to go - check out all the odds using the best prices available right here.

Snooker
World Championship (British Eurosport, 6.30pm)

Championship
West Brom/ Southampton (Sky Sports 1, 7.45pm)

Premier League
Derby County/ Arsenal (Setanta Sports 1, 8pm)

The race to be anonymous in the Championship next year is heating up

Now that the Championship has morphed into toddler football matches where twenty-two hyperactive maniacs thunder around a field chasing the ball, teams would be wise to stick to the Premier League. Already Derby will be practicing their head-down running techniques, and Fulham should probably start swotting up on moping around in the centre circle crying for mummy. The rest, however, might still be allowed to play football next season.

The statistics

* In the last seven seasons, ten teams have conceded sixty-five or more goals in a season and each one has been relegated. This season Derby have let in seventy-six, Reading have now let in sixty-five.

* Nobody higher than 17th in the league at this stage of the season have gone on to be relegated in the last ten years, which

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Derby “saviour” narrowly avoids a fine for parading excessively showy motor

As a team desperately attempting to claw back some dignity from this season by at least finishing with points in double figures, times are hard at Derby County. Things weren’t helped this week when their preening new midfielder Robbie Savage rolled up to training in his brand new £160k Mercedes. Players and staff who face cutbacks and unemployment in the coming months as Derby return to a Championship budget failed to gasp in wonder at Savage’s good fortune.
When Sunderland were relegated in 2003, Michael Gray was stripped of two weeks’ wages and the captaincy after showing up to training in a Ferrari. Surprisingly, Savage, who also owns a Bentley, a Range Rover and a Lamborghini, has escaped criticism for his grotesque, loads-a-money gesture

For the best drama in the Prem, head for the basement

One unintentional benefit of Richard Scudamore’s efforts to pump obscene amounts of cash into the Premier League has been to turn the annual relegation battle into the division’s true drama. Nothing draws out the fighting spirit in the modern athlete better than the thought of losing money, and this season, a record eight teams - sorry Derby, not you - are going at each other like ferrets in a feed sack. Compare this to the contest for the title, which features just two runners plus the riderless horse Chelsea, galloping along under the illusion they’re still in it. As usual, Mr Scudamore is playing a dangerous game, as he’d better hope no one joins the dots and discovers that Martin Taylor’s amputation of Eduardo’s foot at the weekend came as a result of him taking the pitch pumped up with a week’s indoctrination on the evils of relegation. Gladiatorial battles are most stirring, but players without feet are not good for the brand.

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The statistics

* Newcastle have eleven league fixtures left and have taken just six points from their last eleven. If they continue this run of form they will finish on thirty-four points - an amount that would have seen them relegated in the past two seasons.

Don’t worry - he’s getting the seats in his Bentley re-stitched

These days, the biggest problem for a Premiership star when relocating isn’t changing the kid’s schools, selling up the home or even dealing with the impossibly inefficient staff at BT. Sorting out grotesquely-personalised tat must come first.

Following his whopping £1.5m move to Derby, Robbie Savage has announced that he has already made plans to remove the ‘No8’ stitching from the seats of his Bentley. To show commitment to his new club and his unquestionable vanity, the man

Derby gaffer challenges midfielder to race and wins

It’s the kind of bet that an older boy in the playground would make with you to expose your naivety, yet Paul Jewell managed to out-fox midfielder Giles Barnes with his tricky semantics:

“I raced him for £100 and he lost,” Jewell explained.

“I said to him: ‘Listen Giles, this is where you have to learn the game, so I will