Quoting from the BBC website:

“Liverpool’s net spending over five years on players is £82.5m and United’s has been £85.5m. Meanwhile, Chelsea spent £154.8m net on players during that time and Arsenal just £3.4m.”

Net spending, of course, is how much more they have spent than total revenue. Ferguson, probably still smarting from the shame of his 1-4 thrashing by Liverpool, refutes claims they have out-spent Liverpool recently with these figures. This is clearly a load of crap because Man U’s revenue is £40m greater than Liverpool’s to start with.

But you can’t really blame Sir Alex for writhing in the shame of defeat. He likes to be a winner, and, as McLaren’s Ron Dennis once said: “Show me a good loser, I’ll show you a loser.” It doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy it a bit though…

These figures also show that Arsenal is the only team to live within its means. They have had no choice, lacking the big external cash injections of the other of the big four. They have  had to make do and subsist, with the funding gap plugged by Arsene Wenger’s wiliness and his talent in spotting greatly undervalued talent in foreign, cheaper players (English players are way too expensive – they need to be kept in emerald crack pipes, and rare albino prostitutes, I imagine).

Hang on, did I just say ‘cash injection’? I should have said ‘debt’ injection of course… Abramovich was the grandee football investor who was least highly leveraged apparently, and even he has lost half his wealth in the recession. It is not beyond the realms of possibility that the finances of Man U and Liverpool could come crashing down around their ears. They have strong brands, yes, but the financial situations of their respective owners are far more important than the disciplinary problems of Vidic, or Torres’s hamstring niggles. We all thought our banks were untouchably strong but look what was happening there behind closed doors, in those incomprehensibly complex ledgers.

Malcolm Glazer’s takeover bid was built on debt, not oil cash, and it looked shaky even back in 2005. As the figures show above, Manchester is taking on more debt, not reducing it.

But this is a big conundrum of sport finance: money is crucial to success (unless you have a Wenger of course).

Back in the nineties, Italian teams were in the ascendancy with their investment and beautiful big new stadia from the 1990 World Cup. In 2009, English teams have just dumped Juventus, Inter Milan, and Roma from the Champions League. You don’t have to be Sepp Blatter to see the relationship between this success and the extra cash in the Premiership. Oops, did it again, I should have written ‘debt in the Premiership’.

But if the major English clubs keep on obtaining growing success with growing debt, when on Earth will they ever pay it back? Not in a recession at any rate. Despite being Champions of England and Europe, Manchester United are still borrowing more than they can pay back.

When greedy investors believe that a particular investment is rock solid, a ‘bubble’ will form. Will there be a point when this bubble bursts ravaging the Premiership as badly as the global financial institutions in the last year? Will the government have to step in and save our sport? Who will be left standing? Apart from Arsenal of course.

Sir Alex bitterly mumbles: ”There’s talk about a recession but I don’t think there will be one at Liverpool this year.” It could be closer to the Premiership than he thinks.

I was strolling down Oxford Street yesterday without my camera. Which was unusual.

When I don’t have my camera, I inevitably regret it. So I spend most of the time looking for shots I have missed the opportunity of taking. I think of it as a worthwhile lesson in not leaving my camera at home. I will also find my unoccupied eyes drawn to the work of other photographers. I find it fascinating how other people relate to imagery, and especially how professionals use their art to sell stuff effectively.

Walking down Oxford Street is a bit like running a gauntlet of greasy lunatics hitting you with florescent ‘for sale’ signs. I always find it an onslaught on my senses, and I enjoy it when I am feeling relaxed, but dislike it when I am stressed or in a hurry. Despite its shabbiness, consumers from all round the world love Oxford Street and flock there in their tens of thousands to gawp at the trainers, handbags, kilts and other wares being touted in the shop windows. The flood of shoppers is silently but intensely watched over by the models in the adverts: the wearers of what you should be wearing, the trusty guardians of consumer desire.

Sex sells, and you see it in these posters. The photographers use all their knowledge of composition leading the eye, colour and gesture etc.  to work their spell on the (as yet) unfulfilled passers-by.

Look at this advert I saw in a shoe shop window. You don’t have to be a genius to work out how the sexual symbolism is working here. All the compositional movement from those improbably (i.e. photoshopped) slender limbs points to the central conceit of the image: the sexual substitution of the shoe.

It is a clever piece of advertising photography. Was it intended to work on men, women or, as I suspect both?

Hounslow council has recently started recycling food waste. I requested one of the bins so I could join the party.

Now when the designer sat down to find an easily communicable image of ‘food waste’, he would have probably found himself scratching his head at the decision. What sot of food, how do we show it is eaten, how not to convey a different idea etc.

And it is a good idea having an image. In the Royal Festival Hall there are pairs of bins everywhere accepting very specific categories of waste. Unfortunately there are no pictures of what can go in each bin – only descriptions in words. It takes ages to throw something away, as you have to read about ten different lines on the bins to know which one to use. Pictures are far better.

However, I wonder what the designer thought he was representing when he/she put this image on the Hounslow food recycling bins:

I mean, what sort of diet does he think the average Briton has? Chicken drumsticks and white bread? Is that actually a bone at the or is it a dog biscuit there at the bottom?

I know it is meant to be just a reference, but maybe there is a sad truth behind the image. I imagine they did plenty of market research into the best possible images of un-eaten food (which probably consisted of reading some comics by the looks of it). Maybe white bread and chicken drumsticks are the most obvious food images in this country, may be that IS what everyone eats after all. 

So that’s it: we are a bunch of wasteful, big-toothed, malnourished bunch of food twats. According to the council.

I winder what I would icons I would put on the bin. Probably a fried egg with a bite taken out of it, a wobbly jelly with a bite taken out of it, and a squid with a bite taken out of it. And probably a gnawed human femur, just to annoy the Daily Mail crowd.