A very aggressive tackle

Forty years ago the football transfer market went crazy: the British record was broken four times in 1979, more than in any other year before or since. A lot of this was down to Malcolm Allison at Manchester City, who shelled out a record amount for a teenager (£250,000 for Steve MacKenzie, an apprentice at Palace) and £1.45 million to bring Steve Daley from Wolves. That was later, unkindly but not inaccurately, described as ‘the biggest waste of money in football history’. Allison continued to spend money like a drunk in a bar; something the club never recovered from until it became part of the sovereign wealth portfolio of one of the richest countries in the world.

Now could something similar be happening in the recondite and less lucrative world of sports journalism? Here the interloper is a hyper-aggressive American sports website called The Athletic which is opening in the UK under the leadership of well-regarded former Times executive Alex Kay-Jelski. In the time-honoured way of ruthless American predators, they are on a hiring spree, raiding the sports departments of our best newspapers and throwing money, stock options, signing-on fees and benefits at many of Britain’s leading journalists. This is in turn leading to rapidly inflating salaries and bidding wars for talent. No bad thing, you may say; but some of the salaries could soon become unaffordable, with parts of our already beleaguered national and regional press having to pull horns in further, or even close.

The website, which promises to be free of adverts, has a subscription model (like Netflix and Spotify). It will concentrate on football, and not just the Premier League. Fans will be able to access granular reporting about every nook and cranny of their club. That seems to have worked in America.