Brighton revealed as having the second-largest debt in English football

Just in case you’ve ever doubted just how much Tony Bloom has done for Brighton and Hove Albion, it has been revealed that the Albion have the second-largest debt in English football.

Kieran Maguire from the brilliant Price of Football website has calculated from the 92 Football League clubs plus the Scottish Premier Division’s 12 team’s most recent accounts that they owe a collective total of around £3,517,300,000 to banks and owners.

At the top of the pile sit Manchester United with £496m worth of debt incurred largely through the way that the Glazier Family purchased the club.

Brighton are second behind United with £207m worth of debt, virtually all of which is owed to Bloom. Arsenal sit third on £205m, Liverpool fourth with £201m and Tottenham Hotspur fifth on £180m, although Spurs will almost certainly overtake the Albion when their next accounts are released due to the borrowing associated with the building of their new stadium. Should it ever be finished.

Twelve clubs owe absolutely nothing – Cambridge United, Shrewsbury Town, Portsmouth, Kilmarnock, Partick Thistle, Burnley, West Bromwich Albion, Chelsea and Everton. It may come as a surprise to see the latter two on there, but both clubs are funded through shares rather than loans from their respective owners Roman Abramovich and Farhad Moshiri.

British football clubs owe about £3,517,300,000 to banks and owners. Manchester United top the table with £496 million. Chelsea & Everton at the bottom as owners fund clubs via shares rather than loans. Figures from most recent accounts. pic.twitter.com/Yb5koRa0ej

— PriceOfFootball (@KieranMaguire) December 6, 2018

The money owed to Bloom comes from a combination of the near £100m it cost to build the Amex Stadium, the £32m spent developing the American Express Elite Football Performance Centre and the huge losses racked up on signing players since the Albion reached the Championship in 2011.

Bloom spent £110m building squads in the Championship, which depending on your viewpoint was money well spent for the likes of Anthony Knockaert and the return of Glenn Murray or money thrown down the toilet on the likes of Kemy Agustein, Craig Mackail-Smith and Ryan Harley.

The good news about the debt to Bloom is that he is never likely to call it in. Unlike other clubs who owe banks millions, the Albion chairman has effectively gifted over £200m of his own money to the club in order for us to live the dream of playing Premier League football in one of the finest stadiums in the country.

That is also partly why reaching the Premier League was so important. Not only do the riches on offer mean that Bloom can at least claw back a little of his investment, but had we have not done so when we did then there would have been a real danger of being in breach of the Football League’s Financial Fair Play regulations.

FFP doesn’t include infrastructure spending so both the money used to build the Amex and the training ground would have been exempt, but the losses racked up for on-the-pitch activity may have had us perilously close to the limit.

That £110m may have been spread over our six season stay in the Championship, but the majority of it came in the final two seasons when the club learnt their lesson about under funding a squad after the disastrous 2014-15 campaign under Sami Hyppia. Chris Hughton as a result had a squad good enough to deliver third and second placed finishes.

What there can be no doubting though is just how much we as Brighton fans owe Bloom. That £207m figure is absolutely obscene really and without it, we wouldn’t be in the Premier League or defeating Crystal Palace 3-1 despite playing for an hour with 10 men.

Just remember that if you ever doubt the commitment of the man or the love he has for our football club.