Job interviews at West Ham and, most likely, Newcastle United must henceforth take on a new form. Candidates will have to be asked how they propose to cope with diminished funds. Intelligence and talent would make Slaven Bilic an outstanding choice at Upton Park but, at the moment, it is also apt that, as coach of Croatia, he has never been in a position to sign a player. There are going to be fewer sprees in the Premier League.
It is as well that the Abu Dhabi United Group is too rich to have commercial inhibitions, because Manchester City may be obliged to stir up most of the Premier League's excitement when it comes to acquiring footballers. Not even the Champions League clubs can be depended on for extravagance. At Arsenal, the habitually frugal Arsène Wenger broke even this summer and Liverpool's Rafael Benítez was second-guessed by proprietors who recoiled from the £18m price put on Gareth Barry by Aston Villa.
Alan Curbishley must have spotted the trend, but he still felt moved to resign at West Ham in protest at the sale of players. The club assert that there was little option but to transfer Anton Ferdinand after he had declined a new contract. That, however, begs the question of why a person who had expressed a desire to stay in the London area would depart for Sunderland. The terms must have been much more appealing there.
Roy Keane is lucky to have been on the loose with a cheque book. Funds have not dried up and Aston Villa, for instance, embarked on squad development, but there is a tone of encroaching austerity. Tottenham Hotspur, for instance, were comfortably in the black by the time the transfer window closed. It is even feasible that Roman Abramovich is cultivating a taste for good housekeeping.
There was an emphasis on the fact that he had been outbid for the first time when City snatched Robinho for £32.5m. Though opportunities to jeer at billionaires are scarce and must be cherished, there was a quietly interesting aspect to the affair. The Russian could easily have tossed in an extra £6m to match the Eastlands bid. Might it not be that this, too, was another first for the oligarch as he preferred not to pay more than the player is worth?
If even Abramovich has contracted a sense of proportion then it was inevitable that a truly hard line would be taken in other boardrooms. There are owners who can barely comprehend the stance they used to take. Euphoric at the purchase of the club, West Ham's owner, Bjorgolfur Gudmundsson, sanctioned an outlay of about £50m over two transfer windows in 2007 to rebuild the squad. Such a splurge had not achieved much more than to make top-flight status secure. Huge amounts have been expended at clubs who have either never been in the elite or had that status in a bygone era. The Icelander may be discouraged, but Mike Ashley's introduction to reality was far more traumatic.
He probably concedes that he has himself to blame since he admits that he did not conduct due diligence before spending £134m to buy Newcastle. Another £100m then went on debt reduction. That did not cover the £27m still owed on transfers completed by his predecessors. Lifting his head from the worrisome accounts, he would have eyed the "Ashley Out" message on a protester's banner.
Sympathy must not be allowed to get out of control. He has been reckless. More than that, Newcastle and West Ham failed dismally to come up with an approach to which all parties at each club could subscribe. In each case, a de facto sporting director was employed who gave the impression of acting without reference to the manager. At West Ham, Gianluca Nani, fairly or not, came to be considered as some kind of adversary for Curbishley.
Meanwhile, in the north-east, Kevin Keegan seemed excluded from policy- making when he still felt that four substantial additions to the squad would be made at the start of this week. Come Tuesday, he merely had the Spain Under-21 forward Xisco and the loan signing Ignacio González. There had, until then, been indications that he wanted to maintain unity and he did not rail against the acceptance of Villa's £12m offer for James Milner.
West Ham and Newcastle will have had the best of intentions. Ashley has spoken as if the structure he put in place was born of compassion. "You must make sure people aren't spread too thinly," he said three weeks ago. "How could Kevin devote all his time to the first team if he also had to look after the academy? That's where Dennis Wise comes in."
The flaw is so blatant that it seems impossible that it escaped Ashley's notice. Keegan hardly knew Wise. As with Nani and Curbishley, scant attention was paid to fostering a partnership. Instead there was the potential for division. Clubs will be in peril unless far more care is taken to ensure agreement and solidarity behind the scenes.
