Why Wayne Rooney is like a chip shop

Stick with me on this one...

I was looking at all the ways that football players can leave clubs and thought how it's just like buying and selling businesses.

Clubs can choose to sell a player, can receive an unwanted offer for a player, have the player (or more likely his agent) demand a move, have a player retire or just not perform well enough.

You could choose to sell your business. Just like football clubs distributing details of players that are available (the much discussed transfer list) you could contact a business transfer agent and ask them to circulate your business details. With a bit of luck an interested buyer may turn up and eventually a sale price (transfer fee) gets discussed.

Another business could see yours and think that it looks like a good idea to buy. Maybe it fits in with their offering by complementing or providing a competency they don't have, or maybe they just like the fact that it's very profitable. They contact you and ask if you fancy selling in exactly the way the football clubs CEOs will talk such as in the Gareth Bale transfer saga.

Players these days have a coterie of agents and advisors. Often they get paid when a player moves or negotiates an improved contract so they got to the players current club and ask for just that. The business owners could get exactly that in the form of an MBO. The managers of the club go to the owners and ask to buy the business. Hopefully in the business example the negotiations will be less fraught though!

Sometimes, sadly a player just doesn't perform well enough. The club spend time and money trying to understand why. They employ sports psychologists, trainers, dieticians all to no avail. Finally they allow the players contract to expire or sell them on cheaply or for no fee (or even with a reverse dowry). A business that isn't performing may go through the same ritual. Consultants, accountants, business coaches are all deployed but in the end the owning business just feels it's not worth pumping good money after bad.

Of course some businesses just reach the end of the road. The brand is tired, the people bored and lacklustre and the brand just gets put out to grass in the same way that a striker who gets to his mid 30s retires to own a pub or become a pundit on Sky.

Although this piece started out a little tongue in cheek it's surprising that the similies are pretty much all valid.

Have you got another way that a football club is like a business? Maybe you have another sport in mind.