Hello and welcome to the TFO Football Podcast. I am John McKenzie and I'm joined as always

by my good friend and producer Mike Zimmerman. Mike, how are you doing? I'm doing good,

John. How are you? I am doing really well because we've just had a brilliant recording with

our good pal, a fellow TFO employee, Abyshek Raj, talking all about football finances and I know

you enjoyed this podcast episode as well. So what did you enjoy most about it? I think for me it's

when we look at football clubs and finances, we kind of look at it from a backseat view where

we don't know the inner workings of kind of clubs balance sheets, raising money,

and I think Abyshek kind of when people listen to this, I think they're going to get a real

insight of exactly how complex these finances are within the clubs. So I'm actually looking

forward to hearing what these listeners think and what they take away from it. But I think that

for me, it was, wow, there's so much more going on than meets the eye because we're so used to

seeing these transfer fees and all that, but we don't necessarily see the wages and we don't

necessarily see all the different leagues rules because Abyshek talks about how LaLiga has

different rules for Barcelona than maybe say Premier League has for Manchester United and Chelsea.

So I think for me that's what's really interesting and Abyshek dives really deep into that.

Yeah and we've touched on I think the big points of football finance, the big clubs

that are in the public eye at the moment. So we talk about Manchester United, we talk about Barcelona,

we talk about Chelsea and we talk about Arsenal and there's plenty of things to get excited about

there. I think particularly if you're an Arsenal fan. So yeah, if you're an Arsenal fan, stick

around for some good news at the end. But I think without further ado, let's just jump straight

into the episode. So we're joined by a very exciting guest today. We are joined by Abyshek

Raj. Abyshek is great to have you on the show. Thank you, John. It's very good to be here.

...