"Hello, Sir Hillwood."

"Hello, Sir Gibbs."

"Hello, Count Fryer."

“……”

The people in front of Zhou Nan are all senior shareholders of Arsenal. Although Zhou Nan has now become Arsenal's largest shareholder through Holder, this is the first time they have met.

Zhou Nan needed to strengthen them and increase his influence in the UK. And Hillwood, the British aristocracy, also has a full interest in Zhou Nan, a figure who has full influence in academic and political circles.

Otherwise, even George himself would not necessarily be able to convince these shareholders to transfer most of their shares. In the Western world, private property is protected in priority by law, and even the king has no right to encroach on anyone's private property.

This time, Zhou Nan bought 48% of Arsenal's shares at one time. Combined with the three percent of the shares that Alan had already bought, it means that he now owns more than fifty-one percent of the shares.

Although Zhou Nan has become the majority shareholder of Arsenal, none of Arsenal's shareholders have decreased. From this point, it can also be seen that these people have no opinion on Zhou Nan's entry into Arsenal.

Although ethnography in Europe and the United States is still the mainstream of society, they have never despised those who have the ability.

Especially in the upper classes, it can be said that they are all realists.

Alan stood next to him and smiled with his mouth closed, and said kindly: "Jonas, Semmel, let's sit down and talk again, we have plenty of time today, don't we?" ”

"Of course." Zhou Nan smiled at the tall Semmel, "Mr. Hillwood, please ......"

The Hillwood family has been Arsenal's largest shareholder, and their family has controlled Arsenal for three generations, with Simmer's grandson Peter Hillwood remaining chairman of Arsenal until the next century.

Zhou Nan bought the most shares this time, and the Hillwood family took out the most, and insisted on retaining the terms of priority repurchase.

In other words, if Zhou Nan doesn't want to play, they will buy these shares back.

However, Zhou Nan is unlikely to sell these shares again.

In this era, becoming a shareholder of Arsenal is only a stepping stone into the British upper class, but in the future, this position can bring greater social influence to Zhou Nan.

However, although Zhou Nan became the owner of Arsenal, he did not think about managing the team by himself. He is not prepared to interfere in the development of the team, except for arranging for Audrey's grandfather Allen to be his representative on the board.

Of course, as a man with memories of the future, as someone who is familiar with the rules of the game in later generations, he has countless plans for improving the brutal development of world football today.

Real Madrid in this era can be said to be a little-known club, and Zhou Nan certainly wants to bring Stefano and Puskas to let the best team in the world in the 20th century fall on Arsenal's head.

And many of the unreasonable rules on the current court should also be improved.

Of course, he didn't think about coming on his own, but he needed to have a group of agents.

Alan is already old, and he was originally just a marginal figure in the upper social circles. Even now as Zhou Nan's agent, entering Arsenal's management, he lacks the means to exert influence elsewhere.

Therefore, Zhou Nan has long thought about building a good relationship with Negeri Semmel Hillwood and using his influence to make the development of football rules as mature as later generations.

It's also a way to get other shareholders to accept him as quickly as possible, not only with profit, but also with hope to bring everyone together.

The afternoon sun was shining, and today's meeting was originally going to be arranged on the lawn in the back garden, but today's sun was a little too strong, so everyone was now sitting in the shady small living room on the second floor.

Zhou Nan chatted with the crowd for about an hour, from the pollution of London, to the Indo-Pakistani war, from Gandhi's assassination, to Queen Mary's disgust with him.

Eliza's wedding last year, although Gandhi was not welcome, insisted on attending Eliza's wedding. At the wedding, Queen Mary's insistence on not talking to Gandhi, or even looking at him, has always been a hot topic for the British.

It wasn't until the atmosphere was more harmonious that the conversation finally turned to Arsenal's management.

Zhou Nan affirmed the contribution of all shareholders to Arsenal, and also expressed his happiness and congratulations to Arsenal for winning the First Division championship this year.

This year's Arsenal title was a surprise for everyone. Because this year's Arsenal has no star players and no championship coaches, Arsenal can win the championship this year, it can be said that it is not that the Arsenal players perform better, but that other teams perform too poorly.

Zhou Nan hooked his fingers, and Fei Ward immediately walked over with a stack of materials and handed over a copy of the materials in his hand.

The work had been done by Etinny, but he was injured in the back and plastered. And the smell of the plaster is a bit smoky, which is a relatively rude performance in the aristocratic circles of this era, so Feyward replaced him today.

'That's some of my plans and suggestions for the development of the current Arsenal team, and some of the ideas for improving the rules of football right now. You can take a look first, although I am a fan, but I am a layman, so some content, I hope it will not make you think whimsical. ”

They all looked at it carefully, and even Zhou Nan took a copy of the German version to read it and revisit his previous thoughts.

Although he is now proficient in English, he is still unfamiliar with reading, and he is not yet proficient in many words.

At first, the crowd didn't pay much attention to it, not thinking that a layman could have any good advice in terms of the development of the club. But soon, one by one's faces became serious, and they looked at it very attentively, and whispered to each other from time to time, looking at Zhou Nan with surprised eyes.

It has not been 100 years since the development of modern football, and the emergence of the football league is exactly 60 years old this year.

From the beginning of the lack of rules, to now the team has developed its own tactics and coaches, but whether it is tactics or rules, the current development has very serious problems.

For example, violence is now not much restrained on the field, and is even necessary for many teams to win. And people not only do not resent these acts of violence, but even like them.

Fight on the field, win the fight, and get the love of the fans. If you lose a fight, you will be laughed at.

There was also the most severe punishment in later generations, the shovel behind the man, a rule that was actually not perfected until the nineties. Van Basten suffered too many tackles and broke his hamstring several times, and finally had to retire.

In addition, the current games are still two-point system, and the biggest difference between the two-point system and the three-point system is that it is easy to cause a tie, so many of the current football games are a round-robin system, not an elimination system, because the probability of a tie is too great.

Then, what Zhou Nan personally attaches the most importance to is the signing system of players.

The contract system for football matches is arguably the most irrational labor system in the world.

Before the Boseman Act, the rights and interests of players could not be protected at all. Even after the contract period has passed, the player cannot sign with another team. You have to be left by the original team before you can join another team.

After the Boseman Act, the relationship between the players and the team suddenly became equal. But at this time, the big teams in the big leagues, taking advantage of the financial advantage, suddenly became a bad wolf.

Teams in small places lose their ability to protect themselves and can only be turned into star processing plants.

This has led to a serious consequence of the fact that the wages of the players are getting higher and higher, and the transfer fees are getting higher and higher in order to compete for talented players.

Zhou Nan personally appreciates the NBA's salary model, setting a bottom line, for example, the player's salary cannot exceed the proportion of the team's income.

Of course, the NBA doesn't have a transfer fee because there are college leagues that offer talent for free.

However, the football league can set a limit, such as a transfer fee of no more than 10 times the annual salary of a player's contract, so that it does not lead to an unreasonable situation where a player is worth 200 million euros.

Moreover, it sets a standard for player salaries, which cannot exceed 60% or 70% of the team's earnings, so as to protect the team's reasonable profits and prevent a membership-based team like Real Madrid from recklessly stealing talent.

If you exceed that standard and you lose the right to transfer, then any club needs to run properly.

However, Hillwood pays more attention to some of Zhou Nan's genius ideas in team management, such as establishing a perfect logistics training base, establishing a perfect talent echelon, establishing a reasonable business development team, looking for more sponsors, and so on.

Now all the teams rely on tickets for their main income, and there are few sponsors.

Arsenal, for example, have the richest fan base. But the biggest sponsor is Harvey Beer UK, which has zero sponsorship costs.

The beer company simply provides the team with a certain amount of beer for free each year, and then rents a few storefronts at Highbury Stadium for rent and advertising on the billboards at the entrance of the stadium.

In the era of televising, the most valuable billboards on the sidelines, the jersey advertisements, are now gone.

Moreover, the team went out for a ride and stayed in a hotel, which was also not sponsored.

However, the salaries of the players at this time are not high, so relying on the ticket income, every team can live well. But compared to the huge investment, this return on investment is pitiful.

Zhou Nan received a fifty-one percent stake for almost $1.7 million, £850,000. And the team's annual ticket revenue is only about 1 million pounds, excluding all expenses, it is very good to be able to make a profit of 100,000 pounds, and Zhou Nan will share a maximum of 50,000 pounds.

This is still a time when the team is doing well, and if the team has poor results, the team is relegated, and it may even lose money.

So the team owners of this era are generally real fans, and there are no speculators who want to rely on the team to make money.

(This chapter contains some ideas for changing the rules of football, which some readers may not like, but I still try to condense it into a single chapter, because it involves the main line later.) ）