Daily Archives: May 12, 2014

Money may not buy happiness. But it can buy an English Premier League title, as Manchester City proved again Sunday, beating West Ham United, 2-0, to win its second championship in three seasons.

That’s as many titles as the team had won in its previous 131 years. And it owes that turnaround to deep-pocketed owner Sheikh Mansour, who has made the team the best-paid sports franchise in the world, and the best-performing team in the world’s most competitive soccer league.

“We’re building a real club, with a heart and a soul,” captain Vincent Kompany said after Manchester City held off a frantic charge from Liverpool, which won 12 of its final 14 games to finish two points back. “Every year we improve. The belief is there now that if we play like we can, we can win a lot of titles.”

Manchester City scored 102 goals in its 38 league games, one short of the league record. And Sunday’s shutout was its 16th.

Yet, it spent only 15 days in first place during a season in which there were 25 lead changes atop the standings, the second-most in the Premier League era.

And though Liverpool, which gave up the league lead in the season’s final week, fell just short of a title it has been chasing for nearly a quarter of a century, captain Steven Gerrard cheered the team’s progress from a seventh-place finish last year.

“We proved this season we’re capable of mixing it with the best,” said Gerrard, who helped the Reds close the season with a 2-1 victory over Newcastle. “We want to go one better next year. We’re capable of challenging.

Especially now that the Union of European Football Assns., the ruling body for European soccer, has determined that Manchester City’s spending habits violated financial fair player guidelines. UEFA took no action after the club apparently ignored a deadline to either accept or contest penalties that include a record $83-million fine and a wage cap. UEFA could decide as early as Monday whether to stiffen the sanctions against the club’s Adu Dhabi owners, who have invested $1.7 billion in the team over the last six years.

For the players, however, Sunday was a day to celebrate, after which the focus will switch to next season.

“We know the owners have been spending big over the last few years to make this happen,” fullback Pablo Zabaleta said of Mansour, who is paying the club’s first-team players an average of $8.1 million a year. “So this is time to enjoy. But we are very hungry for more. We will work even more to bring more success to this club.”

source: latimes.com

Australians are living in the most expensive G20 economy in the world. A study by the World Bank shows the costs of goods and services in Australia are elevated around the levels of pricey European countries Switzerland, Norway, Denmark and Sweden.

Overall, Australia ranks as the fourth most expensive economy out of 177 countries measured by the price level index (PLI). It takes into account people’s purchasing power and a country’s exchange rate.

Economists believe the major factors that have pushed up local prices are the mining boom, high exchange rate, unbroken economic growth for 22 years, oligopolistic major industries, relatively low unemployment and high labour costs for business.

Kenneth Rogoff, professor of economics at Harvard University, said rich countries were typically at the higher end of the scale and poor countries at the low end.

In the case of Australia, the high PPP [purchasing power parities] price level mainly reflects the way high ­commodity prices bid up economy wide wages and therefore the price of goods in the service sector,” Professor Rogoff said. “If high prices reflect high wages driven by productivity gains in the traded goods sector, then they are not such a problem.”

Productivity down

The Productivity Commission chairman, Peter Harris, warned last week that our productivity has “fallen well behind that of most other developed economies for more than a decade”.

He called for policy attention because the recent record terms of trade – export prices relative to import prices – will no longer support continued income growth for Australians.

Multifactor productivity, which measures how efficiently labour and capital are contributing to output, declined an average of 0.6 per cent annually over the past five years.

Australia’s annual minimum wage is the highest in the developed world, OECD data shows. The $US29,982 ($32,039) real minimum annual wage in 2013 compares with $US23,127 in New Zealand, $US20,285 in Canada, $US19,674 in the United Kingdom and $US14,978 in the United States.

Per hour, it is in line with the highly regulated labour market of France in purchasing power parity terms, a point highlighted by the federal government’s Commission of Audit. The Abbott government has ruled out the commission’s recommendation to slash the minimum wage.

The lowest paid full-time workers in Australia earn an hourly minimum wage of $16.37, compared with $US7.25 ($7.75) in the US. President Barack Obama is trying to lift the minimum wage to $US10.10, but Republicans in Congress have blocked the plan.

Expensive by international standards

The World Bank report, published last week and drawing on 2011 data, adds to evidence that Australia is expensive by international standards.

The Economist Intelligence Unit’s worldwide cost of living survey published in January found Sydney and Melbourne were more expensive than New York and London and among the top 10 most expensive cities in the world. They ranked fifth and equal sixth, behind Singapore, Paris, Oslo and Zurich.­

The World Bank analysis shows that with the exception of Bermuda, the most expensive economies are in the Eurostat-OECD region.

Switzerland, Norway and Bermuda head the PLI with indices of 209.6, 206.4 and 201.6. Australia was just behind at 201.0, ahead of fifth placed Denmark at 185.0 and sixth-ranked Sweden scoring 175.1.

The lowest prices are in Africa, Asia and the Pacific, where PLIs range between 35 and 45 for countries such as Egypt, Pakistan, Myanmar, Ethiopia Bangladesh, India and Vietnam.

The director of the centre for economic performance at the London School of Economics, John Van Reenen, said high prices partly reflected that people want to live in economically successful Australia.

“However, as the commodity boom and China’s growth slows, Australia will face a more challenging time ahead,” Professor Van Reenen said.

The data was buried in the Purchasing Power Parities and Real Expenditures of World Economies report released last week by the World Bank’s International Comparison Program.

The report initially captured major attention for its finding that China had already overtaken the US as the world’s biggest economy. The Chinese government has tried to play down the significance of the report.
source: smh.com.au

Η Ατλέτικο έμεινε στο 1-1 με την Μάλαγα και η Μπαρτσελόνα στο 0-0 με την Έλτσε, έτσι ο τίτλος θα κριθεί στο ντέρμπι κορυφής της τελευταίας αγωνιστικής στο “Καμπ Νόου”. Νοκ-άουτ η Ρεάλ με ήττα από Θέλτα.

Tην τελευταία αγωνιστική στην αναμέτρηση, Μπαρτσελόνα – Ατλέτικο Μαδρίτης, θα κριθεί το φετινός τίτλος στην Ισπανία, καθώς η μεταξύ τους διαφορά των 3 βαθμών παρέμεινε, έπειτα από τις… γκέλες που έκαναν αμφότερες.

Η Μπαρτσελόνα έμεινε στο 0-0 με την Έλτσε, ενώ η Ατλέτικο αναδείχθηκε ισόπαλη 1-1 με την Μάλαγα στην Μαδρίτη, έτσι έχασε την ευκαιρία να εξασφαλίσει το πρωτάθλημα από την προτελευταία αγωνιστική.

LIVERPOOL came up short in its bid for a first league title in 24 years despite a come-from-behind 2-1 win over nine-man Newcastle that left the team two points behind champion Manchester City.

With City winning 2-0 against West Ham, even a victory at Anfield would not have been enough for Liverpool to snatch the trophy from its northwest England rival.

The Reds did their part on the final day of the season, passing the 100-goal mark for the campaign after near-identical strikes in the space of two second-half minutes by Daniel Agger and Daniel Sturridge from Steven Gerrard’s free kicks.

Martin Skrtel’s own goal in the 20th minute put Newcastle in front before the visitors imploded after the break, with Shola Ameobi and Paul Dummett sent off.

If things had turned out differently, Liverpool’s final game of the season could also have been a celebration of the most unlikely title success in English football in a generation.

Virtually the same Liverpool team had finished seventh last season, with a points tally 23 fewer than this year.

And the current Liverpool side had the Premier League trophy in its grasp three weeks ago, only for them to drop five points from games against Chelsea and Crystal Palace before the Newcastle match.

Liverpool finishes the season with 101 goals – only the second time it has passed the century milestone – and a club-record 26 league wins. But the biggest prize, the treasured league title, proved to be just out of reach.

Home fans filed into Anfield more in hope of winning the title than expectation, with Journey’s famous song “Don’t Stop Believin”’ blaring out before kickoff. The stadium had previous form for last-game drama, with Arsenal winning 2-0 here in 1989 thanks to an injury-time goal from Michael Thomas to snatch the title from Liverpool’s grasp.

However, victory over a Newcastle team that had lost six of its last seven games and was winless at Anfield in 20 years was regarded by most pundits as elementary.

It proved anything but.

Misplaced passes, aimless crosses and suspect defending summed up Liverpool’s first half, with the home side lucky not to be further behind at the break than just Skrtel’s own goal in the 20th.

Yoan Gouffran was set free down the left and his cross was sliced into the net by the Slovakia international for his fourth own goal of the season.

With Liverpool already facing a huge task to just win its own game, news then filtered through of Samir Nasri’s opening goal for Man City. All hope had gone.

Anfield was virtually silent by the time City grabbed its second at Etihad Stadium at the start of the second half, but Liverpool steeled itself to finish the season on a high.

Gerrard crossed for Daniel Agger to volley in after 63 minutes and the England captain sent in another wicked delivery for Sturridge to poke in at the far post.

Ameobi was given two yellow cards in quick succession for dissent after Sturridge’s goal and Dummett was also dismissed for a reckless lunge on Luis Suarez, who failed to score the goal that would have taken him to 32 for the campaign – a record for a 38-game season.

EPL FINAL DAY SCOREBOARD:

Manchester City 2 (Nasri 39′, Kompany 49′)  v West Ham 0        
Liverpool 2 (Agger 63′, Sturridge 65′) v Newcastle 1 (Skrtel OG 20′)
Tottenham 3 (Paulinho 14′, Vlaar OG 35′, Adebayor 38′) v Aston Villa 0                 
Cardiff 1 (Azpilicueta OG 15′) v Chelsea 2 (Schurrle 73′, Torres 76′) 
Norwich 0 v Arsenal 2 (Ramsey 53′, Jenkinson 62′)
Southampton 1 (Lambert 28′) v Manchester United 1 (Mata 54′)
West Brom 1 (Sessegnon 56′) v Stoke 2 (McAuley, Adam)
Fulham 2 (Woodrow 61′, David)  v Crystal Palace 2 (Gayle 28′, 84′)  
Hull 0 v Everton 2 (McCarthy 9′, Lukaku 46′) 
Sunderland 1 (Borini 50′) v Swansea 3 (Nathan Dyer 7′, Emnes 14′, Bony 53′)

source: heraldsun.com.au