Arabian Business has just heard about reports that the Saudi Prince Faisal Bin Fahd Bin Abdullah Al Saud is looking to buy a stake in Liverpool football club.

While looking on Getty Images we came across this photo of the club’s American co-owner George Gillett (left) talking to an “unidentified man” in the director’s box at Anfield on Saturday.

Is this mystery man Prince Faisal? Let us know by using the comment box below.

The glamour of owning an English Premier League club might soon lose its lustre for Suleiman Al-Fahim, who completed a takeover of Portsmouth FC this week.

The team is currently second bottom in the league, with three losses from the first three games of the season.

British bookmakers have made Portsmouth odds-on favourites to be relegated at the end of the 2009-10 campaign.

Having reportedly paid £60 million ($100m) for the club, Al-Fahim stands to lose around £30 per year if the club is relegated to the second tier Coca Cola Championship.

Since Arabianbusiness.com is a business site, not a sports site, I will spare you my pub punditry on the quality of the squad, but will instead look at the mathematical likelihood of Premiership survival based on the evidence to date.

The decision Al Fahim has to make now, or more likely in the January transfer windows, is whether to invest in new players. The cost of luring players is inflated for teams in relegation trouble, and typically teams in the lower reaches of the league opt for loan players who are not playing regular Premiership football elsewhere.

But before January, one key person can be replaced: the manager, Paul Hart. In the 16 game tenure at the end of last season, his record was a tolerable played 16, won four, lost seven, drew five - 1.06 points per game.

Having lost the first three games of the season, Mr Hart now has 35 games left to reach what is commonly reported as a safe number of points for survival in the Premier League: the magic 40 point mark.

If Portsmouth continue to average 1.06 points per game, they will reach 37.1 points this season, a tally that most people would expect to see the club relegated.

But, hang on. Conventional wisdom on the points required to survive in the Premiership is wrong. It is true that every club that has scored 40 points or more in the past six years has survived, but it is also the case that 37 points would have been enough to stay up for every season but one since 2003.

Should Paul Hart remain the manager of Portsmouth for the whole of this season? The statistics suggest that it would not be a disaster.

But football is a game played on grass, not paper and, if I were a Pompey fan, I would not enjoy the season if the target was 37 points.

British bookmakers not only have Portsmouth favourite to be relegated, they also have Paul Hart as strong favourite to be the first Premiership manager to lose his job. Who am I to argue?

Like many others I have been a keen amateur sportsman down the years. I have shed blood, sweat and tears on the football field, suffered sunburn playing cricket, broken bones on the rugby pitch, thrashed around on tennis courts the world over, and been brutally demoralised on virtually every golf course on which I have ever stepped foot.

What I attempt to do and what the professionals do, whatever the sport, are poles apart.

Professional golfers, for example, fully expect to complete a round of golf in fewer than 70 shots – that is to say that they expect to ‘break 70’; I masqueraded as a golfer last weekend but the only thing that I broke was my putter. On purpose. In fact if anyone was watching me play – which I sincerely doubt – they would be forgiven for thinking that I was actually a fisherman rather than a golfer, such was the regularity with which I had to scoop stray balls out of lakes.

Professional snooker players regularly accumulate breaks of over 100; the top players occasionally record maximum 147’s. I first picked up a cue in 1983 and my highest break to date is 22.

The difference between the keen amateur and the professional is vast. But equally cavernous is the gap between the average pro and the elite.

Roger Federer is a prime example, and he has just provided us with a timely reminder at this year’s Wimbledon. Sunday’s final was close but in the end it seemed as though he was brandishing a birch twig rather than a racket, as he administered death by a thousand lashes to the husband of the swimwear model, in the match that never ended.

Federer often wears a sweatband around his head when he is playing – I get the distinct feeling that if I were to step on to a court and play against him that he could wear it as a blindfold and he would still win.

He is not just a champion; he is part of sport’s elite; he is a Grand Master not simply competing with the opponents of today, but with the history books; battling against the achievements of all who have gone before. The other most notable Grand Master currently active today is Tiger Woods, who is another on his way to becoming the most decorated player of all time in his chosen sport.

Tiger would almost certainly not recognize what I do as being the same game that he has come as close as anyone to perfecting; instead thinking that I am some sort of nutter that enjoys hacking his way through shrubbery and gorse bushes of a weekend. “That’s not golf,” Tiger would think to himself. “That doesn’t look fun.” And he’d be right.

There are others too. Schumacher in Formula 1; Hendry following in Davies’ considerable footsteps in snooker; Phelps made waves in the pool; even team sports have the ability to throw up the occasional star that shines brighter than all others such as Maradona in football; Jordan in basketball and Lara and Warne in cricket.

The thing is, even the most recreational of amateurs can play a brilliant shot now and again. A crushing forehand. A crisp cover drive. A sweet five iron. You play that one shot that befits the professional arena; you hang on to it’s memory and think, ‘I’ve done it once, I can do it again, all I need to work on now is my consistency’.

But then you see one of the Grand Masters at work and you realize that they do not use a racket, a bat, a cue, or a club as we mere mortals use. The sporting Gods have issued them with a magic wand, and all that we have in common is the name of the game that we are playing.

Most of us play sport because we enjoy it. Some of us play to win. But there are others – the chosen few – to which, as Federer’s post-match press conference T-shirt declared, ‘There is no finish line’. Indeed. There is no easy path to the summit. For those seeking a new summit there is no path at all.

Brinkmanship and bluff have always been a part of the multi-million dollar world of Formula One racing, and there is little reason to suppose that the current battle between the sport’s governing body, the FIA, and its teams, who are negotiating under the name of FOTA, will not find a solution to their dispute.

The man in the middle of the warring factions Bernie Ecclestone, who presides over the commercial rights of F1, and is widely accepted as the only person who can bang heads together to reach an agreement.

The current dispute is focused on the imposition of a plan by Max Mosley, president of the FIA, of a spending cap by F1 teams for next year’s season. The teams, particularly the richest teams including Ferrari and Renault (led by the flamboyant Flavio Briatore), want the spending cap scrapped, or at least phased in over several years.

The spending cap may be the headline issue, but most F1 pundits assume this spat is about a power struggle between Mr Mosley, and Mr Briatore.

If there no agreement is reached, FOTA has said it will form a breakaway series next year, which will have a profound impact on racing in the GCC.

Formula One is a brand operated by Mr Ecclestone that holds all the commercial rights to the racing, and all the contracts with race track owners. Abu Dhabi and Bahrain have contracts to host F1 races.

If the sport splits, there will two championships, and here I will defer to the expertise of Professor Mark Jenkins, director of research at Cranfield School of Management, author of Motorsport Going Global: The Challenges Facing the World’s Motorsport Industry, and respected blogger on F1 racing. Professor Jenkins predicts competing championships that look like this:

The FIA Formula 1 2010 Championship.

As things stand there are currently five teams entered for this championship (if we disregard Ferrari, Red Bull Racing and Toro Rosso who the FIA say are confirmed entrants, but the teams themselves say they are not).

Of the current F1 teams there are only two, Williams and Force India, and three new teams: Campos, USF1 and Manor. Both Williams and Force India have engine contracts in place with Toyota and Mercedes respectively, if we assume that these FOTA teams will not continue to supply engines to FIA championship contenders, then Williams and Force India will probably use Cosworth Engines, effectively making the FIA championship a single engine formula, great for Cosworth, but certainly not in the spirit of Formula 1.

The FIA will also need to find another five teams, with potential new entrants Lola and N Technology pulling out these may come from Prodrive/Aston Martin, Litespeed, Formtech and Epsilon, assuming that their partners are still interested if they aren’t now competing against teams like Ferrari and McLaren. Either way the majority will be new teams with new drivers unknown to the F1 fan base.

The FOTA 2010 Championship

The first problem that FOTA will have is what to call themselves. The commercial rights holder for the F1 championship (Bernie Ecclestone) has been consistently firm in ensuring that any commercial operation using language close to ‘F1′ either pays significant licensing fees or changes their name.

FOTA may try to do a deal with Tony Teixeira to use his A1GP name (Ferrari currently supply the engines for the series) but their options are not wide. The eight FOTA teams will also need to find a tyre supplier

(Bridgestone being contracted to F1, and no-one else is currently interested in spending the kind of investment needed to be in F1), Pirelli, Michelin and Goodyear are possible start points, but may need some financial incentives to get involved.

They will also need circuits. If we assume that currently contracted F1 circuits would not be able to host a FOTA race then the obvious start point would be former F1 circuits - Silverstone and Brands Hatch in the UK, Montreal in Canada, Indianapolis in the US and Imola in Italy are all in the frame.

FOTA will also need regulations and an organisation to enforce these. To make the business model work the series needs media revenue which in F1 provides around 20% of the revenues for the teams, this means deals need to be done with media operations to sell the rights to the series and this requires commitment and clarity for a number of years so that some return on investment can be estimated.

Professor Jenkins assumes that F1 circuits will remain F1 circuits, so Abu Dhabi and Bahrain will host races that lack the cars and the best drivers (Button, Hamilton, Massa all drive for FOTA teams). Broadcasters might still show these races because they are on long-term contracts, but these same broadcasters might also show the FOTA races, which could grab a larger audience because the drivers and teams are bigger brands than F1 and the FIA.

The problem could be compounded for Abu Dhabi and Bahrain if FOTA signs up a series of street races. What the glamour of F1 has done for Monaco, FOTA could do for Dubai and Doha. I can certainly picture Ferarri and McLaren racing a circuit that includes Shindagha Tunnel, Maktoum Bridge and tearing along a start/finish straight along Baniyas Road at 300 km/h.

How a Dubai Street Grand Prix might look on Google Maps.

As a Formula 1 enthusiast, I would like to see all the best drivers and all the best cars competing in a single championship, preferably one that sees a good deal more overtaking and excitement than we have witnessed this year. But if the sport fragments, I for one will be booking a room in the Radisson Blu Hotel (formerly the Dubai Intercontinental) to watch the FOTA Dubai grand prix. Abu Dhabi’s F1 race would pale in comparison.

The big news in the world of football this week is that English Premier League club Portsmouth is the latest takeover target for an Abu Dhabi investor. This time UN Ambassador and Property Tycoon Sulaiman Al Fahim is the money man and is rumoured to have agreed to buy the club for something in the region of 55 million pounds.

Al Fahim was instrumental in the take over of Manchester City and brokered the deal for Sheikh Mansour Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, must have liked the idea and decided that he wanted a team for himself.

I can’t help wondering whether this is some sort of ‘my club will be bigger than your club’ Abu Dhabi based contest unfolding and I’ll be very interested to see how it plays out. Will the two investors be in it for the long haul or will they grow tired of their new playthings once they realise it’s harder than it looks?

It is no secret that there is money to be made in English football. But the Premier League is a fiercely competitive place and the really big money is only really available once a team qualifies for The Champions League - which requires a top 4 finish. In case you are unaware - those top 4 places are currently occupied by Manchester United, Liverpool, Chelsea and Arsenal and have been for 5 out of the last 6 seasons.

Many teams, with the aid of overseas investment have been trying to break into this quartet for some time - and with the exception of Everton in 2004/2005 (who finished 4th ironically without huge financial backing) - all have failed.

If a team is to break this domination they’ll need world class players a world class manager, a truck load of money and a huge amount of luck.

Manchester City have started to put the building blocks in place to launch an attack and pretty much tick all the boxes. However they are finding it increasingly difficult to attract the big name players that are required.

So far, Raul the Real Madrid and Spanish legend, Bulgarian superstar Dimitar Berbatov, Brazilian World Cup winner and AC Milan maestro Kaka have turned the club down. There was also a recent rumour that City had made an audacious bid for the Barcelona playmaker and star of the recent Champions League final, Lionel Messi.

The fees that have been mentioned in connection with these players are astronomical. The fee for Raul alone was said to be somewhere in the region of 71 million pounds. Silly money and to be honest, a silly offer.

Big players only want to play for the biggest clubs on the biggest stages. With all due respect to Manchester City and Portsmouth they are not big clubs - yet. Even the arrival of the Brazilian star Robinho to City earlier in the year appeared to be some sort of fluke.

Robinho famously held a press conference 2 days prior to joining City to re-iterate his desire to play for Chelsea. Whether the news that he would be plying his trade in the blue of Manchester City instead of the blue of Chelsea came as a big surprise - only he will know.

I have nothing against clubs trying to break into the big 4 of English football. It can only be welcomed. If things stay the same for too long they become boring and for most fans of English football teams outside of the top 4, it’s boring already. I’m just not sure that the prospective new owners of Portsmouth realise how difficult a task it will be.

With the continued refusal of world class players to join them - the Manchester City owners are finding this out.

The sorry tale of Newcastle United’s recent relegation should serve as a warning - if you grow impatient for the glory that you crave - if you buy the wrong players - if you sack your managers too quickly - you will fail and the club that you bought for 55 million or 200 million in Man City’s case will be worth a lot less.

Mike Ashley brought Newcastle United for approximately 134 million pounds in 2007 - since relegation the club is now on the market for less then 100 million - and nobody wants it.

If City and Portsmouth are to start to close the gap on the so called ‘big four’ they need to think carefully about their strategy. Buying world class players in their prime is not an option - buying former world class players with big reputations is not advisable either.

Invest in young, talented and hardworking players who have a future. Bolster the youth system and buy players who would relish the opportunity to grow with the team. If the team is built in the right way, not only will they start to win trophies but they will also win fans. Why throw money at something that will not repay you? You love something in the right way; it will eventually love you back.

We will have to wait and see who wins the Abu Dhabi ‘best team contest’. But I for one can’t help thinking that it’s all rather sad that English football clubs are forced into selling out to overseas investors in order to survive. I remain hopeful that rules against overseas ownership are put in place some time soon - although - like the owners of Man City and Portsmouth - I could be in for a long wait.