Very Specific Football Question No.45: Why do Asian businessmen love West Midlands football?

With the ratification of West Bromwich Albion’s sale to the catchily named Yunyi Guokai Sports Development Limited, China’s conquest of the West Midlands is complete.

The Baggies have joined their three biggest local rivals, Wolves, Aston Villa and Birmingham, in being owned by wealthy middle-aged men from the Far East.

All four of England’s Chinese chairman (or Hong Kong in the case of Birmingham) have laid down roots in the same part of England. But why there?

It’s known that Chinese investment in the UK has rapidly increased as new trade deals between the two countries are developed, but that doesn’t necessarily explain China’s apparent fascination with Brummies.

While Birmingham and the Black Country may be interesting parts of the world in their own way, boasting such sights as Cadbury World and Dudley Zoo to name just two, they have not traditionally had the same business allure as London.

Yet if you’re Chinese and you’ve got a spare few million quid to splurge on a football team, there is evidently only one place to be.

It’s possible that the West Midlands has, unbeknownst to anyone in Britain, gained a more glamorous reputation in China than we give it credit for at home.

Something similar recently happened to the seemingly non-descript Oxfordshire village of Kidlington, which was besieged by Chinese tourists this summer without any of the locals ever knowing why.

Maybe the tourist board has pinpointed Solihull as the next must-see English attraction for the discerning Asian traveller who wants to get off the beaten track and see how “ordinary people” live.

Perhaps there is currently a Wolverhampton-based detective series we don’t know about topping the Beijing TV ratings, or an English character in a Shanghai soap opera who hails from Handsworth.

Or maybe it’s nothing to do with popular culture or history. Maybe, as unlikely as it sounds now, this is all about the football.

While Villa, Wolves and the Blues have all suffered recent relegations to the Championship, and the Baggies currently sit in the top flight relegation zone, West Midlands football wasn’t always in such a sorry state.

Is it possible that the men behind Fosun, the “international conglomerate and investment company” that bought Wolves, remember the club’s golden era in the 1950s?

Or maybe the glory days of the 2009/10 season, the last time two West Midlands teams finished in the Premier League top half, were featured heavily on Chinese TV, with Roger Johnson and Carlos Cuellar becoming household names.

Perhaps Villa owner Tony Xia fell in love with the English game after watching Ron Atkinson’s Villa side beat Manchester United in the 1994 Coca-Cola Cup final.

Or new West Brom supremo Guochuan Lai was deeply moved when he witnessed Bryan Robson’s Baggies side pull of their Great Escape in 2005.

When Sun Jihai became the first Chinese player to score in the Premier League – for Manchester City in a 2-0 win at Birmingham in 2002 – is it conceivable that the millions watching on TV back home were left awestruck by the sight of a magical new place named “St Andrews”?

Unfortunately, it’s unlikely to be anything as romantic as this.

One theory is that the Chinese are dead keen on the West Midlands because the high-speed rail link HS2, which has benefited from significant investment from Beijing, runs slap bang through the area.

Simon Chadwick, a professor of sports enterprise at Salford Business School, recently wrote that the boom in Far East football investment “will be driven more by the offices and conventions of Chinese government than by fan sentiment on the terraces”.

The clubs, meanwhile, would be merely “a property that is intended to add value to the Chinese buyer’s business portfolio”.

“Fans should remember that Chinese business culture does not operate on the basis of ‘something for nothing’,” the Professor added.

And this is possibly the greatest indicator of why Villa and Wolves have been snapped up. They’re cheap, but have the potential to grow. (Not that this plan worked out so well for Carson Yeung at Birmingham.)

As for West Brom, as an existing Premier League club they are not such a bargain, but it’s a bit like when you have three of the train stations in Monopoly. At that point you might as well buy the fourth one and exert total power.

There’s just one burning question that none of this answers. When are Walsall going to get a piece of the action?

Follow @darlingkevin on Twitter

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