GRAHAM ALEXANDER will be among the privileged few when he takes his team to Goodison tonight.
Salford City’s privileged few, that is.
Normally when a League Two club is drawn away to a Premier League big gun, thanks are offered to the football gods.
Five years ago Carlisle faced Liverpool at Anfield and made around £200,000 as part of their share of the gate, as well as increased commercial revenue around that League Cup tie.
For them it was manna from heaven.
Salford’s Carabao Cup visit is a world and many zeroes away from that scenario.
Alexander’s side may be going for a giantkilling act but the club are financial giants.
For the Ammies owners — Manchester United’s Class of 92 plus businessman Peter Lim — are collectively worth around as much as Everton’s majority owner Farhad Moshiri, who has a net worth of £1.94billion.
Tot up the wealth of Lim, David Beckham, Ryan Giggs, Gary and Phil Neville, Paul Scholes and Nicky Butt and you get £1.904bn.
What is more, Singaporean Lim owns LaLiga club Valencia.
Beckham is co–owner of MSL newbies Inter Miami. The Nevilles, Butt, Giggs and Scholes are joint owners of the 133–room Hotel Football which sits next to Old Trafford and was built at a cost of £24million.
Salford City, therefore, will not be arriving on Merseyside cap in hand and the fact that there will be no spectator revenue bonanza will not trouble them.
Not that boss Alexander is anything other than buzzing about the game. He said: “In terms of who we are playing, this is the biggest game in the club’s history.
“Of course, the most important one was winning the play–off final last year to get into the Football League.
“But when we talk about privilege, it will be mine to stand in the coaching zone next to a manager of the standing of Carlo Ancelotti.
“We’ve had four promotions in five years and this game is another marker in the progress we’ve made.”
Salford go to Goodison as one of the favourites to this season add another promotion to that remarkable record — one funded by the club’s mega-wealthy part-owners.
There remains much jealousy surrounding Salford and the clout the club can wield in the transfer market.
In 2018, Accrington Stanley owner Andy Holt accused Gary Neville and friends of trying to buy their way into the League after they signed striker Adam Rooney on a wage of £4,000 a week.
Yet Alexander is adamant that Neville and the rest of those who run the Ammies are hard on budgets and insist on value for money.
TRANSFER NEWS LIVE: Breaking news, juicy gossip and the biggest deals
The former Scotland international, who also bossed Fleetwood and Scunthorpe, completely buys into Salford’s financial philosophy and is well aware of the dangers of just throwing money around.
He knows that for all the cash he might have at his disposal, bringing in the wrong kind of players could turn the club into the poor little rich kids of the EFL.
The 48-year-old said: “It’s vital that you put the work in to get the right type of characters.
“You have to work out where the player’s heart is, not where his wallet is.
“Some names, some big names, have been thrown at us this summer and you are like, ‘Really? Really? He wants to play in League Two?’
“The reality is likely to be that when that player has signed his contract and is getting his money, League Two is not going to turn him on.
“And having a demotivated player is no good for anybody.
“It’s happened to me at other clubs. Some players show up and suddenly you don’t have the player you thought you were getting — he’s not that interested, other than in his money.
“You can say now that our Class of 92 owners have so much money, that they are still famous, that they are wealthy businessmen.
“But they only got there in the first place because they worked their backsides off at United.
“They have values and you don’t get what they achieved in the game by not being arsed.
“Those are the same values we have here at Salford City.
“So to have money is great but the value of a player’s character and personality is worth more to us than anything.”
