Then of course there's the idea of what constitutes super rich in the context of football. Away from the financial machinations of the Glazers, Randy Lerner's more straightforward commitment to Aston Villa appears to have run dry, with the team staring at a relegation battle and the purse strings tied tightly shut.

In the Championship, Watford's owners have enjoyed remarkable success by filling their side with loan signings from another club, Italy's Udinese, which they also own.

And then, in England's League One, there's Portsmouth. If the Glazer's ownership of Manchester United appears complex, the background to Portsmouth's stewardship is positively arcane.

An excellent blog by Portsmouth fan SJ Maskell recently dissected the baffling raft of creditors currently being pored over in the English courts. The club, which enjoyed a Premier League berth and an FA Cup win just five years ago, is facing relegation to England's fourth tier and possible ruin. It has seen a succession of owners, offshore companies, and paper trails leading all over the world drive it into successive demotions and financial collapse.

Wayward club

A group of fans has formed the Portsmouth Supporters' Trust, which is looking to gain control of this wayward club and finally wrestle it back from a course to apparent doom. All logic points to their being given the chance to do so, but this is a club that has defied logic for years and a decision in their favor is by no means certain.

The Portsmouth Supporters Trust faces a battle, but it is perhaps this kind of institution that points to a more stable future for clubs and the sport of football in England.

The problem with many of the new wave of owners in English football is not that they are foreign. Football is a global game, and the EPL is filled with players from all over the world, so it would be illogical to deny owners from overseas the chance to take part too.

But the disconnect between the fans that pay to watch these clubs, the communities in which they operate, and even the armchair fans that follow them from afar, is an issue.

A report launched this week by the football community trust Supporters Direct outlines a range of measures primarily focused on the physical manifestations of clubs -- the stadia in which they play, and the various off-shoots of these buildings.

At the report's core are recommendations designed to protect the relationship between clubs and their communities, including joint ownership of stadia, 'golden shares' to be held by supporters collectively, and clubs that are owned by or formed as so-called Community Benefit Societies. In essence, it is about taking a degree of control into the hands of supporters.

The sentiment behind this applies not just to the bricks and mortar of a football stadium. Clubs like Barcelona in Spain and throughout Germany's Bundesliga are protected from extreme and erratic behavior by the fact that fans are directly involved in a democratic ownership arrangement.

The worst excesses of owners, who can act on a whim to often disrupt and damage the course of some of the long established institutions at the heart of communities, can be curbed by what is basically a democratic, rather than autocratic structure.

Allied to initiatives such as UEFA's Financial Fair Play rules, perhaps this will see a game in England that is balanced less precariously, and fit for a long term and sustainable future.

For now, however, English football fans should perhaps be careful what they wish for.