Money can't buy Monaco love as tax battle looms The second most expensive player of the transfer window quickly gave them what they wanted, Radamel Falcao's second goal in many games the springboard for a 4-1 win over Montpellier. Anything over 10,000 is a better than average audience for domestic football at the Stade Louis II, capacity 18,500. At times in the last two seasons in the second division, gates slipped below 5,000, a surreal backdrop to a project that intends to elevate the club to enduring heavyweight status in Europe. But the numbers behind the investment in Monaco by the Russian billionaire Dimtri Rybolovlev in the last 18 months - some £140m, including the £50m which prised Falcao from Atletico Madrid - demand they be taken seriously. Rybolovlev, ranked among the world's 120 wealthiest individuals by Forbes magazine, bought a controlling stake in AS Monaco from the Monegasque royal family in late 2011 and if his new acquisition had some pedigree - Monaco were finalists in the 2004 Champions League and employed, during the 1980s and 1990s, the likes of Glenn Hoddle, Arsene Wenger, Jurgen Klinsmann, George Weah and Thierry Henry - it was fading, the club declining at a startling rate. A strong fan base - like at a Leeds, or a Napoli - can sometimes cushion a club against the worst impact of that sort of freefall. Monaco do not have that. The "New Monaco," though, were out looking for it over the weekend. Sun-bathers on Cote D'Azur beaches had been buzzed by light aircraft trailing banners with the words: "Sunday, two clock, Stade Louis II, Monaco-Montpellier." Holiday-makers arriving at Nice airport, half an hour along the Mediterranean, have been greeted by posters, featuring Falcao's image, trying to put AS Monaco on the a la carte of days out. Thirty Euros bought a place to watch a Monaco XI featuring the decorated veterans Ricardo Carvalho - signed from Real Madrid - and Eric Abidal - from Barcelona - in central defence, and up front the lively young Emmanuel Riviere, whose hat-trick overshadowed Falcao's early penalty, as well as the opportunity for some celebrity rubber-necking in the direction of the VIP suites. At the Stade Louis II, there is a good chance of seeing somebody from the Principality's resident artistic or athletic community, a Novak Djokovic or a Lewis Hamilton. The demographic of Monte Carlo, with its peculiar ratio of millionaires to ordinary Monegasques - its official population is just 36,000, almost 75 per cent of them foreign residents - means the club has a complicated task remodelling itself along the lines favoured and, in theory, required by the governors of European football, one of several imminent challenges. If, as anticipated, Monaco qualify for a European club competition next season, they would come under the scrutiny of Uefa's Financial Fair Play monitors, required to present a viable business plan in which outgoings tally with credible projections for future income. Ticket sales are not going to stack up high against salary costs. Elsewhere in Ligue 1, Monaco are resented. Any privileges brought in by a new, generous patron has that effect on the opposition. Envy is doubled in the case of Monaco, who hold an advantage in the transfer market because they are subject not to French fiscal laws but those of the tax haven they call home. To pay Falcao the £1m per month net that attracted him to France would cost another Ligue 1 club, with their tax liabilities, around £750,000 a month more than their rivals. A similar equation applied when Monaco had Klinsmann and Weah on the roster and the royals were in charge. The French league lived with that. With Rybolovlev upping the ante the league have proposed all their members should be officially domiciled on French territory, and subject to French law, as of 2014, or at least that Monaco accept a compromise which evens out the imbalance between their small overheads and those of the rest. The issue goes to court in the autumn. Its outcome may affect Falcao, who is reported in Spain to be restless already, but Monaco continue to recruit. The Argentinian international goalkeeper, Sergio Romero, has just been signed from Sampdoria. Managing this uplift is Claudio Ranieri, who oversaw promotion and has good references for this task. Working with an impatient Russian oligarch? He did it at Chelsea. Consolidating a freshly promoted club? Witness his stint at Juventus. Ranieri had said he was "curious" to see what sort of crowd would respond to Monaco's Ligue 1 return. He hopes the momentum of the new campaign - two wins from two games - carries on when the numbers dwindle. They will do for the visit of Toulouse on Friday, a fixture the French Federation's disciplinary board has ruled must be played behind closed doors, punishment for a pitch invasion against Le Mans in May, when one trespasser threw a punch at the referee. It is not all champagne and canapés at the Louis II.