Content at Coventry?

As  the Ricoh electronic sign facing the road running past the stadium puts it, Welcome Home Coventry City.  Undoubtedly it was an emotional moment on Friday evening to see the end of exile in Northampton.  This display of emotion by ACL, the Ricoh company, was lessened to some extent by the fact that that it is one of a series of advertisements that cascade, so not entirely overwhelming.  Among the others is one declaiming ‘NERF WARS Ten players for £99’.  Turf Wars might be nearer the truth.

A return to the Ricoh has been from the very beginning a no brainer.  Everybody lost with the move to Northampton – Sisu, through the boycott by Coventry City fans (although I suspect that the massive drop in gates was not solely out of reasoned protest by ‘real fans’ but also done to inconvenience for the less less-committed, but still important financially, fans.

I suspect that ACL, recognising what a no brainer the return was, always anticipated a return.  The club logo, visible through the left-hand sector of the elliptical frame, never disappeared from the stadium throughout the period of exile, a slightly unnerving take on reality.

The details of the current ceasefire in the war between ACL and Sisu are subject to commercial confidentiality.  The fact that a professional mediator was involved suggests to me that concessions were eventually made by both parties.  Sisu have put on a bold face on and still talk bullishly but vaguely in terms of a new stadium, while ACL have not swung the might of their PR company Weber Shandwick into overdrive.

What little is known as fact is that the new agreement is one for two years with the option of a further two years.  Seven years in and £40m+ sunk into the club by Sisu, SISU are far from OUT.  Dreams of a Pompey-style takeover of the club by the Sky Blue Trust remain just that.

However jubilant fans may feel, there is little at a deeper level to celebrate, and they need to recognise that the ‘war’ is not over.  They may be content to watch football at where they see as the rightful home of the club, but until more fundamental issues are fully resolved, we are now in a clod war scenario, with the prospect that hostilities will resume as we come up to the end of the current two-year ceasefire.  Whatever deal has been reached over rent and matchday revenues is inevitably a compromise.  The depressing reality is that neither Sisu nor ACL cannot afford to compromise as they both need all the monies in question.

One unknown in the equation is how many fans will maintain an anti-Sisu boycott.  It will be interesting to see the level at which attendances settle as the season progresses.

On Coventry City, Hereford United and Salisbury City, not forgetting the Owners & Directors Test

So, Coventry City will finally return to the Ricoh. Interestingly, the large CCFC logo which adorns the stadium had never at any point been taken down, suggesting that ACL, the Ricoh owners, always believed a compromise with Sisu could be achieved.

According to the Coventry Telegraph, the big breakthrough in negotiations was as the result of ‘Divine Intervention’. What they meant was that Joe Elliott, long-time key figure in much of what has happened, but recently ostracised by Sisu, persuaded the Very Reverend John Witcombe, Dean of Coventry Cathedral, to intercede. He turned to Bill Marsh, a professional mediator, with some track record in these matters, including involvement in the sale of Brighton & Hove Albion by Bill Archer.

What remains outside the public domain are the details of the new agreement – who conceded what? The Coventry Telegraph paints a picture of willingness by both parties to reach a conclusion. CCFC have announced their pleasure at returning; ACL have remained silent.

The spotlight on football’s top basket case switches then away from Coventry, and falls on two other clubs, Hereford United and Salisbury City. Both cases involve contentious new owners, and hence bring the need once more for scrutinisation of the Owners & Directors Test, more widely known as the Fit and Proper Person test.

In the case of Salisbury, a new owner Outail Touzar, a Moroccan businessman, was approved, and he bought the club. Pretty rapidly the club was describing the negotiations as “a trail of lies, deceit and deception”, and the local MP has branded Touzar ‘a charlatan’. Now you might think that this, together with the fact that Touzar was reported to be recruiting players notwithstanding the club’s transfer embargo would bring his fitness and properness into question. Apparently not.

Over at Hereford, the club, already deeply distressed financially, was sold to Tommy Agombar, who immediately exuded a totally misplaced optimism about what his ownership would bring. Agombar had a theft conviction, and duly failed the Owners & Directors Test.

A 1:1 draw for the efficacy of the Owners & Directors Test? Decidedly not! The previous owner of Hereford United had sold the club in the knowledge that Agombar had this conviction, Agombar was free to sell the club to whoever he wished once it was declared that he had failed the Test, and in fact sold it to a company which specialised in buying distressed debts, thus placing the club deeper in the financial mire.

It is fundamentally wrong that ownership of the club should ever have passed to someone who had not passed the Owners and Directors Test, and equally wrong that such a person can then sell on the club.

Not only is the Owners & Directors Test fundamentally flawed by its inability to prevent, for example, Touzar, buying a club, its operation is fundamentally flawed in that does not prevent someone who has not passed it to sell the club on. As well as a system of Club Licensing we need a system for licensing Club Owners. Without already holding such a license, no one should be allowed to buy the majority shareholding in a club, let alone then sell it.

With respect to Salisbury City, it also needs to be asked why Touzar has not at the very least been charged with bringing the game into disrepute. The current chronic failure of the FA to help rather than hinder clubs in financial distress must be addressed.

Moving on from ‘SISU OUT’

It was a difficult choice of topic after so many months, but Coventry City is probably the obvious choice for me – I live about a mile from the old Highfield Road ground and could hear the roar on matchdays.

By chance, I was turning out last week and came across a copy of the Coventry Observer from 20 December 2007. My reason for keeping it was apparent on page 3 – two stories which began thus:

• Last minute deal secures football club’s future
  Coventry City were just half an hour away from going into administration when pen was finally put to paper on a long-awaited takeover deal.
  with the clock ticking towards Friday’s 4pm deadline for a deal to be struck, the Sky Blues confirmed shortly before 3.30pm, the takeover by SISU Capital was going ahead – securing the club’s future and banishing the threat of administration…

• Arena pledges support for club’s future
  Ricoh Arena chiefs have pledged to support SISU Capital’s efforts to return Coventry City to the Premier League…

Clearly much has changed since December 2007. The club had been through a disastrous period in the years immediately before. Debts had been reported as running as high as £38 million; year after year the club made operating losses; and investing in the new £60m stadium had proved a step too far. Indeed, the stadium, the brainchild of the club’s then Chairman, Bryan Robinson, had only become reality by the club passing the stadium project over to Arena Coventry Ltd (ACL), a joint venture company consisting of Coventry City Council (50%) and the Alan Edward Higgs Charity (50%), a trust set up to help deprived children from Coventry.

The then owners of the club – the major shareholders, owning 90%, were Craigavon (City MP Geoffrey Robinson’s family trust, and Sir Derek Higgs, son of Alan Edward Higgs) – announced their intention of placing the club into Administration. Apart from Sisu, the only potential buyer was ‘Greek billionaire businessman Alki David’, who rapidly backed off when he realised the scale of the debts he would inherit.

The club thus stood, to borrow the recent words of David Conn (or a Guardian sub-editor perhaps) on the edge of an abyss.

Coming in then as saviours of a club in distinct danger of liquidation, how then did we reach today’s situation of repeated legal confrontation and the club’s exile?

Sisu were by their own admission new to the football business. They brought in football business experts such as Ray Ranson and Ken Dulieu. Their judgement proved questionable and both departed. As the performance on the pitch deteriorated and the club suffered a further relegation to League 1, the fans became severely disenchanted, a situation compounded by Sisu’s almost non-existent transparency or engagement with the fans.

Opposition to Sisu became public and organised, and we drifted into phases of protest characterised by a series of slogans.

The first of these was the unequivocal SISU OUT. Understandable though this was, in my eyes it always seemed at best only half a strategy – and what next? The further Sisu sank funds into the club, the less likely it was that anyone else would want to buy the club. In the six and a half years of Sisu’s ownership only the brief appearance of Preston Haskell IV presented any viable alternative to Sisu. It became abundantly clear that a presumption of the SISU OUT slogan – that Sisu were willing to sell – was ill-founded, and even wishful-thinking.

The straw that broke the back of many fans was the decision of Sisu, in an attempt to force ACL’s hand in the increasingly bitter disputes over rent and matchday revenues, to take the club into exile at Northampton. We then entered a phase where the slogan of choice was BRING CITY HOME. A perfectly simple proposition on the face of it, but one which begged the intractable questions of how and under what conditions.

The most recent phase has seen protests with banners saying LET DOWN, which begs the question of by whom. Moz Baker of the Sky Blue Trust when interviewed on local television earlier this week cited Sisu and the Football League, and it’s not hard build an argument for either nomination. I would add to this list ACL and its joint owners, Coventry City Council and the Alan Edward Higgs Trust. I would also add to the list the previous owners of the club, for it was they who precipitated the current situation by deciding to move away from the old stadium at Highfield Road, which resulted in the separation of ownership of the club and its stadium.

From a business perspective, it is perfectly understandable and indeed reasonable that the club owners would want the matchday revenues, particularly with the restraints that Financial Fair Play protocols now place on spending . Equally understandable and indeed reasonable is that the owners of the stadium would also want the matchday revenues, particularly as the football stadium is the core of the revenue generating potential of the infrastructure.

So, we are in the situation where the entrenched positions of the two main proponents are understandable and reasonable from their own perspectives. The only way out of the impasse would be compromise by one or both parties. At present we have a war of attrition. There are unsubstantiated rumours that talks are taking place between Sisu and ACL. If true, we can only hope that ‘jaw jaw’ will stop ‘war war’. The present situation with the club in exile is patently bad for the owners of the club, for the owners of the stadium, and, above all, for the fans, and indeed for the Council Tax payers in Coventry (of which I must put my hand up as being one). The only gainers are the lawyers.

A return to the Ricoh is a no brainer. There must surely be some way forward through compromise.

 

[A reminder – this is a personal blog which is moderated.  Abusive comments will not be posted; counter-views are not considered inherently abusive.]

 

Ready to come back onto the e-pitch

Back in February last year (!) I noted a change in life circumstances and wondered “How this will affect my blogging is not yet clear.” As you may have noticed, it had a major impact on my blogging.  Between March and July this year, for example, I made 16 work-related trips, twelve of them abroad, so blogging rather slipped down my ‘to do’ list.

Nonetheless I have continued throughout to keep my club files up-to-date, but the relatively little time I had for social media I put into three news sites. Directly related to the content of this blog is Scoop.it! Football Finance.   A second site, Scoop.it! The Business of Sports Management includes football management issues that are either beyond the area of finance or are beyond England (the site is tagged and that link picks up just the football stories.  A third site, Scoop.it! The Business of Events Management, includes football events such as the various World Cups (2014, 2018 and 2022), and news on these individual events can be pulled up by clicking on the appropriate tags.

To my regret, my blogging silence has included a number of intriguing (in both senses of the word) sagas – in alphabetical order, Birmingham City, Cardiff City, Coventry City, Hereford United, Leeds United, Portsmouth, Reading, and Salisbury City, for example, spring to mind, all of which have been well covered on the Scoop.it! Football Finance site.

There was much I could have blogged on these clubs and others. With a reduction in my future work commitments I plan to start blogging again regularly.  Just looking at that list of clubs, with the one exception of the fan-owned Portsmouth, there remains much to be concerned about in terms of their finances, how they are managed by owners, and the overall governance of English football.  I plan to play myself back into regular blogging, so do please return to the blog over the coming weeks.  New postings will be announced on Twitter.

As to what the topics of upcoming postings will be, I feel spoilt for choice…

Opening a can of worms?

The varying relationship between football clubs and their local councils I have, in a previous posting, described as a postcode lottery.  It is often a vital one, especially when the stadium sits at the heart of an issue.  I am of course particularly aware of this as a resident of Coventry, where a protracted dispute lingers on with ever more serious potential consequences, as those who follow my news tweets (@JohnBeech) will be aware.  (Even after the High Court hearing yesterday there are unanswered questions, so I’m going to pass on commenting until things are clearer.)

The European Commission is not a body which ever normally prompts me to write about football, but a recent news item had set me thinking.  The report (1) referred to an in-depth investigation by the European Commission into the relationships between five Dutch councils and their local football clubs.  The concern was with whether there had been any breaches of EU law in the way that the councils may possibly have given illegal state aid to the clubs.

The full official report on the EC’s investigation so far can be found here.  The specific findings to date on the five clubs under investigation are given below:

Name of club	Year of measure	Description
NEC (1st league)	2010	Municipality of Nijmegen bought off a claim made by NEC for €2.2 million.
MVV (2nd league)	2010	Municipality of Maastricht waived a claim of € 1.7 million on MVV and bought the stadium for €1.85 million.
Willem II (1st league)	2010	Municipality of Tilburg lowered rent of stadium with retroactive effect, total advantage €2.4 million.
PSV (1st league)	2011	Municipality of Eindhoven bought land from PSV for €48.385 million and leased it back to this club.
FC Den Bosch (2nd league)	2011	Municipality of Den Bosch waived a claim of €1.65 million on FC Den Bosch and bought training facilities for €1.4 million.

It is not the enormity of the potential crimes that set me thinking, rather their almost mundane nature.  In England, were there clubs who would find themselves in similar, if not identical circumstances, inadvertently being guilty of receiving illegal state aid?  On the face of it, the answer is surely ‘yes’.

Certainly there are English clubs which rent their stadiums from the local council as the owner of the stadium.  There are equally certainly others who have received financial support in building new stadiums.

What really set me thinking about all of this was the accidental discovery of a report that Spanish clubs may also be under investigation.  This I came across in the 7^th March issue the print edition of the English language version of the respected newspaper El Pais (not, I have to be honest, part of my regular reading material – it was a freebie on a flight from Madrid to Munich).  I’ve been unable to find the report in English on the newspaper’s website (but the original Spanish is here).

The report implied that the Spanish investigation was not taking place in a pubic way – there was an inferred secrecy surrounding it.  Could it be that the football clubs of yet other nations were under investigation?

If such an investigation were (and you’ll note my cautionary use of the subjunctive) to take place with respect to English clubs, which might have cause for concern?

Given my clear admission that I am not a legal expert, for once I would positively encourage readers’ comments.  I would particularly like to hear the views of legal academics who specialise in football clubs (and even post-games Olympic stadiums, and post-Commonwealth-games stadiums!).

For once, a personal note

Apologies to regular readers for an ‘off topic’ posting, but, to be fair, this is a personal blog.  Rest assured – it will not become a habit.

The sharp-eyed may have noticed a change in the ‘About’ section.  One of those apparently landmark life events occurred at midnight last Thursday – I went from being a full-time employee to ‘senior citizen’ status.  Although I was actually 65 in October, it is only now that I have chosen to switch to being a pensioner.

From Friday, my relationship with Coventry University changed.  I have accepted an Honorary Research Fellowship, which means that I retain my affiliation to the university, but any work I do for them in future is by mutual agreement and subject to individual contract.

Quite what this change will mean in practice remains to be seen.  I guess I’ve been lucky that in recent years my day-job has included what I would actually choose to do by free choice – research football finance and governance.  Not for me a shift to an allotment then!

I plan to continue and perhaps extend my lecturing in Sports and Events Management, public speaking, researching and consultancy.  As I write, I have commitments every month until July in, first, Madrid and then in Kufstein, Austria.  In November I will be spending three weeks lecturing at the Russian International Olympic University in Sochi.

There will of course be significant gaps in my diary, and I plan to focus even more on my particular interest – the role of fans in football governance and club ownership.

How this will affect my blogging is not yet clear.  If things go the way I envisage, I would expect ‘normal service’ to be maintained.  There is unlikely to be a significant increase as I have only ever posted when I felt I had something worthwhile to say.  My tweeting of NEWS items should be unaffected.

My transition from employee to ‘retiree’ should, all in all, be rather less of a transition than for most people.  I see it as an opportunity, and am open to interesting offers!

‘Part and parcel of the modern game’

To develop an old media dictum, a ball boy kicking a footballer, now that would be news.  The Eden Hazard incident (1) was always going to have legs as a story because of its ‘shock horror’ value.  Its inherent symbolism, a Goliath kicking a David, would guarantee that.  As has emerged, there were nuances of the particular incident, which have only added to media interest, which will swell up again when Hazard’s case is heard by the FA.

Not only was it a case of a footballer (at this stage, allegedly) kicking a ball boy, it was a case of a highly, highly paid footballer allegedly kicking a partisan volunteer.  To me this was the true shock horror element.  It epitomised the incongruity of the modern game.  On the one hand there are, in the Premier League, players on enormous salaries, whilst, on the other, vital contributors to the flow of the game, unpaid underage volunteers.  Quite how underage was, of course, an element which added to the story.  The ball ‘boy’ turned out not to be 11 as originally reported, but in fact 17.

Where else but in the modern game would you find a physical confrontation between two people with, to use the language of organisational behaviour, such a phenomenal power distance between them?  Power distance in football, at least as measured by salary, is a real oddity – participants exist on a greatly extended scale, ranging from players, through managers (where else would a manager earn less than his subordinates?), then a considerable distance along the spectrum match officials, all the way to unpaid volunteers.  It is a mixture that is explosive, and it is surprising that it has rarely exploded.

Chelsea’s initial reaction was, not surprisingly, to defend Hazard (2).  I say ‘not surprisingly’, because I am mindful that this was the club that managed to smooth over an incident in which a fire arm was discharged, albeit accidentally, in the workplace injuring an intern (3).

Among the many differing reactions was a condemnation of the ball boy for his attempt to waste time.  This is arguably misplaced, as time-wasting is undoubtedly ‘part and parcel of the modern game’.  It has of course been officially sanctioned since the 1967-68 season by the process of tactical substation.  Out of curiosity I looked at the substitutions that had taken place the previous weekend in the Premier League.

Minutes	No.
0-9	1
10-19	0
20-29	0
30-39	1
40-49	1
50-59	4
60-69	17
70-79	12
80-89	14
90+	2

Even a cursory glance shows a wild skew towards the later stages of a match.  Substitutions because of injury would tend to happen far more evenly, and it is obvious that tactical substitutions are ‘part and parcel of the modern game’.  That particular weekend, all twenty clubs made two substitutions, and twelve of them made a third.

My gripes with this aspect of the modern game are twofold.  Firstly it generates an immense irritation for the fans of one of the two teams, and indeed the players, as the Hazard incident demonstrates well.  In short, it lowers the entertainment value of a match, and tends to enhance the feeling of ‘we wuz robbed’.  Which is my second gripe.  Time-wasting is, in my eyes, unethical from a sporting perspective.  Tactical substitution is all about trying to cement a current score by allowing the opposition less opportunity to compete on the pitch.  It simply doesn’t make sense from the perspectives of sport as sport or of sport as entertainment.  It doesn’t even make sense from the perspective of sport as business to irritate and frustrate half the people who generate the revenues.

It s surely time we moved on from meekly accepting what is ‘part and parcel of the modern game’, started to look at the modern game critically, and call for change to ensure that ‘sport as sport’ is the dominant perspective.  Time in fact for a major and effective review of football governance.  Oh, I forgot… (4)

The time for redefining the modern game is surely badly overdue.  Who though is holding their breath?  Well, for once, I’m just a tiny bit optimistic!

The stadium curse

The topics of the stadium which has become separated from its club in ownership terms, and the mixed blessing that a new stadium can bring, are ones that I have covered in previous postings (see postings passim).

The battle over Fratton Park is shortly to be resolved in court (1).  The twisted history of Portsmouth’s financial ills and, indeed, its ownership ills seem to be moving towards a denouement.  Certainly as a member of the Pompey Supporters Trust, and a strong advocate of fan ownership, I want the Trust to ‘win’ the case (they are not a directly participating party, hence the quotation marks).  The case for a much lower valuation is a strong one, and for once I’m optimistic that the result will, for once, go the right way.  If it doesn’t, it will almost certainly mean the liquidation of the club, and the fight to establish a resurrection club will begin in earnest no doubt.

Nearer to home, literally, as I live and work in Coventry, if not metaphorically, the issue of the ownership of the Ricoh is almost as prominent on my radar.

Its origins go back to the heady days when Coventry was enjoying a notably long and unbroken run in the top flight, dating back to 1967 and the managership of Jimmy Hill.  Its then stadium at Highfield Road dated from 1899, and, with a post-Taylor capacity of approximately 23,500, it lacked any of the facilities that a Premier League stadium needed to compete from a business point of view.  It was not a million miles from Fratton Park to be honest.

In 1997, under the Chairmanship of Bryan Richardson, grand plans were announced for an ultra-modern stadium to be built on a brown-field site on the northern edge of the city, close by Junction 3 of the M6 (and adjacent to the Coventry-Nuneaton railway line).  Arena 2000, as it was originally to be called, was to be the envy of many a self-respecting Premier League, with a retractable roof and a removable pitch, making it ideal for other revenue-generating activities such as pop concerts.  What could possibly go wrong?

Well, just about everything:

• The brown-field site, which had been the site of Foleshill Gasworks, proved problematic.  Contamination of the site required two years of remedial work to make it reusable (2).

• The club was being operated unsustainably.  By 2003 debts were at a level of £20 million (3) and continued to rise (4) and rise (5).

• On the pitch, Gordon Strachan failed in the battle to keep the club up in 2001.

• In 2002 it was only possible for the building project to continue with the formation of a new joint company, Arena Coventry Limited (6), 50% owned by Coventry City Council and 50% by the Alan Edward Higgs Charity, a wealthy local charity for children which has a strong sports interest.

• Sponsorship of the stadium by local car manufacturer Jaguar, itself under financial pressure, fell through as production of their cars in Coventry ceased (7).

To cut a long and tortuous story short, the stadium was built, but to a significantly lower specification than originally planned (capacity was reduced to 32,500), Ricoh took on the sponsorship, and Championship Coventry played their first game there in 2005.  Not that this proved a particular turning point for the club.  In 2007 a potentially club-saving takeover by American consortium Manhattan Sports Capital Partners fell through (8).  Then, having come within twenty-five minutes of going into Administration, the club was acquired by venture capitalists SISU (9).

Although SISU planned to buy at least the 50% of the shares owned by the Alan Edward Higgs Charity, this has not happened, and the club continues to rent the stadium from Arena Coventry Limited.  From the club’s financial perspective, the stadium is thus a monthly liability rather than the major asset and revenue generator originally envisaged.

Relegation from the Championship to League 1 in 2011 exacerbated an already difficult situation.  Attendances and revenues were hit.  The agreed rent, reported to be £100,000 per month, became significantly unrealistic for a League 1 club to sustain.  Again cutting a long story short, the owners and club have been unable to agree a compromise rent that is realistic, and the club, SISU that is, started a ‘rent strike’ in March last year (10).  Obviously this is a situation that cannot run on indefinitely, and in the last few weeks matters have come to a head, with both sides apparently digging their heels in and maintaining collision course.  On the one hand, Deputy Conservative leader John Blundell says that ACL may have to seek a winding-up order over the unpaid arrears (11), while on the other Coventry City Chief Executive Tim Fisher accuses Arena Coventry Limited of pulling out of talks (12).  Whatever the rights and wrongs of the respective protagonists, some compromise needs to be reached, and rapidly.

As well as the two confrontational tales of Fratton Park and the Ricoh, there is a crumb of comfort on the stadium front at Stockport County’s Edgeley Park (13) where a deal has been announced that will see the club running the stadium at a reduced rent and retaining the revenues from it.  Let’s hope there will positive news to report shortly from both Coventry and Portsmouth.

Pompey – the turning point?

I’ve not blogged recently on the Pompey basket case.  Not because there wasn’t much happening, but rather because there has been almost too much happening to stop and take a coherent view.  In fact, the last time I posted was back in March 2011, when I commented “Portsmouth City Football Club Ltd. is dead – long live Portsmouth Football Club (2010) Ltd.!” (1), and it reads today like some historical piece, and at least a tad ironic to boot – the tagline was “Onward and upward at Portsmouth?”

The announcement that a conditional sale to the Pompey Supporters Trust has been agreed (2) brings at least some sort of turning point.

That the alternative bid from Balram Chainrai was turned down by the Administrator can only be good news – just how many times can the same person ‘save’ a club?  Trevor Birch’s choice may or may not have been influenced by the blogs of Micah Hall (3), but certainly the lack of response to the questions Micah posed to Tavistock Communications, Portpin’s PR company, spoke volumes.  Micah’s digging deserves an award, and shows how far a fan can go in the bigger picture of financial decision-making.

The fly in the ointment of the sale is, of course, the issue of the value that Chainrai is trying to place on Fratton Park.  Unless he finally decides to bow out gracefully, accepting that he made a very bad business call, the matter will go to court.  With independent valuations at a much lower level, the Trust stands a very good chance of getting the desired result.

There is also the matter of a potential further ten points deduction on coming out of Administration.  Here I am less optimistic.  I fear it will be yet more evidence that the deduction of points is an entirely dysfunctional sanction, but let’s not burn our bridges before we come to them.

All-in-all, there does finally seem to be a light at the end of the tunnel, and this hopefully will prove a turning point in the club’s miserable fortunes.

In the bigger picture, it may well prove to be a turning point in the road to fan ownership of clubs.  It does need to be seen though as one of many turning points, as I’m sure Brentford. Chester, Exeter Wrexham, and Wimbledon fans, and that’s not a definitive list, would be quick to point out.  It’s significance will depend on how well the hybrid model involving High Net Worth Individuals will work in practice.  If it does work, it will doubtless encourage the Supporters Trusts at bigger clubs such as Liverpool, Manchester United and Newcastle.

As a member of the Pompey Supporters Trust, I feel considerably more confident regarding the future than I have for a very long time.  I’ve even put a bottle of bubbly in the fridge, but I’ll not actually open it though until Fratton Park is in the fans’ hands.  The only certainty is the debt of gratitude Pompey fans owe to the PST Board.  Let’s show our gratitude by uniting behind them.

Round-up of Season 2011/12

The 2011/12 season has been characterised by long-running sagas.  Normally I find myself in an annual review recounting a series of relatively self-contained accounts of the woes which have beset a number of clubs, but many of those listed below are far from resolved scenarios.

The selection is not systematic – it consists of the clubs who have found themselves on my radar screen; further suggestions are welcomed.

Ashford Town
For a club to have its two co-owners feuding (1) was always likely to lead to tears before bed-time.  Add to this a withdrawal from its league in 2010 (2) and there is a clear downward pattern.  This July HMRC issued a winding-up petition  (3).

Billingham Town
A long dispute with Hartlepool over who should pay for improvements to the Billingham stadium (4) had been resolved in December 2010, but in January this year Billingham sought to wind themselves up (5).  However, HMRC then stepped in with their own winding-up petition (6).  The former of the these two seems to have been granted in April (7), but nonetheless the club is still is playing.  Any insight into what has happened would be much appreciated.

Coventry City
Coventry City have faced financial problems since their relegation from the Premier League in 2001, not least because of the development of the Ricoh Arena, a less ambitious materialisation of what had originally been called Arena 2000, originally designed with a retractable roof and a removable pitch (8).  In 2007, in a moment of financial crisis with the club having announced its intention to go into Administration, it was bought by venture capitalists SISU.  Since then SISU has failed to inject enough money to buy back the Rich from the local council and a local charity.
SISU have struggled to find the right balance between economising and maintaining team performance, thus causing complaints from fans.  The financial struggle led to SISU stopping paying the rent for the stadium in April this year in an attempt to force a lower a rental.  The confrontation was resolved in court last month, but details have not been made public (9).

Croydon Athletic
The imprisonment of owner Mazher Majeed for his part in cricket’s ‘spot-fixing scandal’ last November (10) made the club unsustainable.  It was promptly fined and deducted 10 points (11), adding another straw to an already broken back.  Unable to find a new owner, the club withdrew from the Isthmian League, unable to fulfil its fixtures (12).  A resurrection club, AFC Croydon Athletic, has been formed however (13).

Darlington
A sorry tale of desperation and despair, covered in postings passim and on the TwoHundredPerCent website, but eventually one of hope.  In early May fans group Darlington 1883 finally succeeded in taking over the club (14), but at what a price – the club had been forced into exile (15 and 16), and demoted to the Northern League Division 1 (17).  Onwards and upwards!

Harlow Town
Another sorry tale, this time tied up with the owners’ divorce (18 and 19; note the dates).  The club entered a CVA back in September 2009 (20).  Last November the club faced a winding-up order from HMRC (21), but this was finally dismissed in February.  In the same month, new owners had taken over (22).  Any further insight from local readers would be appreciated.

Kettering Town
Not the ultimate car crash – that comes lower down the posting – but certainly one of the most dragged cases.  See postings passim and on the TwoHundredPerCent website.  The season just finished was yet another traumatic one.
Having started the season by going into exile at the former Rushden & Diamonds stadium in Irthlingborough, less than ten miles away, there seems to have been no synergy in attracting new fans, as is reflected in the appearance of fan-owned AFC Rushden & Diamonds, also in exile, at Wellingborough, ground-sharing with Wellingborough Town, less than five miles from Irthlingborough.
Debts built up, and in June the club had to enter a CVA, with debts reported to be £1.2m (23), and HMRC hot on the club’s heels (24).
Meanwhile, want-away owner Imran Ladak had handed over the reins to ‘acting Chairman’ George Rolls, at least, until he was suspended from football for five years by the FA (25).  Ritchie Jeunne took over as Chairman (26), albeit extremely briefly, and now, in a Chainraiesque twist, Ladak is back (27).  The long-suffering Poppies Trust continue to fight on doggedly (28) notwithstanding demotion and a 10 points penalty (29).

Neath
Chased over debts by HMRC and then Barclays (30), the Welsh Premier League club was wound up at the end of May (31).

Northwich Victoria
Another depressing season for the clubs’ fans – evicted from their stadium (32), and then a crazy saga about where they could and couldn’t play (33), and expulsion from the Northern Premier League (34).  You couldn’t make it up.

Plymouth Argyle
It seems some time ago now, but the final chapter in the club’s survival was last October, and so within last season.  Mark Murphy has a neat summary of events here.

Port Vale
Yet another long-running saga – see postings passimandTwoHundredPerCentfor details.  Notable events and non-events during the 2011/12 season were the appointment of an Administrator in March (35), the lack of an attempt to take over by long-time suitor Mo Chaudry (36) and the Administrator’s misplaced faith in Keith Ryder as a potential owner (37).

Portsmouth
Here we go yet again.  The ‘club as company’ has been, more or less continuously, the basket case of English football for the past four decades, and this last season has proved no exception, with the arrest of the latest owners in November (38) and a now familiar drop into Administration in February.  I’m going to hold back in my lengthier comments for the moment as we seem to be on the point of either the start of a new chapter in the saga or dénouement.
Suffice it to say, in the red corner is Balram Chainrai, threatening to ‘save the club again’.  To me this is a bit like ‘giving up smoking’ – you can’t logically apply the phrase on more than one occasion.  In the blue corner is the Pompey Supporters Trust (vested interest declared – I have made a pledge to buy shares, and would urge all Pompey fans to do likewise here)

Prescot Cables
In an act all too rare in English football, the supporter-owned club took the difficult but realistic decision to return to amateur status (39).

Rossendale United
Effectively defunct at the end of the previous season, the club still appeared on my radar screen.  In March the club was still being chased for £37,000 by HMRC (40).  In January the defunct stadium had been gutted by fire (41), and the next month the owner, Andrew Connolly, had announced plans to redevelop the site with 50 new houses (42).  This forced the abandonment of plans for a resurrection club (43)

Rothwell Town
Which is, by the way, five miles from Kettering and thirteen from Irthlingborough.  In May 2010 the club had withdrawn from the Southern League due to financial difficulties (44), and a mooted rescue did not materialise (45).  Last October the club went into Administration (46), and in March the ground was put up for sale (47).  As far as I can make out, there have been no further substantive developments – again any local input would be appreciated.

Stockport County
Yet another season of uncertainty for County (see postings passim and TwoHundredPerCent).  The end of a ground-sharing agreement for Edgeley Park  with Sale Sharks will have added to the financial pressures (48).

Truro City
An interesting case of amazing success on the pitch, driven by a ‘benefactor’, which has proved unsustainable (49).  The club has been pursued by HMRC (50), struggled to play its players (51), and at the start of the current season has had to seek protection through Administration (52).  Two mysteries remain – the involvement of the Salisbury City Chairman, William Harrison-Allison (53), and the sale of the ground (54).  The timing of the latter will guarantee that this story has legs.

Widnes
The joker in this particular pack, destined to be an obscure name that only reappears occasionally in pub quizzes.  It marks an attempt by Steven Vaughan, he of Barrow, Chester and at one time allegedly Wrexham fame (see postings passim), through his son, to create a football club from scratch.  Originally to be called Widnes Town (55), it had to change its name on the not unreasonable grounds that Widens Town already existed (56).  Finding a ground to pay at proved challenging (57) and Stephen Vaughan seems to have opted to weave his own very particular brand of football magic in Malta instead (58).

Very roughly, the clubs involved fall into two groups.  First here are the League clubs.  Here there seems to be a continuing trend of slightly fewer clubs getting into financial difficulty, but those that do do so on a grand scale, and perhaps do so on a kind of cyclical basis – one crisis leads directly to the next one.

The second group, the non-League clubs, frequently display Benefactor  Withdrawal Syndrome (BWS).  The unsustainability of this business model becomes particularly problematic when the ‘benefactor’ has lifted the club up the pyramid to a level where his withdrawal makes survival especially difficult.  Clubs like Crawley Town and Fleetwood are surely vulnerable to BWS, not to mention the League and Premier League clubs of much longer standing who have become benefactor-dependent.

When I started preparing this posting, I did so with as close to a sense of cautious optimism as I manage.  With the natural exception of Portsmouth, surely things were beginning to look a little rosier in the football football finance garden.  Having completed it, I’ve fallen back to more usual mood of pessimism, wondering when club owners are going to get a grip and face reality (full marks to Prescot Cables as an exception).  Not that aren’t some good practice stories out there – Wrexham and Chester provide the most encouraging examples.

At least fifteen years ago I wondered ‘when the bubble was going to burst’.  This has obviously proved the wrong metaphor.  Suggestions for a more appropriate one are welcomed.

A little, light UEFAnomics

(with doff of cap to my chum Stefan Szymanski and his co-author Simon Kuypers, the second edition of whose fascinating book Soccernomics is just hitting the book stands)

With the Euros now in full swing, much media emphasis has been placed on the cultural differences of the various competing nations.  With justification, there has been much concern placed on racism.  The investigative and selective Panorama programme highlighted this, although a similar programme might have been made about England by Polish or Ukrainian broadcasters, to be met with howls of indignation in England.  Clearly there is an issue here, but the scale of the issue is very difficult to gauge, especially from the UK.  It’s not this issue that I am looking at though, but at another ‘cultural’ one.  Having spent some of my early years living and working in Central Europe, and having made work visits to Eastern Europe in the period leading up to the fall of communism and subsequently – last week I was in Bucharest, and I’m currently in St Petersburg – I’ve found myself wondering whether Eastern Europe had ‘caught up’ with Western Europe in footballing terms.  If the emergence of democracy had resulted in improved social conditions, such as in the areas of education, disposable income, access to sports facilities, etc., now being on a par with Western Europe, this should be reflected in the qualifiers for Euro 2012, and in their FIFA rankings as an indicator of form leading up to the Euros.

Country	FIFA ranking (July 2012)	FIFA points (July 2012)	Qualified?
Spain	1	1456	Y
Germany	3	1288	Y
Netherlands	4	1234	Y
England	6	1185	Y
Croatia	8	1053	Y
Denmark	9	1019	Y
Portugal	10	996	Y
Italy	12	977	Y
Russia	13	975	Y
France	14	964	Y
Greece	15	953	Y
Sweden	17	910	Y
Republic of Ireland	18	907	Y
Switzerland	21	868
Norway	26	787
Czech Republic	27	771	Y
Bosnia-Herzegovina	29	756
Slovenia	30	742
Hungary	31	735
Turkey	33	732
Serbia	34	725
Wales	38	658
Slovakia	39	649
Scotland	41	611
Montenegro	50	581
Armenia	51	579
Ukraine	52	572	Y(H)
Romania	52	572
Belgium	54	564
Estonia	57	528
Austria	58	524
Poland	62	518	Y(H)
Belarus	69	497
Finland	75	464
Latvia	76	459
Albania	79	451
Israel	81	427
Lithuania	88	380
Bulgaria	90	373
Georgia	95	359
Macedonia	101	338
Northern Ireland	103	336
Azerbaijan	112	300
Luxembourg	121	283
Faroe Islands	122	279
Cyprus	125	266
Iceland	131	248
Moldova	140	212
Kazakhstan	141	209
Malta	147	195
Liechtenstein	148	177
Andorra	199	15
San Marino	206	0

[Y = Yes; Y(H) = Yes, as host]

The first conclusions that one must come to are that FIFA points correlate pretty strongly with qualification for Euro 2012 (which is hardly surprising as the qualifying games are included in the FIFA points), and that Poland and Ukraine were unlikely to have qualified had they not been the co-hosts.  The Czech Republic were the ‘tail-end Charlies’ in qualifying, and Switzerland, and to a lesser extent Norway, must feel disappointed at not qualifying given their recent form.

The first stage of the Euros, in its round robin format, should also show some correspondence with form (the knock-out stage probably less so).  The following table is sorted by points achieved in the first round at the Euros.

Country	FIFA ranking (July 2012)	FIFA points (July 2012)	Qualified?	First round points
Germany	3	1288	Y	9
Spain	1	1456	Y	7
England	6	1185	Y	7
Portugal	10	996	Y	6
Czech Republic	27	771	Y	6
Italy	12	977	Y	5
Croatia	8	1053	Y	4
Russia	13	975	Y	4
France	14	964	Y	4
Greece	15	953	Y	4
Denmark	9	1019	Y	3
Sweden	17	910	Y	3
Ukraine	52	572	Y(H)	3
Poland	62	518	Y(H)	2
Netherlands	4	1234	Y	0
Republic of Ireland	18	907	Y	0

Netherlands fans have the most right to feel disappointed at their team failing to progress, those of the Czech Republic the most elated.

The first difficulty in setting about looking at the relative strengths of different blocks of countries arises with the fact that the ‘E’ in UEFA is not quite the Europe we learned about in school.  As with the Eurovision Song Contest, the boundaries of Europe have been stretched.  While it may be obvious that UEFA includes Ukraine, it is perhaps less obvious that UEFAland actually stretches as far as the border between Kazakhstan and China.

I have divided the countries into the following blocks: the old Western Europe (WE); the old Eastern Europe (EE); the old Soviet Union (SB); the old Yugoslavia (Yu), which always maintained a position on non-alliance and was a country which always allowed its players to work for Western European clubs; and the others (Oth) who do not fit into the main categories – Israel and Turkey.

To add the ‘UEFAnomics’ dimension, I added a column showing the population of each country based on latest actuals or estimates, and, to allow for size, a column showing the number of FIFA points per million people.  The latter is, of course, a very crude indicator, and does not allow for the anomalies at the ends of the spectrum – the ‘minnows’, where the random talent of individuals has a much stronger relevance to success, and the ‘giants’, where the sheer size of the country makes it perhaps difficult to identify all individual players’ talents.  I’ll make the same disclaimer that Peter Snow used to make for the famous Swingometer – “Remember, it’s just for fun”.

Country	FIFA ranking (July 2012)	FIFA points (July 2012)	Qualified?	First round points	Population	Points / 000,000s of Population	Block
Faroe Islands	122	279			49,267	56,630	WE
Liechtenstein	148	177			36,010	49,153	WE
Montenegro	50	581			625,266	9,292	Yu
Iceland	131	248			320,060	7,749	WE
Luxembourg	121	283			509,074	5,559	WE
Malta	147	195			452,515	4,309	WE
Estonia	57	528			1,340,194	3,940	SB
Slovenia	30	742			2,050,189	3,619	Yu
Cyprus	125	266			838,897	3,171	WE
Croatia	8	1053	Y	4	4,290,612	2,454	Yu
Wales	38	658			3,006,400	2,189	WE
Latvia	76	459			2,217,053	2,070	SB
Republic of Ireland	18	907	Y	0	4,588,252	1,977	WE
Bosnia-Herzegovina	29	756			3,839,737	1,969	Yu
Northern Ireland	103	336			1,799,392	1,867	WE
Denmark	9	1019	Y	3	5,543,453	1,838	WE
Andorra	199	15			84,082	1,784	WE
Armenia	51	579			3,262,200	1,775	SB
Macedonia	101	338			2,055,004	1,645	Yu
Albania	79	451			2,831,741	1,593	EE
Norway	26	787			4,985,870	1,578	WE
Lithuania	88	380			3,187,176	1,192	SB
Slovakia	39	649			5,445,324	1,192	EE
Scotland	41	611			5,254,800	1,163	WE
Switzerland	21	868			7,952,600	1,091	WE
Serbia	34	725			7,120,666	1,018	Yu
Sweden	17	910	Y	3	9,415,295	967	WE
Portugal	10	996	Y	6	10,578,776	942	WE
Finland	75	464			5,404,956	858	WE
Greece	15	953	Y	4	11,305,118	843	WE
Georgia	95	359			4,469,200	803	SB
Hungary	31	735			10,014,324	734	EE
Netherlands	4	1234	Y	0	16,847,007	732	WE
Czech Republic	27	771	Y	6	10,562,214	730	EE
Austria	58	524			8,414,638	623	WE
Moldova	140	212			3,559,500	596	SB
Israel	81	427			7,869,900	543	Oth
Belarus	69	497			9,503,807	523	SB
Belgium	54	564			11,007,020	512	WE
Bulgaria	90	373			7,364,570	506	EE
Azerbaijan	112	300			9,165,000	327	SB
Spain	1	1456	Y	7	46,030,109	316	WE
Romania	52	572			19,042,936	300	EE
England	6	1185	Y	7	52,234,000	227	WE
Italy	12	977	Y	5	60,681,514	161	WE
Germany	3	1288	Y	9	81,799,600	157	WE
France	14	964	Y	4	65350000	148	WE
Poland	62	518	Y(H)	2	38,186,860	136	EE
Kazakhstan	141	209			16,600,000	126	SB
Ukraine	52	572	Y(H)	3	45,888,000	125	SB
Turkey	33	732			74,724,269	98	Oth
Russia	13	975	Y	4	143,030,106	68	SB
San Marino	206	0			31,887	0	WE

Can the Faroe Islanders really be the top achievers?  Well, certainly they are no longer the minnows who could be relied on to roll over and be thrashed, as Scotland infamously discovered.

I find it particularly interesting that the top four achievers who qualified were Croatia, the Republic of Ireland, Denmark and Sweden – all deserve credit for qualifying for the Euros and commiserations for not making it beyond the first round.  Russia, on the other hand, emerge as massive underachievers.

Finally, to return to my original query, I’ve sorted the table by country block (putting Israel and Turkey to one side).

Western Europe:

Country	FIFA ranking (July 2012)	FIFA points (July 2012)	Qualified?	First round points	Population	Points / 000,000s of Population
Faroe Islands	122	279			49,267	56,630
Liechtenstein	148	177			36,010	49,153
Iceland	131	248			320,060	7,749
Luxembourg	121	283			509,074	5,559
Malta	147	195			452,515	4,309
Cyprus	125	266			838,897	3,171
Wales	38	658			3,006,400	2,189
Republic of Ireland	18	907	Y	0	4,588,252	1,977
Northern Ireland	103	336			1,799,392	1,867
Denmark	9	1019	Y	3	5,543,453	1,838
Andorra	199	15			84,082	1,784
Norway	26	787			4,985,870	1,578
Scotland	41	611			5,254,800	1,163
Switzerland	21	868			7,952,600	1,091
Sweden	17	910	Y	3	9,415,295	967
Portugal	10	996	Y	6	10,578,776	942
Finland	75	464			5,404,956	858
Greece	15	953	Y	4	11,305,118	843
Netherlands	4	1234	Y	0	16,847,007	732
Austria	58	524			8,414,638	623
Belgium	54	564			11,007,020	512
Spain	1	1456	Y	7	46,030,109	316
England	6	1185	Y	7	52,234,000	227
Italy	12	977	Y	5	60,681,514	161
Germany	3	1288	Y	9	81,799,600	157
France	14	964	Y	4	65,350,000	148
San Marino	206	0			31,887	0

(Average population of country in Western European block: 15,352,615)

Eastern Europe:

Country	FIFA ranking (July 2012)	FIFA points (July 2012)	Qualified?	First round points	Population	Points / 000,000s of Population
Albania	79	451			2,831,741	1,593
Slovakia	39	649			5,445,324	1,192
Hungary	31	735			10,014,324	734
Czech Republic	27	771	Y	6	10,562,214	730
Bulgaria	90	373			7,364,570	506
Romania	52	572			19,042,936	300
Poland	62	518	Y(H)	2	38,186,860	136

Average population of country in Eastern European block: 13,349,710

Former Soviet block:

Country	FIFA ranking (July 2012)	FIFA points (July 2012)	Qualified?	First round points	Population	Points / 000,000s of Population
Estonia	57	528			1,340,194	3,940
Latvia	76	459			2,217,053	2,070
Armenia	51	579			3,262,200	1,775
Lithuania	88	380			3,187,176	1,192
Georgia	95	359			4,469,200	803
Moldova	140	212			3,559,500	596
Belarus	69	497			9,503,807	523
Azerbaijan	112	300			9,165,000	327
Kazakhstan	141	209			16,600,000	126
Ukraine	52	572	Y(H)	3	45,888,000	125
Russia	13	975	Y	4	143,030,106	68

(Average population of country in former Soviet block: 22,020,203; average population of country in former Soviet block excluding Russia: 9,919,203)

Former Yugoslavia:

Country	FIFA ranking (July 2012)	FIFA points (July 2012)	Qualified?	First round points	Population	Points / 000,000s of Population
Montenegro	50	581			625,266	9,292
Slovenia	30	742			2,050,189	3,619
Croatia	8	1053	Y	4	4,290,612	2,454
Bosnia-Herzegovina	29	756			3,839,737	1,969
Macedonia	101	338			2,055,004	1,645
Serbia	34	725			7,120,666	1,018

(Average population of country in former Yugoslav block: 3,330,246)

The results are not entirely surprising.  With the exceptions of Croatia, the Czech Republic and Russia, all the teams who made it to the Euros through competition were from Western Europe.

Is this an indication that Eastern Europe has not caught up with Western Europe over the last twenty years?  Well, possibly, but there are other reasons, notably the issue of the population of each country.  The next table ranks countries by population.

Country	FIFA ranking (July 2012)	FIFA points (July 2012)	Qualified?	First round points	Population	Points / 000,000s of Population	Block
Russia	13	975	Y	4	143,030,106	68	SB
Germany	3	1288	Y	9	81,799,600	157	WE
Turkey	33	732			74,724,269	98	Oth
France	14	964	Y	4	65350000	148	WE
Italy	12	977	Y	5	60,681,514	161	WE
England	6	1185	Y	7	52,234,000	227	WE
Spain	1	1456	Y	7	46,030,109	316	WE
Ukraine	52	572	Y(H)	3	45,888,000	125	SB
Poland	62	518	Y(H)	2	38,186,860	136	EE
Romania	52	572			19,042,936	300	EE
Netherlands	4	1234	Y	0	16,847,007	732	WE
Kazakhstan	141	209			16,600,000	126	SB
Greece	15	953	Y	4	11,305,118	843	WE
Belgium	54	564			11,007,020	512	WE
Portugal	10	996	Y	6	10,578,776	942	WE
Czech Republic	27	771	Y	6	10,562,214	730	EE

Of the 16 largest countries in Euroland, only Poland (at no. 9 in population), Romania (no.10) and the Czech Republic (no.16) appear in the list, together with Russia (no.1), Ukraine (no.8) and Kazakhstan (no.12) from the old Soviet block, the remainder consisting of nine Western European countries plus Turkey.  Could it be that Eastern Europe suffers in football success from consisting of smaller countries?

Of the 16 largest countries in Euroland, only Poland (at no. 9 in population), Romania (no.10) and the Czech Republic (no.16) appear in the list, together with Russia (no.1), Ukraine (no.8) and Kazakhstan (no.12) from the old Soviet block, the remainder consisting of nine Western European countries plus Turkey.  Could it be that Eastern Europe suffers in football success from consisting of smaller countries?  Consider which countries have actually reached the finals:

Country	Winners	Runners-up	Finalists
Germany	3	3	6
Soviet Union	1	3	4
Spain	2	1	3
Czech Republic	1	1	2
France	2	–	2
Italy	1	1	2
Denmark	1	–	1
Greece	1	–	1
Netherlands	1	–	1
Yugoslavia	–	2	2
Belgium	–	1	1
Portugal	–	1	1

[Yugoslavia were losing finalists in 1960 and 1968.  A reconstituted Yugoslavia today would have a combined population today of 19,981,474, ranking it as the tenth largest UEFA country by population.]

These musings, of course, prove nothing, but they do suggest that being big helps, and, if you are an Eastern European country, you are generally a bit disadvantaged in this respect.  This has implications for Euro 2016 when the number of countries qualifying will increase from 16 to 24.  Eastern European countries will be no better placed to win, but statistically we should expect to see them make up a greater percentage of the qualifying countries, which will be good for them in terms of exposure and international experience.

As for this evening, well, using UEFA points as a predictor of form, England seem to have the edge.  Maybe I shouldn’t tempt providence though, and, in any case, form is a worse predictor in the knockout stages than in the first round because it is being applied to a single game rather than three games

[Apologies for way the tables appear – WordPress.com is not very helpful at formating tables prepared in Word]

So, is it really ‘goodbye Bluebirds, hello Red Dragons’?

Like the old joke about anti-social behaviour in a lift, what is happening at Cardiff City is just plain wrong at so many levels.

The root causes of the problem lie in Sam Hammam’s decision to build a new stadium, the resulting deep financial difficulty that Cardiff got themselves into with Langston and the Damoclean debt hanging over the club as a result, and Peter Ridsdale’s decision to involve the club in what was, from the first, described as a ‘strategic marketing alliance’ with Malaysian investors (1).  As he said at the time, “It will be a long-term alliance.  It will include youth development, it will include the opportunity to explore the whole fan base.  It will certainly include sponsorship.  We are already talking to them about shirt sponsorship and stadium naming rights without any definite conclusions at this stage.  We are also talking about their assistance in trying to put this club on the sort of financial footing that we would have liked to dream of when I first arrived at this football club.”

Needless to say, there was no public talk of the shirt sponsorship involving what has just been announced.

Indeed, as recently as 10 May Dato Chan Tien Ghee said, in an open letter to fans, wrote:

”The new club crest and home colours which were being discussed were intended to demonstrate the symbolic fusion of Welsh and Asian cultures through the use of the colour red and the predominant featuring of a historical Welsh dragon under the Cardiff City FC name. This would have been a springboard for the successful commercialisation and promotion of the club and its brand, driving international revenues and allowing us to fund transfers and success locally, thereby giving the club the best chance of competing at the higher reaches of competition.

This was not meant as a slight in any way shape or form on the club’s traditions or history which we recognise are the lifeblood of any club. It was intended as a positive change to allow us to adapt and embrace the future. Notwithstanding a number of rumours there were no further plans to turn the stadium red or make other radical changes. ” (2)

His use of “were being discussed” and “would have been” must have suggested to many, including myself, that the rebranding of club with a change in shirt colour and change in logo were now a dead duck, a not unreasonable understanding as he continued “In the light of the vociferous opposition by a number of the fans to the proposals being considered as expressed directly to our local management and through various media and other outlets, we will not proceed with the proposed change of colour and logo and the team will continue to play in blue at home for the next season with the current badge.”

He kept his word for less than a month.

In his open letter he also alluded to the current instability in the club’s business model thus: “It is clear to all concerned that the club simply cannot continue to function and exist in its current state, effectively losing large amounts of money each month, while acquiring more and more debt.”  No one can reasonably disagree with view.

In the debate that has broken out in the last couple of days since the announcement of the decision to do a U-turn (3), or to use the language you might expect from someone engaged in a ‘strategic marketing alliance’ – “Following a comprehensive review of wider supporter feedback via email, letters, media coverage and polls run via the official Supporters Club and Media Wales and as a consequence of the above commitment, Cardiff City Football Club will also reactivate rebranding proposals with a view to exploiting and maximising its brand and commercial revenues in international markets” – attitudes seem to have become polarised into two camps.  On the one hand, what is happening is a Faustian pact which involves selling the soul of the club.  On the other, the club’s survival depends on a business plan that will result in untold wealth pouring in from new fans in the Far East.  As is so often the case, it is difficult to engage in debate regarding the relative merits of these two views because they are based on different meanings of the word ‘club’ (4).  The present attempt at debate assumes that these are two mutually exclusive and opposed views, and that there are no other possibilities, no room for overlap, and no possibility of compromise.  That certainly seems to be the view of the Malaysian investors.  Which raises a number of issues in itself.

It suggests that the future of the club hangs on the fickleness of future supporters in the Far East who a) would support a club in a red shirt but not one in a blue shirt, and that b) providing the club’s shirt is red and has a dragon on it they will support in sufficient numbers to pay off the rest of the ‘Langston debt’, reinvigorate the club’s fortunes (in both senses of the word), and allow the investors to see a return on their investment.  As to a), I think this is simplistic and over-stated.  As to b), I can understand the Malaysian investors looking to the marketing success of Manchester United, but they might better have a word with Balram Chainrai, or those behind the K&K Shonan Management Corporation (5), erstwhile ‘saviours’ of Plymouth Argyle.

What is happening at Cardiff is little short of seeing owners who view a club as a commodity which can have some brand value spray-painted onto it to make it stand out from the rest.  A simple question to Dato Chan Tien Ghee – if the key to your success lies in owning a red club, why didn’t you buy a red one?  If the answer is simply ‘Well, Peter hadn’t got a red one in his briefcase to show us’, God preserve us.

Others have tried this drastic rebranding, with some commercial success.  An obvious example is that of SV Austria Salzburg, which Red Bull bought and rebranded as FC Red Bull Salzburg in 2005, complete with change in club colours and logo.  The new club has enjoyed considerable success since the takeover, but the old club had also, and that is where the comparison begins to break down.  Red Bull bought an already successful club and turned it into an even more successful one.  But in doing so they alienated fans to such an extent they started a new club, which they called SV Austria Salzburg, and which has already climbed, Wimbledon and FC United of Manchester style, from the seventh tier of the Austrian football pyramid to the third tier.

I’ll leave my final thought to the SV Austria Salzburg fans who are reported as having raised this banner in the past few days.

Deconstructing Peter Lorimer

Peter Lorimer’s thoughts on fans being on the boards of football clubs (1) were, at least as reported by the BBC, somewhat confusing and even confused.

Certainly his assertion that he does not envisage a member of the Supporters Trust having a place on the Leeds United board is hardly a surprise given the way that Chairman Bates views fans (2).  In fact, it’s no more ‘news’ than would be David Cameron announcing that he could not envisage an Argentinean having a place on the Port Stanley Parish Council.

As Lorimer said, “People put a lot of money in and they’re entitled to run the club as they want.”  I was reminded of the Ingram brothers and their long-running confrontation with the Yeltz Supporters Trust (3).  To many on the owners’ side of football’s divide, legal ownership is simply about the right to control, and there is no recognition of the fans’ perspective of psychological ownership.  There are exceptions – most notably that at Arsenal, where the notion of being ‘custodian’ rather than ‘owner’ has a long history – but their numbers are few.

In other words, Lorimer simply pointed out that current owners, be they ‘benefactors’ or investors, see Supporters Trusts as the natural enemy, because they want to take over the company running the club.  As Basil Fawlty once put it, a ‘statement of the bleeding obvious’.

What was confused and confusing with his comments were his attempts to add a rationale to the argument – one that doesn’t need to be there, and, in the case of his comments, is a flawed rationale.

He was quoted as saying with respect to having members of the Supporters Trust on the board of a club “For me it’s never worked at any club” and “I just don’t think it works on a whole scale. I’ve seen a number of occasions where fans have ended up running a club and it’s ended in disaster.”.

I can only think of one case that I would consider to have ended in disaster, which was that of Notts County, where the Supporters Trust was all but conned out of ownership (4 and postings passim).  Another case that was not an unmitigated success was that at Bournemouth, with the Supporters Trust having to give up control of the club as it continued to struggle financially (5).

Incidentally, while digging the last link out of my files, I came across the following snippet for The Independent of 12 January 1993.  I reproduce it without comment as it may be of interest to those who followed a recent unsuccessful prosecution:

A PAYMENT of £100,000 made to Harry Redknapp, West Ham’s assistant manager, when he left Bournemouth last summer was paid personally by the chairman of the south coast club. Norman Hayward gave Redknapp the gift when he left the club after nine years in charge. Bournemouth had been swamped with angry calls and letters from fans who threatened a boycott when it was made known how much Redknapp was receiving at a time when the club was fighting for survival with debts of £2.6m. Hayward said yesterday the payment came from his own ”personal funds”.

But I digress.

The Bournemouth case, at least in wider context, is typical of clubs when Supporters Trusts take over – they almost invariably do so in the direst of circumstances.  ‘Benefactors’ and investors take over in a variety of financial circumstances, so any comparison is automatically weighted against the Supporters Trusts being successful.

To be clear though, there are numerous examples of Supporters Trusts turning a club round.  It is easy to fail to appreciate the numbers involved, especially as many cases are further down the pyramid.  Recent data from Supporters Direct shows the following clubs with Supporters Trust shareholdings (%):

AFC Telford United	100
Chester FC	100
Enfield Town	100
FC United of Manchester	100
Gretna	100
Hendon	100
Merthyr Town FC	100
Runcorn	100
Scarborough	100
Fisher FC	100
Clydebank	99.99
Inverness Clachnacuddin	76
AFC Wimbledon	72
Exeter City	63
Brentford	60
Newport (IOW)	51
Chesham United	45
Aylesbury United	38
Clyde	32
Dundee	26
Carlisle United	25.37
Dover Athletic	25.1
Lincoln City	25
York City	25

etc. etc., including Swansea City.  In total, 95 English and Scottish football clubs are run by companies with Supporters Trust shareholders.  68 clubs have a Supporters’ Trust director on the board.  The following are fully supporter-owned: AFC Telford United; AFC Wimbledon; Brentford; Chesham United; Chester FC; Clyde; Clydebank; Crusaders (Northern Ireland); Enfield Town; Exeter City; FC United of Manchester; Fisher FC; Gretna; Hendon; Merthyr Town FC; Newark Town; Prescott Cables; Runcorn; Scarborough; Stenhousemuir; Stirling Albion; and most recently, Lewes and AFC Rushden and Diamonds.  There may well be more – please comment if I’ve missed any from these lists.

This hardly squares with Lorimer’s claim that “it’s never worked at any club”.  More to the point, I wonder whether he really believes that ‘benefactors’ or investors are more likely to make a success of running a club.  My list of clubs that have suffered events is littered with the failures of clubs that were NOT run by Supporters Trusts.

If Peter Lorimer really thinks that traditional owners make a better fist of running clubs than Supporters Trusts, I can only recommend that he starts reading a fascinating new series of postings by Ian King on the twohundredpercent website – The 100 Most Controversial Football Club Owners of All-Time.  It will open his eyes.

Why I shall be especially grumpy this Saturday afternoon

“Football clubs ‘in poor financial health’” a headline on the BBC News website has just screamed (1).  Apparently “many clubs are continuing to spend too much, principally on players’ wages, as they always have done”.  What?  Surely not?  Well, OK, the said headline was in the Business section of the BBC website rather than their Sports section.

Begbies Traynor, who over the years have been Administrators of Chester City, Kingstonian, Lincoln City, Huddersfield Town, Northwich Victoria, Wrexham, Farnborough Town, Crawley Town, Scarborough, Bournemouth, Halifax Town, Southampton, and now Port Vale, have just completed a survey looking at the finances of Football League clubs.

Beneath the trite headline, there was some detail of interest.

“Of 68 teams surveyed in those divisions, 13 have signs of distress such as serious court actions against them, including winding-up petitions, late filing of accounts and “serious” negative balances on their balance sheets.

That 19% compares to just 1% in the wider economy, the firm said.”

In particular “the financially distressed clubs include three in the Championship, six in League One and four in League Two.”  Obviously the survey had been completed under conditions of confidentiality, so we can only speculate on which these thirteen clubs might be that are under short-term financial pressure, a temptation which I will resist, at least publically.

There are also the clubs which, to me, have potentially longer-term pressures because they operate on business models which may not be sustainable.  Two which have caught my eye with their recent publication of financial results are one likely to be relegated to the Championship, Wigan, and one about to be promoted out of the Football League, Southampton.

At Wigan (2), turnover was reported as up 16% on the previous year, although this, it was conceded, was “mainly due to the increased Premier League broadcasting rights contract”.   Worryingly though, net losses had risen from £4m to £7.2m.

Wigan fans might take some comfort from the fact that:

“Net debt including bank borrowings and loans from David Whelan and his family remained virtually unchanged at £72.2m compared with £72.6m in the previous year Since the year end £48m of debt was converted to equity which significantly reduces the Club’s long term liabilities.”

Chief Executive Jonathan Jackson commented:

“This position would not have been possible without the continued financial support of Chairman, David Whelan. The post year end conversion of debt to equity has significantly strengthened the Club’s financial position and has, to a very significant extent, written off the debt owed to Mr Whelan.  The club cannot continue to make losses every year and we are continuing to shape all aspects of the Club to ensure the long term future remains positive both on and off the pitch.”

Perhaps just a hint there that Mr Whelan’s pockets are not bottomless.  It was he who has called for control on players’ wages (3).  It was Wigan that managed to hit a wages/revenues ratio of an utterly unsustainable 208.3% in 2004/05 (posting passim).

Meanwhile over at Southampton another ‘debt for equity’ conversion was reported last Thursday (4).  The estate of former owner Markus Liebherr had ‘invested’ £33m over two seasons but had now converted these loans into shares.  (My reason for putting single quotes around ‘invested’ is that I do not see loans as investments.  If I had pushed my credit cards to their spending limits, would I talk in terms of MasterCard and Visa investing heavily in me?).

This conversion certainly takes the financial pressure off a club which last season made a net loss of £11m in gaining promotion from League 1.

The Liebherr family seem to be in that rare group of benefactors which includes Steve Gibson at Middlesbrough – those prepared to dig into their pockets deep and for the long term.  At Middlesbrough the club is “now free from debt owed to external providers” (5).

Looking along the South Coast from the perspective of a long-suffering Pompey fan (but who is number 1 a football fan rather than a club fan), a club in deep, deep trouble not least because it is still paying some players Premier League wages as it faces the drop, my eye caught on the wages/revenues ratio at Southampton, a very high 93%.

This counter-evidence in the discourse over the financial strengths and weakness of clubs is hardly typical.  While few clubs, correction, no English clubs, are as financially distressed as Portsmouth, the Begbies Traynor report paints a more typical picture.

As Portsmouth head for Southampton this Saturday, to be ‘entertained’ as the media like to phrase it, I’ll not be building my hopes up for a surprise Pompey victory.  The earlier derby this season may have been a draw, but Portsmouth now have a depleted squad, forced upon them by their financial circumstances (and as one might well argue, not before time).  No, I’ll be quietly fuming on the absurdity that the outcome on the pitch will have been determined ultimately by the lottery of how rich and how committed your club’s benefactor has been.  It may be a football match, but it certainly is being played in a context of competitive balance.  One club has been the subject of heavy financial doping, and is paying the price, and one is the subject of financial doping, but has so far kept the ‘habit’ under control.  One is a savage indictment of the failings of the benefactor model, and the other is fortunate enough to be able to say ‘OK so far’.

If any good at all is to come out of the ‘basket case’ circumstances Portsmouth finds itself in, it will be through a new and more sustainable financial model, which is why I fully support the community share offer from the Pompey Supporters Trust.  Post-commercial era football has totally lost it way.  Clubs have become the playthings of sugar daddies, and have, as in the cases of Portsmouth and Southampton, sugar daddies with no local connection.  Ownership has become a lottery, and fans have been betrayed as a consequence.  Football governance looks as it will receive only light-touch reform, but that is insufficient to set it back on a road where the results of games are determined in a context of competitive balance.  Financial Fair Play, whatever the extent to which it will actually prove successful, is a no brainer.  And fan ownership is the only way to ensure clubs are a part of the community whose name they are happy, and proud, to identify themselves by.

This posting is, for the moment, open to comments, but please bear in mind that this is not a fans’ forum – it is a personal blog, which is happy to encourage serious debate.  Trolls will have their comments deleted, as will those who favour the so-called banter of ‘scummers’ and ‘skates’.

The new broken-time payments

The decision by UEFA to increase significantly the compensation fee paid to clubs for releasing their players to play in Euro 2012 (1) – for Euro 2008, the total compensation was €43.5 million; for Euro 2012 a total of €55 million had been proposed, but the figure is now to be €100 million (£83.4 million) following pressure from the European Club Association (ECA) (2) – is not entirely unexpected, and not entirely unreasonable. I have my concerns about it though…

Professional football was born on the back of the issue of broken-time payments – compensating amateur players for time they had had to take off from their day-jobs. It’s hardly inconsistent, over a century on, that clubs would seek broken-time payments for players released for international duty.

Nor is it inconsistent that, in a post-commercialised football age, the selection of a player for international duty has little to do with honour and duty, but rather more to do with maximising revenues for the national team.

Certainly international duty, notably with respect to the African Cup of Nations, can have a worrying impact on particular clubs.

There is also the issue of injury while on international duty, although this seems to be resolving itself by the number of declared injuries which somehow heal themselves miraculously quickly once the ‘threat’ of international duty has passed.

By and large then, my view is one from a natural perspective of a mixture of realism and cynicism.

My concern is more at the level of unintended consequences. I’m in the middle of a major research project looking at the concentration in certain European football leagues. Notwithstanding the current difficulties of one of the two clubs, Scottish football, for example, offers no exemplar of healthy competitive balance in its top tier. Since the Scottish Premier League was founded for the 1998/99 season, there has so far been just one single appearance, as runner-up, by a team other than the Auld Firm in the top two at the end of the season (it was Hearts in 2005/06 in case you are scratching your head). The last time another club won the Championship was back in 1983/84 (Alex Ferguson’s Aberdeen), and you have to go back to 1903/04 to find the last season that neither club was winner or runner-up (since you ask, the winner was Third Lanark and the runner-up Hearts; you will be less surprised that Rangers were third and Celtic fourth). While the Auld Firm’s stranglehold on their domestic Championship is the strongest in Europe, the majority of European national leagues suffer from ‘Big 2’, ‘Big 3’ or ‘Big 4’ syndrome (see also posting passim), a fact that is contrary to the principle of maintaining competitive balance within a league.

The reasons that leagues became dominated by a handful of clubs are varied, and the dominance usually dates back to a pre-commercialised era. Our research is beginning to show that the maintenance of dominance in a national league is strongly correlated with the distribution of the broadcasting revenues of the Champions League and the Europa league (and of course their predecessors). In short, rewarding clubs financially for simply being the top clubs reinforces their position, by ensuring that the rich clubs get ever richer, and can hence, afford, the better payers.

As these enhanced UEFA fees to clubs for Euro 2012 will, albeit on a smaller scale, have the same, presumably unintended, outcome, it concerns me that the lack of competitive balance in European national leagues is once again being reinforced, something which is NOT good for the game.