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.

The Tax Man cometh…

There can be no doubt that the abbreviation HMRC is one which has hit pretty well every football fan’s radar screen recently.  There have been the two big Administrations at Portsmouth and Rangers.  Bubbling away in the background is not only the issue of whether clubs’ use of Employment Benefit Trusts constitutes tax evasion (and is hence illegal) or merely tax avoidance (perfectly legal), but also HMRC’s challenge to the legality of the Football Creditors Rule, which has seen it take substantial hits in its revenues since the Crown lost its ‘preferential creditor’ status in 2003, which resulted in ‘football creditors’ coming higher in the ‘pecking order’ when things went pear-shaped.  At present clubs in Administration face an obstructive HMRC when seeking to enter a CVA which would see HMRC being paid anything less than 100p in the pound.

Has the general approach of HMRC to football clubs changed over time?  It states its position pretty consistently, as it did thus with respect to Rangers: “We can’t discuss specific cases for legal reasons, but tax that has been deducted at source from the wages of players and support staff, such as ground keepers and physios, must be paid over to HMRC.  Any business that fails to meet that basic legal requirement puts the survival of the business at risk.“

So, just what is HMRC’s track record over time in pursuing football clubs?  I’ve been researching its propensity to ‘present a winding-up petition’ against a football club, and how it’s changed in terms of frequency over the period since 1960.  Some of the outcomes are unsurprising, but others may be a little surprising.

The full data set is available here, and I will endeavour to keep this list up-to-date.  It covers all English and Welsh clubs, but not Scottish clubs, and has been developed by searching the London Gazette database.

Here are some thoughts on what I found:

• HMRC and its predecessors (the Inland Revenue, who were responsible for collecting direct taxes such as income tax [including PAYE] and National Insurance contributions, and HM Customs & Excise, who were responsible for collecting indirect taxes, notably VAT, merged to form HMRC in April 2005) seem to have shown little favour towards League clubs, and even less to non-league clubs.
  In total since 1960, they have presented a total of 181 winding-up petitions, against League clubs on 58 occasions, and against non-league clubs on 123 occasions.

• The frequency has varied considerably.  There were only two petitions presented in the 1960s, whereas in the peak decade to date, the 1990s, 62 were presented.
  (Images can be enlarged by clicking on them)

• A year-by-year plot of petitions since 1990 reveal a more nuanced pattern.  After a burst of activity in 2002, HMRC seem to have eased off presenting petitions until taking up the challenge again seriously in 2009, with a greater proportion of League clubs being the object of HMRC’s interest.
• My impression from the list of clubs involved is that there is something of a North/South divide, with a disproportionate number of Southern clubs in the list

• HMRC has complained of ‘serial offenders’ and there is some evidence of this.  Bournemouth were on the receiving end of 5 petitions between 1995 and 1997; Chester City received 6 between 1986 and 2009; Crawley Town received 6 between 1973 and 2010; Doncaster Rovers received 4 between 1988 and 1994; Hartlepool United received 7 between 1982 and 1993; Hull City received 6 between 1992 and 2000; Margate received 4 between 2001 and 2010; Northwich Victoria received 4 between 1983 and 2008; Southend United received 4 between 2000 and 2011; and Stockport County received 4 between 1975 and 1999.

Looking at just the list of Winding-Up petitions of course tells only part of the story.  The size of the debt to the Tax Man has grown astronomically.  When Accrington Stanley withdrew from the Football League in 1962, the club owed the Tax Man roughly £4,500; Portsmouth owed HMRC approximately £11 million when they sought the protection of Administration in 2010.  The interesting question is why did HMRC hold back in the period up to 2009 and allow such large debts to grow.  It’s not as if they have a track record in the longer term of being tolerant with football clubs.

One petition in the list intrigues me, and I would appreciate any input from readers who know of the circumstances: in 1993 Customs & Excise presented a petition against Gorton and District Sunday League Football Club, and the club was indeed wound up as a result.

That feeling of déjà vu at Pompey, all over again

Portsmouth’s return to Administration today (1) for the second time in a smidgen under two years speaks volumes, especially coming in the week that Rangers, a rather more iconic club, suffered the ignominy of Administration too (2).  High profile those these events are, the phenomenon of financial problems is not confined to te top clubs.  This season so far we have also seen Darlington go into Administration, as have Rothwell Town way down the pyramid.  Prescot Cables have returned to amateur status mid-season, and poor Croydon Athletic have disappeared, at least for the moment.  (A full listing of English football clubs’ insolvency events in the modern era is available here; a warning, it does not make pleasant reading)

It would be easy to dismiss the case of Portsmouth as a special case (especially bad, that is).  The ‘club as company‘ has a long and shameful tradition.  It was formed in 1898 to replace the previous club, Royal Artillery, who were disbanded because of that delightful euphemism ‘financial irregularities’ – payments to players which were blatantly undermining their supposed amateur status.  Funny how history can return to haunt you.

By 1912 the owners were already in deep financial trouble, and the company was voluntarily wound up and promptly reformed, thus wiping out its debts (3), a procedure which is no longer legal, but was far from rare in those days.  The mind boggles at how football clubs today would behave if it were still a legal option like this open to them.  To use a ‘Partridgeism’, the club ‘bounced back’, entering the Football League in 1920, winning the FA Cup in 1939, and the old First Division title in 1949 and 1950.

The road was only downhill after that, obviously excepting the recent relatively spell in the Premier League and FA Cup win.  Sporting decline was followed by financial decline.  A series of owner/benefactors who failed in various degrees is a familiar mantra to Pompey fans – since 1973 the list reads John Deacon, Jim Gregory, Terry Venables, Martin Gregory, Milan Mandric, Sacha Gaydamak, Sulaiman Al Fahim, Ali Al Faraj, Balram Chainrai, and Vladimir Antonov.  Whatever criticisms can be made about them individually, the lack of any continuity has hardly been good for the club.  And there will doubtless be further criticism to come as the unravelling enquiries of both this period of Administration, and the previous one, tease more and more uncomfortable detail out of the wood work.

Of the 200+ files I have on English football clubs, Portsmouth’s is the biggest.  It would be convenient to say that this is because I am Pompey fan.  That would not  though be honest.  It’s because they have a spectacularly aberrant history of ownership and mismanagement.  ‘Spectacularly aberrant’ from normal business, that is.  Merely ‘worse than most’ with respect to other football clubs.

The themes which have dogged Portsmouth occur throughout my files, and all over this blog:

• Owners who did not have deep enough pockets, and yet push clubs further into unsustainable financial positions

• Owners unlikely to win ‘Ethical Businessman of the Year’ competitions

• Owners who have clearly not read the dictum of Mr Micawber in David Copperfield (Charles Dickens was born in Portsmouth, so the reference is particularly appropriate)

• Repeated failure to pay HMRC on time

Portsmouth’s latest ‘misadventure’ should provide a wake-up call.  But then so so should their one two years ago.  Will the governing bodies just hit ‘snooze’ again?  I like to think not, but, would you believe it, I’m not optimistic.

I can’t argue that the imposition of the Financial Fair Play protocol, or effective club licensing ,or an effective Fit and Proper Person Test would necessarily have avoided Pompey’s current discomfort.  Without them though, another round of insolvency events is inevitable.  It doesn’t have to be that way and nor should it be.

Surely the football world must finally wake up to sorting out, as its highest priority, its financial messes, by attacking the causes rather than the symptoms  rather than stressing over the number of English clubs left in European competition or who the next England manager should be.

That elusive number of insolvent football clubs

Today’s breaking news makes for grim reading.

First there are the reports that Portsmouth is to go into Administration again (1).  With the club’s bank account now frozen, players and other staff unpaid, and an early parachute payment in the offing, this comes as no great surprise.

Meanwhile, North of the Border, it is reported that Rangers are declaring their intention of going into Administration (2).  In theory at least, Administration might yet be avoided – they might manage to negotiate a deal with their creditors, but this seems unlikely as it involves HMRC and a sum of £49m , or they might find a new owner in the meantime (which seems almost as unlikely).  The process of ‘declaring intent ‘ provides a company with temporary protection from creditors.  Two precedents from English football spring to mind: Plymouth Argyle (who did subsequently go into Administration) and Coventry City in 2007 (who found a buyer in the nick of time, thus avoiding Administration).

Those interested in the complexities of what has been going on at Rangers should follow the excellent Rangerstaxcase blog.

It was the case of Coventry City that prompted me back then to find what proved to be an elusive number – the number of top flight clubs that had gone into Administration.  So elusive did it prove to be that I started compiling relevant data in an attempt to produce it myself.  The results of this research I have now added to the blog on a new page No. of Clubs, accessible by clicking on the link or from the top menu.  Please read the bumf at the top of that page before diving in!

The Magic of Football – still there in the Cups?

It’s increasingly difficult to see any magic in the beautiful game other than black magic, especially when you look at it from a financial perspective.  You only need to think of the narrow escapes at Plymouth and Wrexham recently, and both Portsmouth and Darlington are standing on the edge of the precipice.

The Cups may be a different matter however.  Recently Louise Taylor suggested that the FA Cup Third Round had failed to cast any magic on fans (1).  Below I’ve taken her data and, in italics, added some more.  It struck me that whatever magic there might be would be associated with the possibility of a giant-killing, or, as the BBC have started to call it, a ‘cupset’.  Did the possibility of a cupset bring out the fans, especially in the case where the ‘minnow’ was playing at home.

Home Club	Tier	Away Club	Tier	Away – Home Tier	FA Cup attendance	Average league attendance	Difference
MK Dons	3	QPR	1	-2	19,506	8,217	11,289
Swindon Town	4	Wigan	1	-3	13,238	7,887	5,351
Bristol Rovers	4	Aston Villa	1	-3	10,883	6,122	4,761
Gillingham	4	Stoke	1	-3	9,872	5,482	4,390
Macclesfield Town	4	Bolton	1	-3	5,757	2,222	3,535
Fleetwood Town	5	Blackpool	2	-3	5,092	1,781	3,311
Dagenham & Redbridge	4	Millwall	2	-2	3,396	2,161	1,235
Crawley Town	4	Bristol City	2	-2	3,779	3,181	598
Brighton and Hove Albion	2	Wrexham	5	3	18,573	18,595	-22
Chelsea	1	Portsmouth	2	1	41,529	41,632	-103
Manchester City	1	Manchester United	1	0	46,808	47,013	-205
Doncaster Rovers	2	Notts County	3	1	9,535	9,750	-215
Peterborough United	2	Sunderland	1	-1	8,954	9,233	-279
Liverpool	1	Oldham	3	2	44,556	44,857	-301
Tottenham Hotspur	1	Cheltenham	4	3	35,672	36,071	-399
Sheffield Wednesday	3	West Ham	2	-1	17,916	20,041	-2,125
Barnsley	2	Swansea	1	-1	7,380	10,719	-3,339
Norwich City	1	Burnley	2	1	22,898	26,516	-3,618
Nottingham Forest	2	Leicester	2	0	18,477	22,224	-3,747
Watford	2	Bradford	4	2	8,935	12,731	-3,796
Birmingham City	2	Wolverhampton	1	-1	14,594	18,682	-4,088
Fulham	1	Charlton	3	2	20,317	25,315	-4,998
Middlesbrough	2	Shrewsbury	4	2	12,631	18,164	-5,533
Coventry City	2	Southampton	2	0	9,000	14,813	-5,813
Everton	1	Tamworth	5	4	27,564	33,407	-5,843
Reading	2	Stevenage	3	1	11,295	18,554	-7,259
Sheffield United	3	Salisbury	6	3	10,488	18,559	-8,071
Hull City	2	Ipswich	2	0	10,246	18,922	-8,676
West Bromwich Albion	1	Cardiff	2	1	12,454	24,794	-12,340
Derby County	2	Crystal Palace	2	0	10,113	26,133	-16,020
Newcastle United	1	Blackburn	1	0	30,876	48,866,	-17,990
Totals	2.29		2.32	1	522,334	602,644	-80,310

I have added the away teams, the tiers in which each team plays, and the difference between the tiers at each game.  The list has been sorted into an order from the greatest increase to the greatest drop in the number attending.

The results are not entirely surprising.  Where the home team is two or more divisions below the away team, the fans have turned out in extra numbers.  At games like Everton v. Tamworth and Sheffield United v. Salisbury, the home fans staying away outnumber any boost in the ‘minnow’s’ away following.  The two biggest differences are at matches between clubs in the same division.  Overall there is a fairly clear picture of the FA Cup lacking magic except when a home team might just cause a cupset.

Below is a graphic representation with a rather unscientific trendline.

It’s unscientific in that there are many variables at work here, including, for example, the distance away fans have to travel, and, in any case we are dealing with fairly small numbers of games.

One difficulty is that a scientific look at this phenomenon would require details of ticket allocations for away fans (and implicitly therefore home fans, given that stadium capacity is known) and the percentage of these which were sold.  Does anyone know a single source on the internet which gives these?  This would be an interesting topic for research as the outcomes would provide a basis for a scientific allocation of tickets for away fans.

2011 – The Year in Insolvency Events

Below is a round-up of the insolvency events I have logged during 2011.  The definition of insolvency event is a debatable one, and I prefer a descriptive rather than prescriptive one.  Broadly I would define an insolvency event as one which reflects a discontinuity in the operation of the ‘club as company’ caused by insufficient funding.

Where the Court or Companies House has been involved, I designate the insolvency event as ‘hard’ (and shown in bold), and, where this is not the case, I designate it as ‘soft’.

Repeat events at a particular club are italicised.  Any errors or omissions posted as comments will be corrected with due acknowledgement.

CLUB	DATE	INSOLVENCY EVENT	‘HARD’ OR ‘SOFT’	TIER
Leyton	12/01/2011	Expelled from Isthmian League because of debts; subsequently dissolved (see below)	S	8
Windsor & Eton	02/02/2011	Compulsory Liquidation	H	7
Plymouth Argyle	21/02/2011	Filed intent to enter Administration, then did so	H	3
Eastwood Town	01/06/2011	Sold for £1	S	6
Rossendale United	18/06/2011	Expelled from North West Counties Football League because of debts	S	9
Gedling Town	25/06/2011	Again withdrew from East Midlands Counties Football League	S	10
Rushden & Diamonds	05/07/2011	Administration	H	5
Hucknall Town	14/07/2011	Reverted to amateur status	S	7
Leyton	17/07/2011	Dissolved	H	10
Dawlish Town	22/07/2011	Withdrew from Western League	S	9
Prescot Cables	16/10/2011	Returned to amateur status mid-season	S	8
Rothwell Town	17/10/2011	Administration	H	8

For comparison, this second table shows the insolvency events in 2010:

Crystal Palace	26/01/2010	Administration	H	2
Folkestone Invicta	05/02/2010	Entered CVA	H	8
Portsmouth	26/02/2010	Administration	H	1
Chester City	10/03/2010	Compulsory liquidation	H	5
Farsley Celtic	10/03/2010	Compulsory liquidation by Administrator	H	6
Grays Athletic	12/05/2010	Relegated from Conference National; sought to drop a further level to Isthmian League	S	5
Nelson	16/07/2010	Resigned from League; folded	S	9
Ashford Town (Kent)	20/07/2010	Administration	H	8
Gedling Town	25/10/2010	Withdrew from East Midlands Counties Football League	S	10
Atherstone Town	18/12/2010	Resigned from Southern League	S	8

In an increase from 10 insolvency events to 13, although drop from 6 to 5 of ‘hard’ insolvency events.  These are in absolute terms fairly small numbers so it is difficult to generalise with any certainty.  Nonetheless they are large enough as percentages of the total numbers of clubs in the various to warrant some albeit speculative comment.

Although the insolvency events at Portsmouth and Plymouth Argyle in particular of the bigger clubs have attracted much media coverage, the incidence of insolvency events in clubs in tiers 7, 8, 9 and 10 is rarely even noted other than by local newspapers.  It would easy to dismiss their higher level of incidence as simply a reflection of the fact that there are far more clubs in each of these lower tiers.  While that is certainly part of the explanation, it must be remembered that we are not quite comparing like with like.  At these levels there are no broadcasting rights to be lost through relegation, and the difference in financial scale of operation between successive tiers is low.  Indeed, the business plan B in case of relegation will not be significantly different from the business plan A of staying up.  There should therefore be proportionately fewer insolvency events.

In my view there are  surprisingly high number of insolvency events at the level of semi-professional clubs.  The smaller budgets should be easier to manage, and any shortfall of revenues should be relatively easily absorbable if the club is owned by a local ‘benefactor’.  Even a whip-round with collecting buckets should be enough to ward off an impending insolvency issue, unlike at, for example, Portsmouth, with their debts rising at one point to a reported £135 million.

On the one hand, lower tier clubs exhibit a greater realism than Football clubs, as evidenced by the number of ‘soft’ events with clubs simply dropping a tier voluntarily.  On the other hand, they can be driven into financial doping by a ‘benefactor’, leaving them with entirely unsustainable business models when the ‘benefactor’ either loses interest is unwilling or unable to continue the club’s enforced ‘habit’ for cash injections.

I certainly see the same worrying signs in the football sector as I have done for more years than I care to remember.  Higher level clubs remain as vulnerable as ever, and lower level clubs seem to be becoming more vulnerable.  As the year turns, a number of clubs are in imminent threat, the most obvious being Darlington (1).  At higher levels, few would discount Portsmouth as a prime candidate for Administration unless a ‘benefactor’ buyer can be found, and the club launches off down yet another ownership cycle.

In a nutshell, I fear another depressing year for fans at too many clubs.  Here’s hoping that the various versions of financial fair play protocols can begin to bite and force clubs into sustainable business models.  Let’s also hope that all the words recently expended on football governance by politicians lead finally to an effective licensing system which includes an effective fit and proper persons test.

All best wishes to blog readers for the New Year.

Round the Lower Levels Part 2

At last, Part 2 of my overview of what is happening from a broad financial perspective.  Part 1 ran alphabetically up to Prescot Cables, and is available here.  With a slight jump backwards, we pick it up with:

• Port Vale
  An interesting case of ‘fan ownership’.  Valiant 2001 bought the club from the Administrators in 2003 (1) – the club had debts of £2.4m and was said to be losing £500,000 a year (2) – and in doing so avoided the real threat that football might have disappeared from Vale Park (3).
  Survival has been a battle, with the problem of sponsors not paying and a threatened takeover (4), and the need for a loan from Stoke City Council (5).  Nevertheless the club managed to complete its CVA in May 2005 and to come out of Administration in October 2006.  Meanwhile local boy Robbie Williams had bought shares for an undisclosed sum (6).  However Chairman Bill Bratt had “taken the club as far as I can” by September 2008 (7), but was denying takeover rumours the following month (8).
  Into the New Year and a row was brewing over the apparently different involvement with local rivals Stoke City by the council (9).  Bratt attempted to clarify the club’s difficulties here, and pointed out his already considerable commitment to the club (10).
  Fan opposition to the way the board was running the club mounted, and Bratt pointed out the obvious:

  Supporters have protested against the board in recent weeks, and Bratt said it could be potentially destructive.
  “If we go, what happens? We fold immediately. If that’s what they want, they could take the club down, not the board,” said Bratt.
  He added: “I’m quite happy to walk away from this club right now, but the banks and creditors would come in straight away, and there’s no Plan B in place. (11)

  Plans B, C and D have however emerged in recent years – the failed attempts by various parties to invest in the club (Harlequin Properties (12); Mike Newton (13); Mo Chaudry (14); and most recently Blue Sky International (15)), although there has been investment by Peter Miller (16).
  All the uncertainty has prompted an attempt by fans to oust the board (17).
  All very sad.  The days of fan-benefactors like Jack Hayward, Jack Walker and Steve Gibson seem to have gone, and fans need to be clear in discriminating between ‘fan-owned’ and ‘Supporters Trust owned’.

• Portsmouth
  I’d planned to avoid blogging about Pompey until the situation became clearer, but it hardly seems reasonable not to comment in this context.
  The immediate situation sounds reasonable, with the immediate possibility of points deduction probably not on the Football League’s agenda (see previous posting).  The issue is just how long the ‘immediate’ will last – current indications are that it will all too brief, with time and money running out sometime next month.  Whether Keith Harris will have been able to weave his magic in finding a buyer before then (18) seems unlikely – Pompey are hardly the most attractive of clubs to buy in their present mess (19).  I have it on good authority that even the liquidation of the ‘oldco’ is proving to be contentious.
  Administration for the club (as opposed to the existing Administration of CSI) looks increasingly likely, with its inevitable 10 points deduction, threat to keeping up the CVA payments (and further points deduction).
  Increasingly liquidation and resurrection by the Pompey Supporters Trust looks the only viable longer-term scenario.

• Rossendale United
  The club did not reapply for membership of the North West Counties Football League at the start of this season (20), and a new club is being resurrected (21).  News is scant, any local informed input would be appreciated.  See also my posting in March where I argued that the club was a classic case of Benefactor Withdrawal Syndrome (BWS).

• Rothwell Town
  In October the Rowellian Football Social Club (trading as Rothwell Town Football Club) did go into Administration (22).  Again, any local informed input would be appreciated.

• Rushden & Diamonds
  Following their expulsion from the Conference (23), the club tried but failed to get into the Southern Premier League (24), and went into Administration (25).  That appears to be the end of the club in this manifestation, but an AFC Rushden is being formed (26).
  This seems to be another case BWS, although perhaps with twists yet to emerge…

• Southend United
  In November the club announced “Roots Hall Development Moves Closer” (27).  So, nothing new there then.  Meanwhile, the Fossetts Fantasy Farm project has been “has been removed from the [Council’s] capital programme until the certainty of developer contribution can be ascertained” (28).

• Truro City
  The club owned by Kevin Heaney, wannabe owner of Plymouth Argyle, is in deep, deep trouble.  Wages have been unpaid (29) and the ‘Stadium for Cornwall’ project now has a big question mark hanging over it (30).
  HMRC are chasing tax debts of over £100.000, and the club has until January 16 to come up with the money or face a winding-up order (31).

• Wakefield
  A not entirely unfamiliar story here too (32), with unpaid wages and money owed by a sponsor (33).

All too worryingly, I could start going round the alphabet again, with various tales of various woes at Barnet (34), Cheltenham (35), Chorley (36), Coventry (37), Croydon Athletic (38) and Dorchester Town (39), although at least the last of these has a positive side, a possible takeover by Dorchester Town Supporters Trust.

It looks as if the race is definitely on for the club to face the first insolvency event of 2012.  February is the second highest peak for insolvency events (behind may), so it could well be a close run thing.

I’m beginning to wind down (or is it up?) for Christmas, so, in case I don’t post again in the next few days, a very Happy Christmas, or Bah Humbug (delete as you consider appropriate), to all readers.

Pompey and the potential for points deduction

Having carefully got through as far as Prescot Cables in the first half of my round up of clubs in trouble below the Premier League, I had rather assumed that I could at least get Part 2 published before returning to the subject of Portsmouth.  Clearly that was not meant to be.  So here are some first thoughts on what will be an ongoing saga of, well, Pompeyesque proportions.

For most fans there will be the question of points deduction, a matter for the Football League.  As it stands, at least for the moment, the company which owns Pompey, Portsmouth Football Club (2010) Limited, is not in Administration, as it is at pains to point out in its official statement (1); it is the parent company, Convers Sports Initiative plc, which is (2).  It is the issue of how closely the two companies are linked that the Football League will have to rule on.

The obvious precedent to spring to mind is that of deadly rivals Southampton, where the decision was that the company owning the club and the parent company were so intimately involved that the club should suffer points deduction on account of the parent company going into Administration.  It’s worth quoting from the Football League’s statement (3) at the time:

The [Grant Thornton] report [on which the decision was based] concluded, among other things, that:

1.The Holding Company has no income of its own; all revenue and expenditure is derived from the operation of Southampton Football Club Limited (SFC) and the associated stadium company.

2.The Holding company is solvent in its own right. It only becomes insolvent when account is taken of the position of SFC and the other group companies.

3.The three entities (the Holding Company, SFC and the stadium company) comprise the football club and they are inextricably linked as one economic entity.

If we compare the situation at Southampton then with the situation at Portsmouth now, there are major differences.  At Portsmouth currently:

1. CSI does have income of its own and definitely does not derive all its income and expenditure from Portsmouth Football Club (2010)
2. CSI is insolvent in its own right; its insolvency does not arise because of any insolvency on the part of Portsmouth Football Club (2010)  [I grant you that it’s hardly a cash cow, but it’s not Portsmouth that has brought CSI down]
3. CSI and Portsmouth Football Club (2010) are not inextricably linked as one economic entity; CSI’s website shows their structure (4) to consist of a number of unrelated subsidiaries: Boom!, DGB Convers, GP Week, Leaders, Power Play Golf, Sportpost and WRC, as well as Portsmouth FC

On this basis, there is a strong case that CSI’s Administration should not result in a points deduction for Portsmouth.

If Portsmouth Football Club (2010) should itself seek protection by going into Administration, that would be entirely different matter, and points deduction would without doubt be incurred.  The Football League has no precise published tariff, but I would expect something in the region of 17 to 20 points.  How likely is that to happen?  The Administrators of CSI will almost certainly be looking to sell off its components, and Portsmouth is in effect already ‘on the market’.  With the added complication of Portpin and Balram Chainrai’s involvement in the insolvency of CSI though, it’s not a club that will be fighting off suitors.  In the meantime, the club “has funding in place for the short term, but will now be seeking alternative investment for its longer-term requirements”.

Not a very encouraging situation, but what’s new for Pompey fans?

[For new readers, I make clear that I am Portsmouth fan and a member of the Pompey Supporters Trust.  The thoughts above are, nonetheless,  my thoughts from the perspective of an academic researcher.]

Round the lower levels Part 1

Plenty has been happening once you look down the football pyramid since I last gave a general overview.  The continually flashing lights on my radar screen have of course been Plymouth Argyle and Wrexham, although, for entirely different reasons, I have resisted the very strong temptation to blog on these two clubs.  In the case of Plymouth, I have been put off by the plethora of non-news that has been churned out over the last few months – it seemed as if 90% of this consisted of Peter Ridsdale purring that one of two takeover attempts was due to completed ‘next wekk’.  At Wrexham, in distinct contrast, real news was happening at a staggering rate – I did actually start a posting, but, while, I was writing it, two press releases issued which made my opening paragraph redundant.  In any case, my friends over at Twohundredpercent gave (happenings and non-happenings) at both clubs excellent coverage.

A third nebula seems to heading towards my radar screen – the ever-dependable Portsmouth, but with one Henry James Redknapp due in court shortly, I’ll hold back for the moment at least.

It’s not as if the radar screen has been otherwise blank though.  In alphabetical order of clubs then:

• Astley Bridge
  (I haven’t managed to identify which league the club plays in – any offers?)
  The club, which has been around since 1892 (1), is under threat thanks to thieves who stole the club’s pitch mower (2).  The club cannot afford the alternative of having the council mow their three pitches at a charge of £1500 for five cuts.

• Bournemouth
  The club has failed to buy back its Dean Court stadium which it was forced to sell and lease back almost six years ago (3).  Meanwhile, 50% of the club’s shares have been sold to a 41 year-old Russian petrochemicals trader (4), and chairman Eddie Mitchell purred “His arrival brings security to the club”.  Is it just the Pompey fan in me that finds this less than reassuring?  I hope so.

• Carlisle
  Carlisle have formidable issues with the existing Brunton Park stadium, not least the threat of a repeat of the 2005 flooding (5).  Just over two years ago the club was losing £1.2m a year and facing gates down to just over 6,000 (6).  By March 2010, gates were down to around 5,200 and budget cuts had to be imposed (7).
  Now we have the results of a feasibility study (8) and ‘Project Blue Yonder’, which would see the building of a new 12,000-seater stadium (9).  Certainly this appears more realistic than Plymouth Argyle’s ill-fated plans for a 40,000+ stadium, but not a great deal more so – Plymouth has a population of just over 250,000 whereas Carlisle’s population is just over the 100,000 mark.
  No easy solutions to the club’s dilemma I’m afraid.

• Dawlish Town
  I’m a bit thin on information here, but a link (10) said that the club had withdrawn from the Western League Premier Division in July.
  The club website (11) is still live, but does not appear to have been updated recently.  With doubtless no intended irony, it still has a link to an item headed “Chairman dreams of promotion and new stadium ”
  Their Wikipedia entry (12) begins with that damning phrase “Dawlish Town A.F.C. was a football club… ”
  A Facebook page (13) implies that the club has disappeared, and a new FC Dawlish Town is being formed.
  Can anyone with local knowledge expand on this?

• Harlow Town
  A winding-up petition from HMRC was dismissed in court o 14 November because the club had paid its tax bill (15).  This followed on entering a CVA in September 2009 (16).
  See also postings passim.

• Hucknall Town
  After a particularly turbulent period last season (16), the club has new owners (17) who talk of turning into a community club.   There is even talk, perhaps just a tad OTT, of the club as a ‘sleeping giant’ (18).  All in all, things a lot a rosier nonetheless.

• Kettering Town
  Ah, the inimitably enigmatic Imran Ladak!  See postings passim.
  Having solved the impending problem of the end of their ease, Ladak took the club to Rushden’s Nene Park (19), which everyone hoped would see the start of a new period of stability (for Kettering, at least)
  Ladak is now ‘open to offers’ for the club (20), the entire team is transfer listed (21), players are partly unpaid (22), and as a result it has been transfer embargoed (23)
  Who can guess what Ladak will do next?  This, after all, is the man who brought in Gazza to run the club, sacking him after six games (24).

• Prescot Cables
  This Community Interest Club has taken the decision to return to being an amateur club, the financial pressure having built up following the lack of a sponsor (25).

Part 2 will be coming to a screen near you shortly.  I’ve now more or less recovered from the failure of my laptop’s CPU and hence its scrapping, so normal service should now be resumed.

A not quite 24 carat golden age of football ethics?

Received wisdom seems to be that, once the baton of running FIFA was passed on from safe and reliable English hands, there was a rapid descent into a quagmire of unethical goings on.  Even Uncle Sepp himself now admits that FIFA “has had a rough time of late” and concedes that there is now “the need for change and the urgent need for sweeping reforms” (1).  He concludes “FIFA remains committed to walking the walk and won’t get stuck in solely talking the talk. By December, this will become clear for all to see. Until then, I invite everybody to bear with us so that we can clean house and come back to the public with facts that allow FIFA to enter a new decade of doing business. And never again revert to doing “business as usual”.“  Whether he himself decides to ‘walk the walk’ is anybody’s guess.

I’m just back from a work trip and have been reading en route Sir Stanley Rous’s autobiography Football Worlds, published in 1978, a couple of years after he had been replaced as FIFA’s President by João Havelange.  A couple of passages particularly caught my eye as they reveal that back then all was not 100% squeaky clean.  Consider this first quote:

“In Nasser’s day I was once present to watch a game there when the Sudan played Egypt in the final of a competition.  My host was General Mostafa, later Vice-President of FIFA, and an enthusiastic crowd of 110,000 worked themselves to a pitch of excitement when the winner had to be drawn by lot after the game had ended with the scores level.  The referee was blindfolded before making the draw, and a great roar of cheers greeted his pulling out the slip with Egypt on it.

“When the General returned from the field I congratulated him on the luck of the draw.  He replied that there was no luck involved as, by agreement, both pieces of paper had Egypt written on them.  He may have been joking, but the Sudanese officials showed no sign of disappointment and the result made the day for Nasser and the spectators.“

This, for some reason, brought to mind a different recent occasion when, rather than two identical slips of paper, a voting card had only one choice on it.

Sir Stanley was not averse to telling a story against himself.  He writes this from his days refereeing, concerning a game between Millwall and Charlton:

“At a crucial point in the game I saw a defender’s hand fist the ball away in a goalmouth melee.  As I blew the whistle for a penalty the players untangled themselves and looked at me in surprise.  It was then that I realised that it was the goalkeeper, not a full-back, who had punched the ball.  So I walked past the penalty spot, past the goalposts, to the edge of the crowd and called at the top of my voice: ‘If the man with the whistle blows it again I will have him removed.’  Then I restarted the game by dropping the ball and the mistake was retrieved without disaster.“

A more innocent age perhaps, or perhaps not, than the kind of confessions that can appear in autobiographies today (2) – a reference to Matt Le Tissier, to save you clicking through.

Overall, one would have to conclude that, compared to today’s ills, it was generally a much more ethical football scene, but not some Halcyon era of perfect ethics.

Wages and the distortion of the pyramid

The data just published by Sporting Intelligence (sourced from internal PFA files) adds more fuel to my argument that the football pyramid is becoming utterly distorted in the sense that the scale of finance in the different tiers is being ludicrously stretched.  In a recent public lecture as part of the  Coventry Sporting Conversation series (a podcast is available here beginning at 02:05 mins.), I put the case that the lifting of the maximum wage started to stretch the level of financial activity across the tiers, and that when the Premier League broke away and negotiated its own broadcasting rights this process accelerated dramatically.

While the Sporting Intelligence data in its tabular form excited me, it was when I put into Excel and produced some graphs that I got really excited.  The full set of data on average players’ basic wages , together with UK average wages as a benchmark is shown here:

(All graphs can be enlarged by double-clicking on them)

At first glance it is obvious that things started to change with the appearance of the Premier League, but if we plot pre-Premier League and post-Premier League separately, the change can be seen as an acceleration of the existing trend:

The most striking features of the data emerge when you compare the average basic wages over time in each tier with the average UK wages.  The Premier League data confirms the stereotype of the ability to live the Ferrari-driving playboy lifestyle:

In 1984/85 the average Premier League player was earning two-and-a-half times the average UK wage, but by 2009/10 this had grown to 34 times the average OK wage, with no sign of slowing down.

On the other hand, life for a player in today’s League 2 is rather different from this stereotype:

Starting from a position in 1984/85 of below the average UK wage, things did slowly get better until the dawn of the Premier League.  Apart from a strange positive blip in 2003/04 (and no, I can’t explain it either), his lot has been scarcely different from the average UK worker’s wage.  Given that a footballer has a limited career, I wonder how a League 2 player ever manages to get a mortgage and buy a house, especially if he’s a goalkeeper – other data I have shows that goalkeepers are the worst-paid players.

This distortion in wages up and down the pyramid is simply a reflection of the disparity in revenues.  Of course higher levels deserve higher broadcasting rights and should be able to pay higher wages to attract the best talent, but when the size of the difference between tiers has become so vast, the traditional view of a club having some ambition and a local businessman to back them has long gone.  The only way upwards to the top is with an Arab prince or a Russian oligarch.  This is of course hardly news, but the data above makes abundantly clear that unless 92 Arab princes or Russian oligarchs come along, performance on the pitch will continue to be grossly distorted by the richness or otherwise of a club’s benefactor.  That is, unless change in governance takes place, and Financial Fair Play is imposed rigorously up and down the pyramid, financial doping is stopped, and a measure of sporting competitive balance returns to the game.

Stadium developments (and redevelopments)

In the last couple of weeks, stadiums, both those which are newly planned and those where there has been or will be redevelopment, have being popping up on my radar screen with surprising regularity.

The saga of what to do with the Olympic stadium shows no signs of reaching resolution.  Sadly we seem to be drifting into an Athens 2004 legacy situation.  When I visited last year, the lady from the company still tasked with the legacy management of the infrastructure told me, with refreshing honesty, “You will have read a lot of bad things in the press about our legacy issues.  All of them are true.  But there also some good things.“

Basically the problem had been that everyone was too busy preparing the Games sites to worry about legacy until after the Games had taken place.  No one could accuse LOCOG of not thinking about legacy – it’s just that their thoughts have never quite got round to making decisions.

Two issues trouble me with our stadium:

• Why is there still any question of any club other than Leyton Orient moving there?  For West Ham or Tottenham to move there would be a clear breach of Premier League or Football League rules (see previous posting).  Simply ignoring this most fundamental point does not in any way legitimise the situation.

• What of the issue of public money being spent on installing a football club there, and the blatant prejudging of who is to go there by Bojo (1)?  If FIFA were in any way consistent in condemning political interference (and note my use of the subjunctive), we should be seeing the legendary FIFA gunboats heading up the Thames any day now.

Meanwhile, across London, Chelsea are faced with an unusual situation as they plan to move from Stamford Bridge – the way that the Stamford Bridge stadium ownership was tied up Ken Bates to prevent it being sold.  This was undoubtedly his greatest footballing contribution, although pedants might question my use of a superlative that implies he made three good footballing contributions.  This looks to be a saga in the making because of the failure to keep records up to date (2), and the club will face opposition from its fans (3), focused into the Say No CPO group.  The club management must have been off sick when Marketing101 was scheduled.

Close by, Fulham have announced plans to redevelop part of Craven Cottage (4).  This pursuit of the ‘Molineux model’ rather than following a high risk ‘new stadium’ strategy is to be commended.  The alternative is the infinitely depressing ‘Fossetts Farm model’ (see postings passim or Southend United’s own New Stadium webpage).

When planning turns to stadium development or redevelopment, much depends on the attitude of the local council.  Three current cases are:

• Plymouth Argyle, where the local council has agreed to pay £1.6m for Home Park and rent it back to the club for £135,000 a year.  This will hopefully facilitate a last-ditch rescue, but it should be remembered that the club had bought the ground from the council for £2.7m in 2006 (5).

• Swansea City, where the council-owned Liberty Stadium is rented to Swansea City and the Ospreys, and continues to be run at a loss (6).  Can any reader with a deeper local knowledge explain this unlikely scenario?

• Doncaster, where the council-owned Keepmoat Stadium seems to be creating a worrying financial burden for Doncaster council tax payers (7).  Again, any deeper local insight would be appreciated.

What is disturbing in all of this is the reliance on the public purse.  Any talk of ‘rich clubs’ is a joke in the broader footballing context.  Mind you, mention of ‘rich clubs’ and the public purse must raise a reminder of the shockingly bad deal (from the perspective of Manchester council tax payers) struck between the local council and Manchester City.

Unsung heroes

The news that Plymouth Argyle’s players and administrative staff are still failing to get their full pay (1) is not, of course, really news at all.  This situation has been going on for roughly a year.  It’s a message of despair that has become as familiar as Peter Ridsdale cooing that he expects a deal to be finalised very shortly.

There are still those who do not break out in sympathy with the players at least – you know the sort of stuff: “Overpaid prima donnas.  Serves then right.  No sympathy whatsoever.“  This is of course nonsense.  Plymouth Argyle is not a Premier League club, and the majority of players are on salaries that do not even begin to approach the telephone numbers that Premier League players command.  They do have the professional Footballers Association supporting them though.  Still, it’s hardly easy to adjust to dramatic changes in family income whatever your salary is.  I should know: I once had no choice but to make the first Mrs. Beech redundant from our shared workplace.

The administrative staff will undoubtedly be on generally lower salaries, and I have even more sympathy for them.  Apart from being worse off financially, they didn’t sign up to a profession where a transfer to somewhere else in the country was going to be an industry norm.  I’m sure most of them are local folk, who have more than demonstrated their loyalty to a club which is not just their employer but a club that they care about.  They are the real unsung heroes.

In a different news story today, another super-loyal administrator (in the non-insolvency sense of the word) has left his club/employer after an amazing 38 years – now there’s loyalty.  This is the case of Portsmouth’s Club Secretary, Paul Weld (2) .  As the club website points out: “Paul has worked through nine changes of ownership, 19 different managers (22 if you include Frank Burrows, Alan Ball and Harry Redknapp, all of whom managed Pompey twice), encompassing two periods of administration, four relegations, four promotions, one FA Cup final triumph, one FA Cup final defeat and a season in Europe!“  No doubt it was the two periods of Administration that must have caused the greatest stress in the Weld household.  Why did he remain so loyal when there must have been more secure job opportunities open to him over the years?  Well, “A Pompey fan, Paul was an active member of the London Supporters’ Club before arriving at Fratton Park from the Football Association as assistant to the then secretary Jimmy Dickinson, before taking over as club secretary.“  So, someone to whom it was clearly more than ‘just a job’.  And here’s a hint, Paul – yours is an autobiography that I can’t wait to read.

I’m sure there are similar stories to be told at a myriad of clubs.  Let’s not forget these unsung heroes, especially in the troubling circumstances of the current Plymouth Argyle administrative staff.  A club is much more than just the team who turn on Saturdays.  Let’s hope that those directly involved in the takeover negotiations can bring a rapid close to the brinkmanship and haggling, and show a little humanity to their loyal staff and their families.