Nepotism attempts to rear its ugly head again

Regular readers will recall how Eddie Mitchell was reported to be the author of several emails to Weymouth offering them £5,000 to take on his son Tom as a player (1).  Mitchell dismissed the emails as an elaborate forgery.  He, of course, had famously tried to leave his sons in charge at Dorchester Town when he bought Bournemouth (2), and has openly admitted “I’m not a passionate football fan – my son plays and that’s what drew me into football” (3).

Now there is a would-be club investor who is seemingly totally brazen in his motives. The Cambridge News reports “[Chairman] Tony Roach has revealed Histon have no financial agreement in place with businessman Raj Chodankar. But the Indian could invest in the club in the future if his son impresses during a forthcoming trial at the Glass World Stadium” (4)!

Back in July the club website had reported “International businessman Raj Chodankar is putting the finishing touches to various items of paperwork and the fine detail regarding joining the Board is expected to be completed within the next fourteen days” (5).  Chodankar’s public profile is about as high as that of, for example, Suleiman al Fahim at Portsmouth.

What shocks me is not only the lack of empathy with the sporting ethic, but also that this should involve a club whose origins lie in the principled foundation of the Histon Institute and the donations of John Chivers (of jam fame).

To put this scenario into a context, it needs to be borne in mind that Histon are under pressure from, guess who, HMRC, who are owed £20,000 of VAT (of course, already HMRC’s, collected by the club but not yet forwarded), but also £11,000 owed to Cambridgeshire Constabulary.  Allen Soraff, the club’s Finance Director, says “We’re very comfortable with the level of debt we’ve got and the arrangements we’ve got to clear it. We’ve made a significant payment to the police and what we owe to HM Revenue and Customs is a very small amount of money in relation to what other clubs owe. Arrangements are in place to pay it off and everything is under control” (6).  That HMRC will rest easy simply because other clubs owe more seems unlikely.

Histon faces two particular problems.  For those who are not familiar with the geography of East Anglia, Histon and Impington are a pair of villages with a combined population of approximately 10,000 only.  They lie less than five miles from Cambridge, which has Cambridge United (Conference; ex-Football League) and Cambridge City (Southern League Premier Division).  The city of Cambridge has a population of over 80,000 if the students are excluded.  Histon might expect to be the ‘Tranmere’ of the trio of clubs, but that title falls currently, if not historically, to City.  Comparison with Gretna and Carlisle United is tempting.

This issue of potential attendance links in with the second problem. Soraff has also said “The directors putting their hands in their pockets and paying the bills is going to be the key to turning the finances around. Even if you put 200 or 300 people on the gate, that brings in £3,000. The sort of money we need to run on the budgets we now have, there’s no question people like (chairman) Tony (Roach) and myself are going to be putting their hands in their pockets to get the club through it. I set a budget at the beginning of the season that didn’t need directors to put their own money in. But gates haven’t been at the level we hoped for, sponsorship hasn’t been at the level we hoped for, and TV revenue has disappeared“.  There is an alternative to pressing on regardless with the same budget on a benefactor model, and it’s not rocket science – cut back on the budget to an appropriate level.

The route back to financial sustainability should not depend on the depths of directors’ pockets, nor indeed on the trial of the son of a potential benefactor.

Just how significant today will prove

I don’t suppose it will get much press coverage in tomorrow’s papers, but today something happened which will have a major, major impact on the English game – UEFA announced the formation of its Club Financial Control Panel (1).  The Panel is tasked with ensuring that the UEFA club licensing system is applied correctly across all 53 UEFA member associations, that clubs have fulfilled the criteria defined in the UEFA Club Licensing Regulations, and, most significantly, driving through the adoption of UEFA’s Financial Fair Play concept (2).

Let me quote the passage on the Financial Fair Play concept which will send shivers down the spines of many of the Chairman I have blogged about of late:

“The major objective of the Financial Fair Play concept is to improve the financial fairness in European competitions, as well as the long-term stability of European club football. In order to achieve this goal, a set of measures will be put in place. These include an obligation for clubs whose turnover is over a certain threshold, over a period of time, to balance their books or break even. Under the concept, clubs cannot repeatedly spend more than their generated revenues. Guidance will be given on salaries and transfer spending, indicators provided on the sustainability of levels of debt, and clubs will be obliged to honour their commitments at all times.“

Can this really be the blueprint for dragging Chairman down screaming off Debt Mountain?  Will it really reign in the insanely escalating levels of pay for players?

As UEFA President Michel Platini puts it: “The idea is not to hurt clubs. The idea is to help them. The basic premise is that clubs should not spend more than they earn. Club owners have asked for the introduction of rules, and this will be an adventure for European football and UEFA.” He argues that the measures are essential for the long-term health of the European game.  They certainly are essential for even the mid-term health of the English game.

Key to the success or otherwise of the Panel’s work will be the quality of the people appointed to serve.  They are Jean-Luc Dehaene, Belgium (Chairman); Jacobo Beltrán, Spain; Egon Franck, Germany; Umberto Lago, Italy; Johan Lokhorst, Netherlands; Brian Lomax, England; Petros Mavroidis, Greece; Brian Quinn, Scotland; and Yves Wehrli, France.

The two British members of the panel are a particularly interesting choice.

Perhaps not a name ubiquitously well-known on English terraces, Brain Lomax is nonetheless a major figure in the recent development of English football.  He was a founder member of the first Supporters Trust, at Northampton, back in 1992, and then became first the Managing Director and subsequently the Chairman of Supporters Direct.  This year he was awarded an OBE for services to football in the Queen’s Birthday honours list.

Brian Quinn CBE is much better known North of the border, as Chairman of Celtic.  He joined their board in 1996 and was appointed as Chairman in 2000, holding the post until 2007.  He holds Masters degrees from both Glasgow and Manchester Universities, and a Doctorate in Economics from Cornell University.  Prior to his work with Celtic he had worked for the International Monetary Fund and the Bank of England, rising to be Deputy Governor. (There is more on him and his strategy at Celtic here.)

If the other seven panel members of the same calibre as these two, we can expect a Panel that will be effective and efficient in driving through of Financial Fair Play, and that will have a major impact on the English game, a very positive one.  No doubt there will be tears before bedtime from some Chairmen, but that will be no bad thing.

Oldham (v. Spurs?!)

When I blogged on Parallel Realities and Worcester City recently, contrasting the board’s full-blown optimism in pursuing a new stadium with the harsh reality of the club’s financial situation, I cited other examples – Portsmouth, Southend and, most notably, Darlington.  I might also have cited the case of Oldham, a particularly interesting case, as it seems the owners seem almost aware of the parallel realities (not the case in the other examples, at least not publicly), yet somehow can see no way of reconciling them.

Oldham went into Administration in August 2003 (Evening Standard, 19 August 2003), following the withdrawal of funding from ‘benefactor’ Chairman Chris Moore.  So desperate had he become to quit, just two years after taking over, and with the club losing £50,000 a week (1), he offered to write off a £4m loan to the club, and talked with Peter Ridsdale about the latter taking over.  Some might say fortunately, he sold instead to three London-born entrepreneurs who had made their fortunes in New York in real estate and the mobile phone business – Simon Blitz, Simon Corney and Danny Gazal (2).

On the stadium side, Boundary Park was beginning to exceed its sell-buy date and eventually a stand was closed for redevelopment.  In February 2006 the three owners revealed plans for an £80m ‘Oldham Arena’ regeneration project (4) to be built at the Boundary park site.   There problems getting planning permission, and the green light was only given in December 2007.  Things did no go smoothly however, and an effective local residents group continued to lobby against the scheme (5).   Demolition work began, but financial obstacles began to appear.

On the finance side, the three had had a baptism of fire.  As David Conn reported in The Independent:

“To finance this dream, they funded the club for three months in administration, which cost them £522,500. The preferential creditors, the Inland Revenue and VAT, were owed £715,000 and were paid 32p in the pound: £237,000. “Football Creditors” – other clubs, players and the League’s pension deficit – are to be paid £428,000, while Blitz and Gazal paid £120,000 for Oldham’s office equipment and other assets. Unsecured creditors, the usual victims including a £30,000 policing bill, local family firms and £1,856.50 unpaid to St John Ambulance, got nothing. The club’s ongoing losses are estimated at £1m, and their shoring-up of the club adds up to £2.4m. They are paying £4.6m more for the ground and land, while guaranteeing that Boundary Park will still be a football ground in 10 years’ time.” (4)

Given that Oldham have played at the same level in the pyramid since 1997, the stability on the field might have been expected to allow a steady recovery in the club’s financial fortunes.

However, in June 2009 the club’s major sponsor Hillstone Development went into Administration (5).

By march this year this was talk of a mystery foreign investor (6), but he did not materialise.  The three owners hinted that might sell up to right person however.

In early July there was talk of a possible groundshare with Rochdale (7) or possibly Stockport, but at the end of the month a major shift in plans was announced – a major new development, a 12,000 seater-stadium at Failsworth (8).  Gates at Boundary Park have been hovering around the 6,000 mark for the past decade.

The rationale for the move was, in one respect apparently compelling (9).  As Corney put it, “In its current state Oldham Athletic is dying. Our revenue fell 20 per cent again last year and we’re now attracting attendances on a par with many League Two clubs. This new vision gives us an opportunity to provide a facility that will create new revenue streams to make the club financially viable and self-sustaining, whilst also giving supporters a superior matchday experience. We haven’t taken the decision to leave Boundary Park lightly – it was our preferred option to redevelop it – but the credit crunch means the land value and market conditions have diminished to an extent which makes that scheme no longer economically viable.”

But if redevelopment of Boundary Park is no longer viable because of the credit crunch, how exactly can the club finance a much more grandiose scheme?  As Corney stated recently “We originally purchased the club for £5.4m and have spent say £1m a year for seven years. The new stadium will cost £14m to build. That’s before the price of the pitches we’re building. So let’s say that’s £26m. If we sold Boundary Park today we’d get £12m. It’s no wonder I don’t sleep at nights“  (10).  Given that the price tag on the Failsworth scheme is said to be £20m, that’s hardly surprising. Perhaps he would sleep more easily if he recognised that he is having a recurring nightmare, not a dream.

And is the club well positioned financially to fund a £20m scheme, which, incidentally, faces formidable local opposition and hence additional costs? today the club reported interim results for last year (11 and 12).  Highlights include the following:

• Creditors are owed £3.1m, up from £2.7m last year;

• Debts due after more than one year climbed 148 per cent from £145,000 to £359,000.

• Although net losses are down from £537,000 last year, they are now still £414,000

Most worrying of all is this statement which is included in the accounts: “The company is dependant on its shareholders for financial support, which the directors are confident will continue for a period of at least another 12 months. The shareholders have indicated their present intention to provide adequate finance to enable the company to continue in operational existence“  No doubt intended to reassure, it might have done so if a period of prudence was being planned.  With a £20m plan being pushed hard, it has the opposite effect, not least because the figure of ‘at least 12 months’ is well short of the time required for a new stadium at Failsworth to be completed.

Still, there’s no harm in nightmaring dreaming is there?

And Spurs?  Well, they too have a grandiose scheme for a new 56,000-seat stadium, one which they would have no difficulty in filling (13).  They too announced their financial result today – record profits of £33.4m (14).

The differences between Oldham and Spurs have less to do with financial disparity up and down the football pyramid, and rather more to do with differences in financial health and in the sustainability of the clubs’ business models.

The continuing Southend saga

Having brought the club to the verge of Administration and a ten points deduction over debts of over £2 million, and failed to pay players on time for the fourth month in a row, the club issued the following statement on its website this afternoon:

“For completeness we can confirm that all action by HMRC was dismissed at this morning’s hearing following the release of funds by the Club’s Chairman over the weekend.

This brings the matter to a close.” (1)

Wishful thinking I fear.  Too many questions have been brushed aside unanswered.

Perhaps the most important one is “On what basis has ‘the Chairman released funds’?”  Are we to assume that one £2.1m debt has simply been replaced by another?  Is the new one a ’soft debt’ from another Ron Martin company?  Is it actually likely to remain ’soft’?

Almost as important is the question of future business strategy.  No change in strategic direction will leave the club heading back to the abyss same time next year.  So how would a new direction be different?  Will the seemingly unstoppable pursuit of Fossetts Farm carry on regardless, with sunk costs of already £1.9m?  This seems likely as Ron Martin and his immediate family are the beneficial owners of the Fossetts Farm development (2).

The gainers have been HMRC – they got their money, for which all taxpayers should be happy – and inevitably the lawyers.  As for the club, it just seems to back where it was a fortnight ago but without a winding-up order hanging over it.  That is a step in the right direction, but if there is still a debt of £2.1m it’s only a very small step.

I just don’t see how the board can see the matter as closed if they are to be seen as having any credibility at all. The brinkmanship of the last few days had already seriously eroded that in any case.

Northwich Victoria: A cautionary tale

To apply the term ‘troubled’ to transfer-embargoed and ‘in Administration but without a CVA yet’ Northwich Victoria would be something of an understatement.  Even today’s televised win against Charlton in the first round of the FA Cup (1) will do little to help their present predicament (see postings passim).

Briefly in Football League Division 2 over a century ago, much of their subsequent life has been at the level of the Cheshire County League, before climbing back to what is now the Conference in 1979.  Financially things have regularly be tough even at this level – Customs & Excise sought a winding-up order in 1983, and the Inland Revenue (who with Customs & Excise formed HMRC) sought one in 1993.

In 2003 construction began of the new Victoria Stadium, and the Vics said farewell to the Drill Field after 125 years (at that time the Drill Field was the oldest-continuously used football ground in the world).  Before construction was complete, however, the club was forced into Administration in 2004 (2) following the serving of a winding-up order by stadium building contractors Tarmac over a debt of £17,000.  The Drill Field had been sold for £2.3m, and the cost of the new stadium had been projected as £1.8m, so a winding-up order over £17,000 was not a scenario that fans or shareholders might have expected (Liverpool Daily Post, 16 September 2004).  A grant of £500,000 towards the new stadium was made by the Football Foundation (3).  A rental of £1,000 to groundshare with Witton Albion in the interim was said to be to blame for the financial embarrassment.

Swiftly a consortium led by local businessman, and father of the Vic’s goalkeeper, Mike Connett bought the club from the Administrator (This is Cheshire, 29 September 2009). Completion of the new stadium was promised by Connett, and plans would now include bars, restaurants and all-weather facilities.  Connett ran a company called Beaconet, and has been described as owning a document-shredding business (4).  He was reported as having put £2 million into the club.

The new stadium opened in August 2005, and included an entire terrace transported form the Drill Field (5).  By then the club had just been demoted for failing to transfer their Conference membership from the old company to the new company by the deadline of 31 May (6). An appeal was unsuccessful.

By March 2007 rumours had begun to circulate that the Vics were in financial difficulty and Connett was looking for a new owner (7). These rumours were denied by Connett.  In October 2007 he announced that he was indeed looking for a new owner (8), on the day that HMRC sought a winding-up order for unpaid taxes of over £350,000 (9).

In December it was announced that a new consortium headed by Jim Rushe had completed a deal with former owner Mike Connett and agreed terms with creditors, including HMRC (10), the deal including a 25-year lease on the new ground (11).  Rushe offered “a sustainable future going forward“. Debt level, however, was reported as being at the £500,000 level, and to be paid off over an unspecified number of years (12).

At the end of July 2008 a winding-up order was sought by Belgrove Services (13), but this appears to have been settled.

Over the summer Rushe agreed a deal to buy the Victoria Ground from Connett for £3.2m (Connett had bought it in 2004 for £225, 000, and had subsequently borrowed money from three lenders using the land as surety) but had failed to find backers to fund the deal (14). Unfortunately, one of these lenders, the Clydesdale Bank (through its subsidiary the Yorkshire Bank), was now seeking recovery of their loan of £1.25m from Connett.  To add to the complicated situation that was unfolding for the Vics, HMRC was becoming restless over the remaining tax debt of £300,ooo (15), this notwithstanding the fact that Rushe and former director Nick Bone had pumped half a million pounds into the club.  Money was flowing out of the club at a worrying rate – over the summer the now full-time players had been paid £70,000.

To add to the Vics’ woes, a football creditor, AFC Telford, appeared last December (16), prompting an FA probe (17) into a sum said to be around just £3,000.

January this year saw a rapid escalation of the problems – crisis meetings with the Conference (18), a transfer embargo (19), a lock-out from the stadium, which had been dependent on a generator for electricity after the mains supply was cut off, by landlord Connett (20), and a winding-up petition from HMRC (21).  Meanwhile Connett’s company Beaconet was also facing a winding-up order (22) (his insolvency problems had led to the lock-out and hence pressure to get the club to pay its rental arrears).

Connett proceeded to start gutting the stadium, and the club had real problems be able to play fixtures, moving home games to other grounds.  Things turned to low farce; witness the following:

“On a day of acrimony in Wincham, Connett:

• Banned Rushe and club secretary Derek Nuttall from the ground

• Fired groundsman Joe Biddle after accusing him of talking to outsiders on the phone about his plans to strip the stadium of it’s fixtures and fittings

• Demanded £2,000 off the club in cash to pick up the first team strip, currently locked in a cupboard inside

• Allowed workmen to play a makeshift match on the pitch, joined by his pet dog

• Boxed up every item of safety equipment needed to host a game, from fire extinguishers and handheld radios to luminous stewards’ jackets

• Issued a list to Cheshire Trading Standards of everything he intended to take away from the Marston’s [Victoria] Arena, including the goalposts.”

On 28 January, Connett’s Beaconet was struck off (23).  Almost a month later the club got the keys to the stadium from Beaconet’s Receiver (24) under a temporary Licence to Occupy.  No such good news with staff unfortunately; within a month manager and six players had left (25).  Connett meanwhile was declared bankrupt on 26 February (26).  For the club, there was another HMRC winding-up order on 25 March (27).

On 29 April at last came some good news – agreement was reached between Rushe and Deloittes (the Beaconet Receiver) over the purchase of the stadium (28), but on 18 May the club entered Administration again (29).

The Conference’s response?  To expel Northwich for going into Administration too late (30) – the Vics had breached that well-known regulation, Appendix E, not quite showing the support they were to show Chester City shortly!  This decision was overthrown upon appeal to the FA (31), and the Vics were allowed to start this season in the Conference North with a ten point deduction (32).  Football creditors will still need to be paid before the transfer embargo is lifted and the club can enter a CVA.

The transfer embargo was lifted in July (33), only to be reapplied on 25 October (34).  Rushe meanwhile is still optimistic over the purchase of the stadium (35), but the CVA remains problematic, with HMRC unwilling to agree to the offers being made.  Ironically today’s FA Cup fixture, and the games which led up to it should facilitate a better offer.  But there is a Catch 22 – the club will not be paid the roughly £100,000 rewards until the club exits Administration (36).  The same will apply to their 2nd Round tie at home to Lincoln City on 28 November.

So, this is a club which in five years has gone from a sure-fire way to profit from a new stadium, through two Administrations, to a situation of tragi-farce.  Plenty to reflect on there, including the weaknesses of the benefactor model, and some lessons to be drawn.

Perhaps even by a certain other club in the news with continuing plans for a new stadium in spite of insolvency issues?

Added blog feature

As I sometimes post summaries of clubs currently in crisis, I have added a tag above named ‘OVERVIEWS’ which gives direct access to such postings.  Hopefully this will prove useful to some readers.

Latest HMRC target

HMRC’s increasingly active pursuit of recalcitrant football clubs has taken them to Wimborne in Dorset, where Wimborne Town play in the Wessex League Premier Division (1).  The club’s moment of glory was winning the FA Vase in 1992.

Debt to HMRC had been as high as £90,000, a very high level for a club at this level in the pyramid.  Incoming owners had reduced this to £70,000, and the debt is now down to £27,000.

Director Paul Miller has said that HMRC visited the club recently saying ‘we have come to shut you down’, but that a repayment plan has now been agreed.

The message to clubs at all levels in the pyramid can’t be clearer – pay your taxes and National Insurance or we will be on your back.  The days of ‘easy overdraft’ are over.

Around the Courts

Catching up on my surfing this evening, I’ve been beginning to wonder if I should start a spin-off blog covering football management in court.  Almost certainly not, for I find it hard to see that today’s crop of stories is in any way typical, thank goodness.

First up was the widely reported case of Portsmouth Chief Executive Peter Storrie, who has been charged with tax evasion (1).  It is alleged that tax and national insurance were not paid in connection with the signing on fee when Amdy Faye was recruited in 2003. Storrie vigorously denies the charge.

If he were to be found guilty and banned under the Premier League Fit and Proper Person Test, Portsmouth would lose the one platform of stability that has seen them survive three changes of ownership. The club’s circumstances would certainly compound the impact of this.

Second up was a case that has absolutely no relevance to Portsmouth if you follow the Premier League party line, but which will be of interest to many of the Fratton Faithful who do not. Former Pompey owner Sacha Gaydamak’s father Arcadi has been sentenced in absentia to six years in prison by a French court (2). He was also fined five million euros for his role in illegal arms deals in the 1990s.  He had been charged with involvement in smaller arms deals in Africa as well as with tax offences and fraud.  Obviously all this was in no way connected with the funding of son Alexandre’s purchase of Pompey.

From along the coast came news of a pending civil case involving Bournemouth directors. Vice-Chairman Jeff Mostyn is being sued in a complex case by former Club  Secretary John Piper (3). It centres on the recovery of a loan made shortly before the club went into Administration.  Piper in the meantime is has joined the HMRC winding-up petition over a different loan made to the club.

All a coincidence, but it doesn’t help the image of either club, or indeed that of the game in general.

Accrington, Southend … and Worthing

So, will there, in best Jeff Stelling tradition, be dancing in the streets of Accrington, Southend and Worthing tonight?

Let’s deal with Worthing first.  It’s the home of the HMRC office which deals with the tax affairs of football clubs.  Certainly there is cause for dancing, but probably this will be manifested as an occasional outbreak of sedate foxtrots rather than a full-blown Rio-style carnival.

Accrington?  Well, in terms of outcomes there is, at first glance, certainly cause for dancing – taxes now cleared, Ilyas Khan in as non-executive Chairman, but, hang on a minute, weren’t there going to be fan directors too? No mention of any in the club statement (1).  Khan it was who as recently as 16 October was reported as having donated his 12% shareholding in the club “to Accrington Stanley Supporters’ Fund with a request it joins with other fan groups, creating a fan-based trust to play a part in the club’s future“.

And who is still on the board, now as Managing Director and Head of Operations?  None other than Dave O’Neill, who had spurned Khan’s offers to help right up until the court hearing when Khan’s offer was the only way left.  Mysteriously, even miraculously, Khan and O’Neill have made up their differences with a remarkable speed.  As Khan and Peter Marsden said in a  statement issued by the club “We believe that the town, the community and the supporters should now link arms with the team and the management to forge a stronger and vibrant partnership that will be a credit to this wonderful wonderful Football Club. Whilst there have been clear differences of opinion between David and ourselves, these are not only resolved, but put behind us” (2).  How exactly the supporters and the management will link arms has yet to be spelled out.  Perhaps best to sit this one out this evening until things become clearer.  As Khan has said recently “The club must be transparent, we have a better chance of surviving if the club remains totally transparent. I am now hoping we can still work together to sort the club out by being 100% transparent” (3).

What would keep me back in my seat at the disco tonight if I were a Stanley fan is the thought that Khan is non-executive Chairman and O’Neill, who brought he club to its knees, is Managing Director and Head of Operations.

Over at Southend there is no similar concern over transparency – it still doesn’t exist.  Mention of a full statement shortly which was in the club statement this morning has been airbrushed out (4), and reduced to a bland statement simply noting that “Agreement has been reached to pay the outstanding debt by Friday“.  If I were a Southend United fan I’d be praying this evening rather than dancing.  All that’s happened is that we have gone into extra time.

All-in-all, if you feel like strutting your funky stuff this evening, Worthing looks the best bet, albeit not an especially lively one.

President Klaus and Newcastle United

Not perhaps a natural pairing – the President of the Czech Republic and a major English football club – but those who read the front pages of the papers as avidly as the back pages may just see where I am going with this.  If not, please stick with me.

As I write, the only impediment to the implementation of the EU’s Treaty of Lisbon is the signature of the Czech President, the Czech Republic being the last of the 27 nations of the EU to ratify the Treaty.  Early this morning it was announced that the Czech constitutional court ruled that signing the Treaty did not violate Czech law (1), so we can expect the Treaty and all its implications to be hitting us fairly shortly.

There are major implications for sport within the Treaty.  In 2007 the European Commission published The White Paper on Sport (2).  Section 4.1 (3) introduce the concept of the ’specificity of sport’ – the characteristics of sport which, as business, make it different from conventional business.  Some specific areas are identified – Free movement and nationality (4), transfers (5), Players agents [a research project has already been commissioned by the EC] (6), Protection of minors (7), Corruption, money laundering and other forms of financial crime (8), Licensing systems for clubs (9), and Media (10).  Coming up shortly then in EU countries near you will be the implementation of, amongst many others, the following proposals:

• The Commission will promote dialogue with sport organisations in order to address the implementation and strengthening of self-regulatory licensing systems.

• Starting with football, the Commission intends to organise a conference with UEFA, EPFL, Fifpro, national associations and national leagues on licensing systems and best practices in this field.

• The Commission intends to organise the structured dialogue in the following manner:
  - EU Sport Forum: an annual gathering of all sport stakeholders;
  - Thematic discussions with limited numbers of participants.

• The Commission encourages and welcomes all efforts leading to the establishment of European Social Dialogue Committees in the sport sector. It will continue to give support to both employers and employees and it will pursue its open dialogue with all sport organisations on this issue.

Eurosceptics will see this as yet more waffle then interference; europhiles will recognise that there are major implications for the governance and even ownership of sports clubs, hopefully a number of them being positive.

Which brings us back to Newcastle United, and the fact that a question is to be raised in the House (11) by Tyne Bridge MP DavidClelland.  He has tabled a Commons motion calling for Newcastle United owner Mike Ashley to reconsider selling the naming rights to St James’ Park.

If football were an ordinary business, it would be absurd for such an issue to be raised in the House of Commons.  Why shouldn’t the owner of a business run in it any legal way he chooses?  But this issue is at the heart of the ’specificty’ of sport.

On the one hand we have the fans, committed to club, opposing the sale of what they see as their sporting heritage.  On the other, we have Mike Ashley, the owner committed to company, one which he bought for £134m in 2007 and which he now apparently can’t sell for £80m.  The extent to which Mike Ashley has or has not himself to blame for his predicament is a side issue.  The real issue is whether single benefactor ownership is the appropriate model for sports businesses.

How the specificity debate unfolds, and the extent to which ownership will come into the debate on governance, only time will tell.  But let’s be clear, debate there will be, and it will be at a European level whether we individually like it or not.  We are about to be living in exciting times, as if the problem of Debt Mountain wasn’t causing enough excitement and debate already.