About

This site is a personal blog maintained by Dr John Beech, an independent academic.
He previously worked at Coventry University,
where he was Head of Sport & Tourism at the Applied Research Centre in Sustainable Regeneration (SURGE).  He continues to lecture, research and consult on all matters relating to sports management, and to football management in particular.
He received the Football Supporters’ Federation Writer of the Year Award for season 2009/10 for his work on it.
It is read in more than 180 countries, from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe.

John was a founder co-director of the Centre for the International Business of Sport and author/co-author/co-editor of a range of books, book chapters and journal articles on various aspects of sports management and English football management in particular.  He is an International Professor at the Russian International Olympic University in Sochi, Russia, and has held the post of Visiting Professor at FH Kufstein University of  Applied Sciences in Austria, and at the Instituto de Empresa (IE) Business School in Spain.  He lectures in Sochi, Paris, the JAMK University of Applied Sciences at Jyväskylä in Finland, and at universities in Karlsruhe and the Ostfalia University of Applied Sciences in Salzgitter, Germany.

His research has been reported in the Financial Times, the Times, the Independent, the Observer, the Glasgow Herald, the Daily Express, France’s Le Parisien, Germany’s Frankfurter Algemeine Zeitung, and Handelsblatt, Austria’s Die Presse, and Spain’s Expansión, and featured on BBC1’s Football Focus and Late Kick Off. He has made over a hundred broadcasts, and has appeared on Radio 5 Live, Radio 4 (including The Today Programme, File on Four and PM) and the BBC World Service, and on Australian, New Zealand and US public service radio, as well as British (BBC, BBC News24, and Sky News), Croatian, Dutch, Greek, Polish and Russian television.  He writes for F.C. Business, Football & Stadium Monthly, Football & Sports Arena, ProSport Business Magazine and When Saturday Comes.

John maintains detailed data files on over 200 English football clubs, covering strategic, managerial, marketing and financial issues.  He will consider requests for access to them from academics (including PhD students, but not Masters or undergraduate students [purely on the grounds of potential request numbers]), journalists and broadcasters.

The aim of the blog is to offer commentary on current (and, to a much lesser extent, historic) issues in the management of English clubs and, as appropriate, the governance of the clubs and leagues. ‘English’ in this context, means clubs that play in English leagues, thus including, for example, Cardiff City and Merthyr Tydfil.  Where non-English clubs provide interesting examples, whether positive or negative, that are of relevance to English clubs, they will on occasion be covered.  This may thus, on occasion, include SFA or FAW clubs, or non-British clubs, but the focus of the blog remains English clubs, and not the wider range of British clubs.

Management at the national level is also reviewed.

Serious debate is encouraged.

Contact: john DOT beech AT cantab DOT net

John is a member of the Football Supporters’ Federation and the Pompey Supporters Trust.

or THE UGLY BUSINESS?

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Disclaimer: This is a personal blog and the opinions expressed are those of the author.