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.

A hint of significant change at FIFA?

Well, don’t hold your breath, but there is just a possibility.

The conferences I usually attend are for academics, and any confrontation is usually so subtle that it needs to be decoded.  Which is one reason I particularly enjoy the two-yearly Play the Game conferences, with their exciting mix of investigative journalists, academics and sports practitioners.  The latter group normally does not include anyone from FIFA, but the conference which has just finished in Köln proved to be a notable exception.  The Play the Game organisation, for those unfamiliar with it, describes itself as “an international conference and communication initiative aiming to strengthen the ethical foundation of sport and promote democracy, transparency and freedom of expression in sport” (1).

Sepp Blatter had been invited, but with stunning predictability he turned the invitation down “due to a great amount of similar demands” (2).  If he meant demands that he face his critics over the way FIFA is mismanaged, that’s probably understandable.

On Thursday, however, in a joint session with presentations by the indominatable Andrew Jennings, long-time scourge of FIFA, and his opposite number in Germany, Jens Weinreich, who should be in the audience but Walter di Georgio, FIFA’s newly appointed Director of Communications (now there’s a job I wouldn’t want!), sitting just two rows behind me.

Confrontation was inevitable, especially when Jennings, produced a list of what he said was 167 bribes recorded by the Zug Prosecutor’s office, which he (Jennings) is fighting to get published (3).  Di Gregorio took understandable exception to Jennings’s assertion that FIFA had the classic characteristics of a Mafia family.  Worse was to come when Jennings and di Georgio clashed over the reason for Jennings being banned by FIFA from its press conferences; this concluded with Jennings shouting “Liar!” from the podium.

It will be interesting to see whether di Georgio comes good on his offer to speak to the next Play the Game conference in 2013.  Apart from anything else, he will no doubt have to survive a post-conference debriefing with Blatter, which I’d love to be a fly-on-the-wall at!  Assuming Jennings is finally successful in publishing the Zug court documents – there is a slow Swiss legal process to go through yet – we will have to see whether Blatter survives.

Among other football-related topics discussed at the conference was a two-hour session entitled Financial fair play, or football’s foolish plan, chaired by Supporters Direct Europe’s Antonia Hagemann.  Speakers were, in order, Sefton Perry (UEFA’s Benchmarking Manger for Club Licensing), Professor Stefan Szymanski, myself, and Christian Müller (until recently the Chief Financial Officer of the German Football Association [DFL]).  The four presentations and the following discussion can be viewed here, following an incongruous 30 seconds beer advertisement.  My own contribution is at about 40 minutes in.

The final session of the conference turned to a key issue for all sports today, that of ‘quis custodiet ipsos custodies?‘ or ‘who guards the guardians?’.  The outcome was a call to the IOC to gather all stakeholders to draft a code for good governance in sport (4).  While I welcome such a move in general, I have a problem with it being under the auspices of the IOC.  How likely is this to find a positive response from ‘barely Olympic sports’ such as football and tennis, and non-Olympic sports such as F1, the rugby codes, North American sports and golf?  At the heart of this is the fact that the major professional sports do not fit well with the sports already engaged with the IOC.  And of course there is, for English football, the whole ‘Home Nations’ issue, an already touchy subject.

Manchester United and the Monkees

A comparison that doesn’t fully stand up to scrutiny, I promptly concede, but the ‘soulless’ way Manchester United is run as a business must trouble many a fan of what was once ‘the beautiful game’, and has often in the past been referred to as ‘the people’s game’.

An article in the Financial Times really caught my eye (1) – an interview with Richard Arnold, United’s Commercial Director by the redoubtable Roger Blitz.

It wasn’t the business plan that Richard Arnold was setting forth was other than a sensible one in business terms, but here was someone who has ‘sold his football soul’, if, that is, he had had one.

It was the calculating and almost cynical way he viewed his ‘customer base’, and the language he used.  Here was someone who made no distinction between running a sports business and running any other kind of business – a distinction which I believe to be vital (and bear in mind that I have been teaching and researching sport management, working in a university Business School, forponsored over fifteen years).  Yes, there is much common ground, but sport businesses are a distinct variety of business, not least because their customers see themselves as having psychological ownership of the product.

God help the present and future fans of Manchester United who are to be milked like a cash cow, even when incurring charges on their club-s credit card.  And just how comfortable does Sir Alex Ferguson (see my previous posting) feel working for them.  I caught sight of him, appearing, rather incongruously, in a video shown last week at the annual Labour Party conference.  He has long been a Labour Party supporter, and, for the benefit of overseas readers of this blog, the Labour Party for many, many years played Left Half in British politics.

Another football supremo also caught my eye since my last posting- the peerless Peter Ridsdale.  He was claiming that “he yearns for a life out of the public eye” (3).  Had this claim appeared in the form of a press release by fax from some rural hideaway out of the public spotlight?  No, in fact he was sitting “sipping coffee in Cardiff’s Mercure Holland House hotel” giving a press interview.  How torn the Spinmeister must be in deciding whether to follow his yearning.

“Completely vindicated”? Well, not quite completely

The press have been quick to quote Peter Ridsale as saying that he had been “completely vindicated” following the dropping of charges fraud brought against him by Cardiff Training Standards Department (see BBC and This is Plymouth for example).

In my book, in this case that fine arbiter of plain English, the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, the primary definition of ‘vindicate’ is “clear of blame or suspicion“.

Undoubtedly he has been “completely vindicated” of ‘blame’ as the charges have been withdrawn, and he continues to be able to be a director of a football club.  He can continue to weave his own brand of magic, honed at Leeds United, Barnsley and Cardiff City.

Whether he has been cleared of ‘suspicion’ is, in my opinion, not quite so clear-cut however.  Further down in the press reports the reason the charges were dropped is revealed.  A council spokesman is quoted thus: “On paper, there was a case to answer, however, the council has recently obtained further evidence from prosecution witnesses and taken the advice of a leading counsel.  After a thorough analysis of this new evidence, and due to the reluctance of those supporters who raised concerns to provide witness statements, the council considered that a conviction after trial was unlikely.  Consequently, the council has decided to discontinue the prosecution.“  In these circumstances it would seem likely that there will those who still harbour a suspicion, possibly including some at Cardiff Trading Standards Department, and so ‘complete vindication’ is an interesting use of the language.

To remove both ‘blame’ and ‘suspicion’ it can be argued that the case would have had to have gone to trial, and ‘not guilty verdicts’ returned for all three charges.  Ridsdale had previously said “I will be vigorously rebutting the charges” (1).  He must surely be ruing the fact that the charges were dropped, and he was denied his opportunity to have his cases heard and to be ‘completely vindicated’.

The devil’s work

For someone who has no great love of the media, Sir Alex certainly knows how to get himself in the headlines.  His latest claim is that football has sold its soul to the TV ‘devil’ (1).  Attractive though his choice of metaphor is, with the vision it generates of a BSkyB ‘evil empire’, it just doesn’t really work when his other complaints he makes are vectored in.

He complains that the broadcasters have too much power, especially with regard to their influence on fixture lists.  But isn’t that inevitable when you sell your soul to the devil?  It’s exactly that power that the ‘devil’ broadcasters have bought.  And I don’t recall that the standard ‘devil buys soul’ contract allows for renegotiation of the terms.

He complains too that the broadcasters haven’t paid enough for the rights.  That may or may not be the case, and Sir Alex is not being unreasonable in making the suggestion as it is the Premier League who ‘sold their soul’ rather than Manchester United, Sir Alex’s club.

The Premier League though do not of course distribute broadcasting rights to clubs equally, and Manchester United does rather nicely thank you compared with the weaker clubs in the league (who, to maintain competitive balance, should if anything get more than Manchester United, rather than less).

On the whole, I’m not unsympathetic to some of the points he makes, but, in his case, methinks he doth protest too much

The changing face of Premier League shirt sponsorship

The news the other week that Manchester United had secured a lucrative sponsorship deal with DHL for their training kit (1) rather caught my attention.  It wasn’t the unique (?) case of training kit being sponsored – I would expect this to be a one-off, with all new shirt sponsorship deals having a clause requiring exclusivity over all shirts.  It was the fact that a global courier service was the sponsor.  Their business is truly global, they have previously sponsored sport (2), and a Premier League club would give them global ‘reach’.  No doubt we will see UPS signing up next season – they too are already into sports sponsorship (3).  They actually offer a handy application form on their website – commercial managers of football clubs get typing!

The news that QPR have finally signed up not one but two shirt sponsors (home/away kits) (4) allowed me to complete this season’s entries into my Premier League shirt sponsorship database.  More on this in a second, but I must warn you that the official QPR website has followed the Times in charging for content other tasters – a distinctly retrograde step and hardly fan-friendly.  Do these clubs need ‘naming and shaming’?

Two initial views of the data show some interesting trends.  First, some data on the country of the sponsor.  The graph is a tad grainy as presented I fear, but clicking on any of the images will open it up to a rather more legible size (I kept them small on the posting itself so as not to slow downloading).

Very broadly there seem to be three periods  apparent: from the start of the Premier League a steady-state period to roughly to the end of 1997/98, with sponsors falling roughly equally into the UK and foreign categories; a period from then until 2006/07, when foreign sponsors started to turn away, before starting to return; and the most recent period, showing a return to a roughly equal split.  I would have to admit that I can’t see a simple obvious reason for this trough of foreign sponsorship in the middle period.  Do any readers have any thoughts on this?

While the Premier League began with almost half the clubs sponsored by locally-based companies, there has been a slow but steady decay.  This I would simply attribute to the rising cost of shirt sponsorship, with foreign-based multinationals better placed to pay higher fees than the likes of, for example, the splendidly named Reg Vardy Motors, sponsors of Sunderland roughly a decade ago, and now part of Evans Halshaw.

It shouldn’t be assumed that ‘local’ necessarily means a UK company.  For example, Peugeot sponsored Coventry City for their first five years in the Premier League – the Peugeot 206 was at that time built at their Coventry site.

Secondly, data on the sponsor’s sector.

The graph shows the four most frequently occurring sectors over the two decades.  Financial services are just the largest grouping at 13.5%, closely followed by breweries at 12.8%, although, if the breweries are combined with the occasional sponsorship by spirits and cider manufacturers, alcohol manufacturers, with a combined total of 13.8%, slip into top spot.

It’s clear that financial services have grown steadily as sponsors over two decades, but gambling, the Johnny Come-Latelys of PL shirt sponsorship, is very much in the ascendancy.  Together the two sectors now sponsor 13 of the 20 clubs.  The early days of the Premier League saw a much greater diversification among shirt sponsors.

Finally a look at the Top 4 v. the rest of the Premier League clubs.  One would expect the clubs which have pretensions of being global brands to attract global sponsors, and this is indeed the case.

By playing more televised matches, especially when qualifying for the Champions league, the Big 4 have consistently attracted more foreign sponsors than the other clubs, generally two to three times more.  By being able to play a global market in attracting sponsors, they have been able to push their sponsorship charges up, and so increase their financial muscle.  There is thus a double effect of reinforcing their dominant position, by greater TV revenues and by greater sponsorship revenues.  Whatever happened to competitive balance?

Some rather late and ineffective justice for Luton fans

There was some small crumb of comfort for Luton fans in the news that four of the directors of the previous owners of the club had been banned from being company directors (1) (and hence now fail the Fit and Proper Person Test).  Former chairman Bill Tomlins was disqualified for six years; Derek Robert Peter, the former CEO and a chartered accountant was disqualified for seven years, and Richard Sidney Bagehot and John Mitchell were each disqualified for three years.

The official statement from the Insolvency Service (2) who investigated Luton Town, or more exactly the old company, Luton Town Football Club Limited (“LTFC”) – which is not in any way connected with present owners Luton 2020 – makes clear the scale of what had been going on under the club’s previous owners:

The investigation by The Insolvency Service found that the directors of LTFC had breached Football Association (FA) and FIFA rules and caused LFTC to trade at the risk and detriment of HM Revenue and Customs (“HMRC”), being in arrears with PAYE and NIC within a few months of commencing to trade and recently not declaring or paying its VAT liability.

Between July 2004 and February 2007 LTFC acted in breach of FA and FIFA rules and regulations on payments to football agents. The FA enquiry found that the company had dealt with unlicensed football agents and made payments totalling £157,000 through its holding company Jayten Stadium Limited (‘JSL’) using funds provided by LTFC which should have been paid by LTFC itself and routed through the FA.

During the same period of July 2004 and February 2007 the directors individually either caused or allowed the company to trade at the risk of and ultimate detriment to HMRC which was owed £3,578,661. The Court heard there was a pattern of non-payment and chasing from HMRC.

Why I say “small” crumb of comfort is for two reasons.  First, the club has had to suffer as a football club for the misdemeanours of these previous owners (see previous posting where I wrote of Luton’s ‘unfair disadvantage’) in terms of points deductions and the resultant relegation to the Conference.  Seeing four people just banned from being company directors hardly results in an overall balance of justice being seen to be done.

Secondly, the perceived lack of balance in justice is exacerbated by the fact that these goings-on came to light as a result of whistle blowing from within the club, which should have in part mitigated the punishments handed out to the club.

The success in bringing about these bans must give HMRC a good feeling for their ongoing fights with football clubs.  These currently include the major fight North of the border against Rangers (a blog worth a look at on this is Rangers Tax Case as is The Scotsman), their attempt to have the Football Creditors Rule thrown out by challenging the leagues in court rather than taking action against individual clubs, and the ongoing cases against Harry Redknapp, Milan Mandric and Peter Storrie.  Some interesting reading coming up there’s no doubt, and the various court rulings may have significant implications for all clubs.

Banning Orders

The banning of a fan, whether by a club or by a court, is a contentious issue.  SjMaskell has an interesting and thought-provoking posting up on just how easy it could be to find yourself banned under Section 14 (B) of the Football (Disorder) Act, without ever being charged, let alone convicted.  I wonder how often that is used in comparison to bannings under Section 14 (A) – those which follow from a conviction.  I wonder too how many fans realise they can be banned without ever having been convicted of an offence.

Banning is not a topic that I have frequently blogged on.  In fact the only previous occasion was when I compared the Crawley Town lifetime ban, imposed on an idiot who they claimed wasn’t one of their fans in spite of the fact that he appeared as one of their own on their official website, with the Stevenage Town fan who received a six-year ban for assaulting one of his team’s players on the pitch.  I thought at the time that, notwithstanding the fact that nothing could be said in way of mitigation of the ‘Crawley Town’ fan’s inept behaviour, a life-time ban seemed inappropriately harsh for inept but offensive behaviour, especially when compared to the act of punching a player on the pitch, and I don’t feel any differently now.

Does anyone have any data sets on banning orders?  This topic seems worthy of further research and analysis.

In the meantime, steady as you go when engaging in banter with fans you don’t know – you never whether they have ‘history’.  Should you find yourself being unfairly treated, the people to contact are the Football Supporters’ Federation, who can offer a range of advice and active support.