THE BLAME GAME

They say “history is written by winners” – ‘they’ being embittered losers, probably. And accounts of Southampton’s decline from FA Cup finalists to near-extinction have read like winners’ histories, despite the total lack of winners involved.

The Southern Daily Echo has recently told “The Untold Stories” of Saints’ fall, a series which could as accurately have been entitled “The Same Old Stories”, variants on “It wasn’t me” from directors who have led Southampton from UEFA Cup to Johnstone Paint Trophy in six years.

Even Annual Reports have been written thus. In 2006, then-Chief Executive Jim Hone wrote: “Attributing blame for the (Company’s) decline…would be of dubious value.” That didn’t stop him.

The Echo didn’t offer its own perspective, leaving Saints’ three majority shareholders to offer theirs. Rupert Lowe, Michael Wilde and Leon Crouch have been in various forms of ‘charge’, with supine backing (especially in Lowe’s case) during those six years. And they dominate the tale. Anyone “attributing blame” need look no further.

Southampton’s 2004/5 accounts warned of difficult times. Saints were relegated and although most of the resultant financial impact was still to come, the figures were grisly.

Losses were avoided thanks only to one-off profits from property sales. And despite a whopping £20m of broadcast revenue, club debt spiralled from £15.9m to £21m.

There was also the ‘Redknapp effect.’ People still say ‘Arry was never a more effective Portsmouth manager than when he was Southampton’s. And his legacy was, as per, an unsustainable wagebill.

Lowe, chairman since the mid-1990s, was, in some ways admirably, determined not to overspend Southampton’s way back. To his credit, he’d inserted ‘relegation clauses’ in most players’ contracts, shrinking Redknapp’s legacy. But despite £6.3m in ‘parachute payments’, they finished miserably mid-table in their first Championship season.

Lowe still paints pretty pictures of Saints’ finances in 2006, mostly because there was “money in the bank.” But his regime set the financial trend towards administration. Losses were £3.3m, the debt increased again and - “winners’ history” or no – you couldn’t dispute Hone’s view that finances were “unacceptable and unsustainable.”

Without significant investment, Saints’ Football League future would stretch far beyond parachute payments. This investment was promised by Wilde – though he now denies making specific claims. He became Saints largest individual shareholder and drafted a ‘Manifesto for Change’ challenging Lowe’s leadership.

Rather than be ousted at an EGM, Lowe and his cronies resigned en masse – displaying a unity of purpose which might have served Saints well if better directed.

The ‘manifesto’ was a jargon-heavy statement of the obvious, e.g.: “the need for a ‘football first’ philosophy to prevail.” Even Lowe had to ask “Can you imagine a club where football didn’t come first?” (though critics imagined Lowe’s Southampton as just such a club).  Lowe also criticised the manifesto’s “omission of firm financial commitments.” Few listened. But they should have.

Inheriting England’s Rugby World Cup-winner Clive Woodward as “performance director” seemed ideal for Wilde’s regime. But, like most of Lowe’s football appointments, Woodward was hopeless. A Championship club was no place to experiment - a mistake Lowe repeated.

Wilde’s board immediately spent what he now admits was “money we didn’t have,” backing new manager George Burley, himself fresh from financial basket-case Heart of Midlothian.

Burley mounted a promotion challenge. But with new investment still hypothetical, Wilde told Saints November AGM of “on-going negotiations” with parties whose names he cannot divulge” and “long-term refinancing”, which jarred with admissions that failure to win very short-term promotion would produce “substantial” reductions in income, meaning “It would be prudent to plan accordingly.

The board split on this issue, between its full-time paid ‘executives’ and ordinary ‘non-executives’ such as Wilde. And although all were elected at that AGM, there were only 22,000 shareholder votes against the executives and…two million against Wilde.

Within three months, and without any investment in sight, Wilde resigned, a club statement noting tersely that “the lack of new investment is the only reason behind his resignation and the board’s willingness to accept it.@

Wilde now says that he regrets not becoming an executive himself and all-but-says he was “only obeying orders.” How this change of status would have produced any new money (beyond a salary for Wilde himself) wasn’t clarified.

In September 2006, Hone warned that Saints finances were dependent on “faith” in investment assurances and “hope” of promotion. They got neither.

The executives took charge of the begging bowl and the summer was dotted with local and national press reports of potential investors. Reported interest from Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen merely produced a boost to Saints share price. Reported interest from various other sources, mostly cinema owners at one stage, didn’t even produce that.

But in early autumn, hedge-fund SISU Capital Limited had emerged. Fronted by footballer-turned-high-financier Ray Ranson, SISU had expressed interests in any number of clubs before alighting on Southampton. But their promise of £10m investment in return for 55% control was a good one – considering it was the only one.

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GREEN’S DAY

I listened to and read about Chelsea/Barcelona before I saw it. And I wasn’t surprised when what I saw wasn’t what I’d been led to expect, especially from what I’d read.

Radio’s Alan Green berates continental European referees so regularly that he’s long-lost any impact (which those who defend him for his ‘honesty’ often overlook). So his diatribes against Tom Henning Ovebro at Chelsea were meaningless. Immediately after Barca’s equaliser, though, he was much more resonant: “Chelsea will rue those two penalties now.

By the time the Mirror hit the news-stands, there’d been five penalties and a Uefa conspiracy. Fortunately, for those in need of perspective, other issues competed for headlines, notably Drogba’s post-match ranting, which had everything but the sex; action, “bad language from the start”- as per TV warnings – those white, wide-eyes &, for comic relief, those flip-flops.

Technically, Ovebro’s worst decision was Abidal’s sending-off, although the defender might have gone earlier for pulling Drogba’s shirt had Drogba not been shouting “wolf!” as he fell. But despite the best efforts of such as 606’s Issy Clarke, playing devil’s advocate to insufferable Blue Tim “Barcelona aren’t all that” Lovejoy, this was lost in the storm.

It had a chilling effect on conspiracy theories, thankfully. Not everyone would be stupid enough – not even every Chelsea fan – to believe a conspiracy to prevent an all-Premier League Champions League final would involve sending-off Barcelona’s remaining credible defender, with them one-down after 65 minutes. If Barca could be trusted to reach the final from there, they deserved to.

Nonetheless, the theory seeped through. Leeds defeat to Milan and the ref in the 1973 Cup Winners’ Cup Final has been exhumed, thanks to a vote-desperate local MEP (though I’d argue Leeds were just as sawn-off in the Champions’ Cup Final in 1975). And an all-English Uefa Cup final (Spurs v Forest) went west in 1984, thanks to pro-Anderlecht influences on the referee, admitted years later.

But the ‘dodgy foreign ref’ was more-often cited. A ten-year-old interviewed on the BBC’s ‘Newsround’ showed admirable football awareness in bemoaning a Norwegian ref’s lack of domestic big-match experience. But this was only admirable for a ten-year-old, not Jamie Redknapp, well-paid by Sky TV to know better. And where did John Terry get the idea that Ovebro had only ‘done’ ten Champions’ League games (he’s ‘done’ 22)?

We’ve progressed little from a recent World Cup when an Egyptian referee was similarly-berated for ‘lack of big-match experience’ having refereed a number of Al-Ahly/Zamalek ‘Cairo derbies’ – imagine an SPL-title-decider in front of twice the crowd, with twice the historical enmity…and keep going.

Much, too, was made of Ovebro’s Euro 2008 mistakes, bizarrely including a linesman’s error (albeit the same error which saw Graham Poll depart Japan/Korea 2002 early). Yet they weren’t even the worst mistakes of the tournament by a bald ref, as those who witnessed a chap called Webb ‘handling’ Austria v. Poland could testify.

Still…five penalties!! Well… “Pique: It was a penalty” screamed one headline. Pique said: “The ball touched my hand but it wasn’t deliberate”, which suggested “Pique: It wasn’t a penalty” might have been a touch more suitable (though admittedly, Pique ‘would say that, wouldn’t he?).

Daniel Alves’ foul on Florent Malouda was just outside the box…the six-yard one. So that was a penalty, unless Alves dives when he’s fouling too. Ovebro clearly shaped to make a decision before the pertinent foul but should have taken that extra second – perhaps blowing his whistle a bit longer – to toss a proverbial coin in his head between free-kick and penalty. We’d have waited. No-one was going anywhere.

Samuel Eto’o’s late block was only handball in the mad, staring eyes of Michael Ballack – who, had he shown similar determination to close down Andres Iniesta, might have obviated the need for articles such as this. Redknapp was convinced too, naturally. But by then he was displaying all the perspective and restraint of his Dad in a transfer window.

Thankfully, we were spared 1,000+ Martin Samuel words blaming Platini. Instead, the Mail reprinted Samuel’s words before Chelsea’s last-16 tie against Juventus. Platini, an ex-Juventus Champions Cup-winner, said he’d “love to give the trophy to Juventus” which apparently put mind-altering pressure on the tie’s referee.

Ovebro’s performance “gives the issues renewed relevance”, which was the paper’s way of accusing Ovebro and Uefa of cheating, without having the balls, evidence or, I suspect, legal team, to do so openly.

(Samuel, to his immense credit, made only dismissive references to “wild conspiracy theories” & his conclusion on events, “the better team is going to Rome but the best team lost” is, currently, unsurpassed).

Chelsea should have had two penalties, either of which would have put them two-up if converted, meaning they would very probably have won. And Barcelona’s coming from behind - referee-assisted or no – with ten men for 25 minutes was the stuff of champions, although with the defenders available for Rome, they won’t be this year (had Chelsea done likewise in a Nou Camp second leg, that would surely have been the line).

That was pretty much Alan Green’s take, even in the intense heat of the moment. And if Green offers truer perspective than great swathes of the media, great swathes of the media need to take a long, hard look at themselves.

FUN AND FROLICS IN THE FOOTBALL LEAGUE. AGAIN.

The summer’s big question, or possibly just May’s, might be “which club will go bust first?” A company called ‘Cash-strapped’ appear to be sponsoring about half the clubs in the Football League. And precious little money will be arriving in the close season – which means gate receipts are only marginally down at Darlington.

Yet the League has decided to re-distribute Premier League-bound Birmingham’s second-year parachute payment, £11.5m, among Championship clubs (all of it), Division One clubs (none of it) and League Two clubs (the rest). £155,555.55 to each club would solve a lot of problems. But that would be doing the right thing, betraying knowledge of what ‘league’ is supposed to mean.

Darlington appear in direst need. A charity fund-raising match to pay staff over the summer raised nothing like enough - most non-playing staff lost their jobs three days later. Meanwhile, the list of potential bidders is headed by HG Wells’s Invisible Man, with his twin brother the only other interested party.

Former chairman George Houghton still owns the ground and won’t let go, throwing numerous spanners in the administrators’ works, as no serious bidder would want him around. The much-maligned administrators themselves had something of a Gordon Brown week, culminating in a badly-drafted statement which (mis)led to a newspaper headline “Quakers get the boot” (itself widely-criticised for bad taste). And while everyone plays a protracted game of ‘he said, she said’ Darlington FC is dying.

Darlington was on the edge of a web of intrigue woven by Bournemouth and Chester, who were fighting over owners and League Two’s final relegation spot, until Bournemouth strode clear towards the end (for which 31-year-old Eddie Howe should be manager-of-the-year).

Lifelong Chester fan Paul Baker still controls Bournemouth, so had to watch as his club were relegated by…er…his club. He’d agreed to sell to, naturally, “a conzzzortium of local businessmen”, headed by local good-egg Adam Murry but backed by local bad-egg Jeff Mostyn, whose broken investment promises immediately pre-dated Baker’s.

It seemed Baker would be freed to take Chester off Stephen Vaughan’s hands, allowing Vaughan to, reportedly, takeover…Darlington. But Murry’s conzzzortium were annoyingly ‘due’ with their ‘diligence’ and continually unearthed financial skeletons, winding-up orders mostly. Ergo, all deals were off.

Baker and Alastair Saverimutto were the clowns who bought Bournemouth last summer, which begs the question what sort of clowns the unsuccessful bidders were. Up-for-sale Southampton may find out.

One of two bids for them is backed by ‘God’, aka Matt Le Tissier, whose precise involvement is unclear but whose name could sell ANYthing to Saints’ fans. The other is a “conzzzortium of…guess what” apparently involving Marc Jackson, one of the afore-mentioned Bournemouth undesirables.

Jackson was derided by Bournemouth fans as a Southampton fan, which should be a plus this time. But having reportedly ‘worked’ at Southampton recently, he is “known to” Rupert Lowe, the root of all Saints’ evil, which is enough to strike fear into Southampton hearts.

Every press report – local or national – of potential Saints bidders has either highlighted links with Lowe, however tenuous, or reassured readers that there are none. Lowe remains just one of many Saints ex-directors responsible for their current plight. But fans fear his return to the point of paranoia.

Meanwhile, despite being run by a supporters trust, a recommended rescue-package model elsewhere, Stockport are a late entrant in the race for extinction, proving that the right system still needs the right people, however financially transparent it is.

Culture Secretary Andy Burnham has called for redistribution of the ‘big four’s’ Champions League wealth, believing the gaps within the Premier League more damaging to ‘English’ football than the canyon between Premier League and Football League. Fans, from north-east to south coast, may beg to differ.

‘MotorMurph’ is written by Mark Murphy.

ALL-PARTY POOPERS

Despite the bluster and, at least, two other words beginning with ‘b’ from Martin Samuel, the All-Party Parliamentary Football Group produced an inoffensive little document, distinctive only as an example of politicians keeping a promise.

Launching the inquiry last April, chair Alan Keen said it would “provide a platform for those who care about football to contribute their views in open debate…(inviting) a limited number of speakers to make presentations” while “anyone wanting to prepare a written submission” could do so. And while the report was promised for last autumn (they’re politicians, they can’t be totally honest, apparently), that is exactly what they’ve done.

Apart from surprisingly strident support for “Blatter’s 6+5 proposal” to, according to Samuel, destroy the Premier League by making half its players English, the report is hardly radical. Likewise the Premier League’s arrogant dismissal of it (though they rightly noted that “6+5” wasn’t within the group’s initial remit, upon which they’d based their written submission).

The APFG have called for beefing-up of the Football Regulatory Authority, “Fit-and-Proper-Persons” regulations and the FA’s and Premier League’s corporate structures, in line with the current fad for non-executive directors. Plus elected supporter representation on clubs’ governing bodies.

Much of this was in the APFG’s 2004 report on English football’s finances. The most fervent recommendation has, possibly thankfully, garnered less media attention: “The FA should regain its role as the governing body, single voice and overall regulator…the two main professional leagues should simply liaise with the FA as governing body.@

The Group felt this recommendation necessary in the light of the Premier League’s written and oral submissions to the inquiry. The written submission echoed Chief Executive Richard Scudamore’s mantra on “complex tripartite arrangements” between the FA and the leagues – a man trying to avoid the obvious, that the Premier League, however, rich and famous, is constitutionally, just another league.

The need for the FA to re-assert its role is clear even from their own submission, where they talk of “the significant proportion of work centralised through the FA” without once referring to their governing status.

The need is even clearer from the Premier League submission, especially on the issues of club ownership.

Their “fit-and-proper-persons” regulations are lauded as going further than general company legislation on directorships, which highlights the weakness of general company legislation and ignores the complete lack of restrictions on ownership in their regulations.

And the section on club ownership simply deals with the issue of dual ownership of clubs, merely noting that “there is no prohibition on foreign ownership of English private or public companies”, which, as they surely know, isn’t the point at all. This is another echo of Scudamore, responding vigorously to criticisms which aren’t being made so as to avoid the real issue.

Sadly, the APFG didn’t pressurise Scudamore sufficiently when he came among them in December. Newspapers had, somehow, got wind of what Scudamore was going to say to the inquiry panel, a move designed to dictate the course of his cross-examination. It worked.

It has been a ‘blood-out-of-stone’ process even to get a poorly-regulated Premier League, let alone a properly-regulated one. So it is down to groups such as the APFG to keep plugging and picking away.

Their report is a part of that process, albeit an inoffensive little one. It’s a dirty job that someone has to do. And that someone won’t be the arrogant, megalomaniac Premier League.

THE TIMES THEY HAVE-A-CHANGED

There are parallels between my club Kingstonian, about whom I bored you recently, and Ipswich Town; fifth in their respective top-flights in 2000, relegated and in administration within 18 months. And with Ks embarking on their return journey, Ipswich have made the move which suggests they’ll follow suit, under the ownership of reclusive “secondary marketer” Marcus Evans, who reportedly ‘recluses’ in Kingston-upon-Thames.

(Ipswich’s last FA Amateur Cup game, before turning professional in 1936, was a 4-2 defeat at Kingstonian. Fascinating, eh? No??).

Evans’ anonymity is guarded with chilling efficiency. He could have crossed the road to avoid me on my occasional trips to Kingston Hill’s ‘millionaires’ row’ (where he has Jimmy Tarbuck for a neighbour, lucky man) and I wouldn’t have known.

The very old school Cobbold family, who guided Ipswich through its glory decades of the 60s, 70s & 80s, were largely to be found in the background but were Madonna-esque exhibitionists compared to Evans.

Under the Cobbolds, Ipswich twice gave their successful manager to the nation – Alf Ramsey leading them to the 1962 title, Bobby Robson all but leading them to the 1981 title. The Big Match Revisited recently featured the Frank Worthington wonder-goal (those of a certain age need no further explanation) but Ipswich won the game.

And so big were Ipswich that they provided an inordinate number of players for the “”””classic”””” 1981 film Escape to Victory – John Wark, Russell Osman (his character joyously named ‘Doug Clure’),  Robin Turner (one for the completists) and others denied a best-supporting actor Oscar by some ham called Gielgud.

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A NASTIER PIECE OF WORK

Apparently, the Premier League is perfect. And if you think not, you’re either envious or French. Or both.

The Mail’s Martin Samuel, looking and sounding more like ageing right-wing hack Garry Bushell with every by-line, didn’t quite include ‘sexual deviant’ on that little list when, on April 20, he purported to write about the All-Party Parliamentary Group’s (APFG) latest report, English Football and its Governance. But the suggestion was clear. If you thought there was something wrong with the Premier League, there was something wrong with you.

Naturally, a man with Samuel’s journalistic integrity would neither condone, nor collude in, such actions - but the idea of using ‘friendly’ journalists to write the right thing at the right time is as old as journalism itself, and not something the Premier League has ever fought shy of, it has been scurrilously suggested.

The adjacency of independent FA Chairman Lord Triesman’s criticisms of Premier League debt and anti-Triesman stories appearing in various newspapers (prop: R. Murdoch, mostly) gave birth to ‘Tries Watch’ in this column, for which material has rarely been lacking. And with the smart money being on the APFG concurring with Triesman, it was clearly time for some ‘friendly’ journalism.

Pity, then, that Samuel is no good at it. Apart from direct references to long-dead Trot tendencies, the carefully-placed anti-Triesman stories weren’t instantly recognisable as such. Articles about the FA’s spat with their Jamaican counterparts had genuine news merit until you realised that a) it pre-dated Triesman’s tenure and b) he helped to solve the dispute.

Samuel’s article had no such journalistic merit, errant nonsense from paragraph one, which had the APFG destroying the Champions League success of Premier League (“English”) clubs and England’s currently impressive World Cup qualifying campaign. By paragraph two, they were “self-appointed (with) no standing” (“other than with gullible journalists”, he adds, presumably including Mail colleague Charles Sale, who was interviewed for, and quoted favourably in, the report).

And some of Samuel’s fellow-journalists feel he has gone too far with the centrepiece of the article, a detailed run-through of perceived character flaws of some senior group members.

Chairman Alan Keen may not “claim the highest expenses in parliament” – a hot current topic, included to stoke readers’ ire - but his wife Ann does. Sheffield Attercliffe MP Clive Betts attempted to “alter an immigration official’s letter” to help his “Brazilian rent-boy escort” – foreign and gay, a double whammy for Mail readers (those of you wondering if this is the same six-year-old story disinterred in the Times by Samuel in May 2007 when Betts spoke out in favour of Sheffield United over the ‘Tevez saga’…it is).

And others not only voted for the Iraq war, and against subsequent investigation of it, but did so “very strongly” – stomping into the ‘aye’ lobby, one assumes.

It isn’t immediately obvious how this all impacts on their judgment of English football’s governance. But critics, such as the Mirror’s Oliver Holt, do Samuel a disservice by presenting it as ring-fenced character assassination.

Samuel is making the point that the Keen’s overspending, Betts’ assistance to an immigrant and others’ reluctance to have their motivations scrutinised is hypocrisy. And he has exposed hypocrisy rather well. Too well, in fact.

He wants the Keens’ ‘abuse’ of taxpayers’ money outlawed. He wants stricter controls on ‘abuse’ of immigration policy. He wants MPs who voted for the Iraq war to have to demonstrate that they did so for legitimate reasons which were in the country’s best interests.

Or, put another way, exactly the sort of regulation, scrutiny and governance many people in, and interested in, football have long wanted in football, the latest such group being…the All-Party Parliamentary Football Group and their latest report English Football and its Governance. Samuel has exposed hypocrisy, alright. His.

Maybe, though, my sense of irony has let me down again. That’s the kindest excuse I can muster for some of Samuel’s more left-field (or should that be more far-right-field?) observations.

He ridicules the very concept of All-Party Parliamentary Groups: “these cosy little clubs in Westminster, discussing everything from Zimbabwe to dementia and jazz appreciation.” Indeed, jazz appreciation struck me as ‘for Kenneth Clarke only’ and one hopes that minimal parliamentary time and taxpayers’ money is directed towards it. But Zimbabwe?

Maybe Samuel was looking for some sort of A-to-Z of All-Party groups, in which case including something beginning with ‘A’ might have helped (such as the fascinating-sounding ‘Adventure in Society’ group). Unless Samuel regards the economic basket-case of Africa as somehow trivial. I’ll make no comment on the political view at which that hints.

It wouldn’t be a Samuel article without another dig at Michel Platini, “the politician’s friend” (and I say that fully realising this is “another dig” at Samuel). It is UEFA’s, and therefore Platini’s, Champions League that causes the damaging imbalance in English football (the “three teams in the Champions League semi-finals for the third year in succession” imbalance with which Samuel proudly begins his article), not the Premier League’s 1992 breakaway from the rest of English football in order to keep all the big money.

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IT’S A LONG WAY DOWN TO THE TOP

Please indulge me. My team has just won promotion. And if a football columnist can’t write about his own team in his own column at a time like this, what perks are there? After all, David Conn shoe-horned a Manchester City piece into this Friday’s Guardian. And City only managed a plucky UEFA Cup defeat.

Kingstonian, of Ryman (Isthmian) League Division One South (stirs the soul, doesn’t it?) were top of the Conference in November 1999 and doing league doubles over Doncaster Rovers in 2001, which, wouldn’t you know it, was when their troubles really started.

Consecutive Wembley FA Trophy wins in 1999 and 2000, plus two top-eight Conference finishes gave Ks Football League ideas above their station…and their budget. A combination of astronomical player-wages and misguided overspends on unsuccessful ground improvements placed Ks in administration in October 2001, six MONTHS after a Sky-televised fourth round replay against Bristol City had pushed FA Cup run proceeds past £330,000.

Chief Executive Chris Kelly was a non-league personality worthy of the fame as a player (‘The Leatherhead Lip’). As an executive, he was hopeless. Manager Geoff Chapple was among the best outside the football league – FIVE FA Trophy wins in all and countless promotions. As a wage negotiator, he was among the worst. Most of the directors, even the one called Kingston, were as hapless as they were faceless. And, until this very weekend, Ks have been paying the price.

In April 2002, administrators Begbies Traynor sold the lease to Kingsmeadow, Ks council-owned home ground since 1989, in order to pay creditors including a very dischuffed Barclays Bank. This separated the club and ground in the now time-honoured fashion which, in equally time-honoured fashion, proved disastrous for the club.

The new leaseholders, the Khosla family from Goa led by the never-knowingly-charismatic father Rajesh, were disinterested in and ignorant of football in equal measure. A lucrative groundshare arrangement with the newly-emergent AFC Wimbledon benefited Ks not one penny.

And the Khoslas hit pay-dirt when Wimbledon, in a curious nod to their own raison d’etre, bought Kingsmeadow for five times what the Khoslas had paid a year earlier, and reduced Ks to sub-tenants in what had been their ‘home.’

With the Khoslas desperate to sell, Wimbledon couldn’t have been better purchasers for Ks. But few Ks fans saw it that way and many still don’t, casually calling Wimbledon ‘Franchise’ (Wimbledon fans ‘pet’ name for Milton Keynes Dons) and ‘Squatters’ (factually hopeless and steeped in irony when voiced by ‘Woolwich’ Arsenal fans). Even David Conn, in his book The Beautiful Game?’, acknowledged Wimbledon’s dispossession of Ks as “a jarring note.”

Wimbledon too won promotion this weekend but my attempts to celebrate a successful win-double for the “Kingsmeadow football family” were met with widespread derision.

Encouraged by the Dons’ Trust’s role in forming AFC Wimbledon, the Ks Trust was set up to take over from the Khoslas, who were losing money on the club. However, the Trust’s institutional financial transparency sat uneasily with them and their seeming allergy to declaring VAT and publishing accounts on time. And the Trust’s chairman (yours truly) simply didn’t trust them.

So the Trust failed and under the Khoslas’ continued disinterest and ignorance, Ks dropped two levels in non-league football’s pyramid, to their lowest level since their formative years. Eventually the Khoslas’ financial policies came under increased scrutiny via a series of leaks to the local press (modesty forbids me revealing the source) and the Ryman League itself added its decisive weight to the pressure on them to sell.

Local flower-seller Jimmy Cochrane finally took the club off their hands. And after three of the most inglorious years in charge of a football club, Rajesh Khosla claimed in the press that Ks were in a better position than when he took them over. No-one has yet been able to quote from this story without laughing.

Since then, it’s been a case of slowing the slide and beginning to turn things around. In 2006, Ian MacDonald became the third assistant manager in three years to take over the top job. His team mounted a credible, if narrowly unsuccessful, promotion challenge and beat Wimbledon to win the County Cup – Ks first trophy since Wembley, when MacDonald himself had been coach.

But financial control had been lacking and despite MacDonald’s genuine ability and popularity, he was denied the opportunity to work with a slashed budget. Stuart McIntyre became the fourth assistant manager in four years to take etc… But the pressures of the job turned him into a dour Scot with a team to match. Enter Alan Dowson.

Dowson’s north-eastern accent is as impenetrable as the faster-talkers on ‘The Wire’, unsoftened (one assumes) by years in the soft south, at Millwall and player and manager at Ks Surrey rivals Walton and Hersham, leading them to the Ryman Premier Division on promotion in 2005. In January 2007, Dowson was tasked with repeating the trick at Ks. He has.

Walton fans warned us that their promotion had been built on eighteen 1-0 wins, with Dowson’s career as a defender exerting the dominant influence on his management. When Ks beat Walton 1-0 recently, kick-starting the promotion-clinching winning run, their fans had an “I told you so” look about them. But that overlooked Ks being the division’s top scorers and the four and five goal hauls dotted all over Ks record since Dowson arrived.

Dowson has had good people behind him. Assistant Mark Hams could step up to the managerial job like so many Ks assistants before him with his authentic (comprehensible) South London accent and sense and honesty to burn (“Did you think Leatherhead should have had a penalty?” “Yes, I did.”). And coach Martin Tyler’s measured analysis suggests a media career could have been his for the taking – except for one frightening rant at a hapless fourth official at Ashford which, had there been a strategically-placed phone camera available, would still be a YouTube favourite, as it is, before you ask, that Martin Tyler.

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WHAT FANS WANT?

The biggest surprise about Darlington entering administration in February was that it was a…surprise.

Darlington have been chasing their financial tail since before they encountered local ‘businessman’ George Reynolds – living, wigged-up proof that not all publicity is good publicity.

Since 2003, Darlington have used the over-sized massage of Reynolds’ ego called the Darlington Arena for home games. And they’ve been paying for that in every conceivable way ever since.

Reynolds’ successor-but-one George Houghton (note to administrators: avoid Georges) never hid this from fans. On the contrary, he never stopped banging on about it. His 31-month chairmanship was a mix of grandiose ambitions for the ground, including a slightly-disturbing reference to a ‘Darlington Village’ – making the Quakers the ‘Chelsea of the North’, minus an Abramovich – and ever more desperate pleas for more supporters than their 3,000 average gate to turn out, or else…

Administration was the ‘or else,’ which had been more than implicit in Houghton’s various public exhortations and open letters. Phrases like “Last year I invested millions into this club to ensure you had a club” and “if we (keep) offering discounts and freebies, we won’t have a club for much longer”…and many, many more, should have provided a hint to local football followers. It didn’t.

Houghton even tried the last refuge of the scoundrel, citing Darlo’s nearest rivals Hartlepool as the example to follow: “They’re getting up to 5,000 every game. If you had 5-6,000 fans coming into Darlington, I think you would just about break even.” That didn’t work, either.

It shouldn’t have been “shockingly sudden” then for administrators to be called in to stem weekly losses of £54,000 – or, to emphasise just how much that is, almost three days pay for John Terry. But it was, with administration rumours only spreading at Darlington’s home game the night before the announcement and, of course, only spreading slowly with only 2,858 in the ground.

Worse, Darlington fans’ version of ‘rallying to the cause’ has seen falling attendances fall some more – almost plummet. Southampton fans rallied, even though it was ‘only’ their parent company in administration, and produced their biggest crowd of the season. Darlington’s first post-apocalypse gate was 2,450, the third worst of the season.

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MONEY WALKS…

One of the million laugh-out-loud moments in the film ‘This is Spinal Tap’ is their tour manager’s declaration that “Money talks…bullshit walks.” Recently, football has suggested that it’s the other way around.

If, like me, you read way too much of the football press, you’ll know that anywhere between six and sixteen Football League clubs have been under ‘imminent’ threat of administration for weeks. These stories have largely been triggered by a March 25 deadline for entering administration, which gets any points deduction out of the way this season.

Bates pioneered ‘tactical administration’ two years ago, taking the decision to put Leeds into administration and take a ten-point deduction only once they were relegated anyway. And the current suggestion has been that clubs have allowed points on the board to be as weighty a factor as (lack of) money in the bank in determining whether to take the administration ‘plunge.’

Financial laymen like myself would have thought an ability to pay bills when they fall due was the overwhelming determining factor and that administration was more a requirement than a decision for a club themselves to make. But what do we know?

So it is that only one team…and a ‘parent company’ have taken that decision, so far. League Two Darlington took their ten-point hit in February, taking themselves out of play-off contention, though with their recent history of play-off failures, it could be argued that they were just saving their fans more misery. But no club has followed their lead, despite cries from financial anguish from Bournemouth to Stockport.

Not even Southampton, at the time of writing, although the Football League’s board will have pontificated on their matter by the time of reading for some of you. Southampton’s continuing woes will probably fill another column soon and is already being spoken of as another potential “Tevez” – a new noun, exclusively for football fans’ usage, meaning “legal argument protracted beyond reason and the patience of everyone involved.”

Where Darlington accepted their fate, Southampton have, merely by applying the rules as written, so far avoided theirs. For some months, the local Echo newspaper has published regular articles explaining the administration process, usually without warning or obvious context other than a way of preparing fans for the worst.

And when March 25 passed without news, they seemed surprised. They certainly hadn’t warned, or been warned, of what transpired, faithfully referring to the ‘club’ entering administration, which is precisely what hasn’t transpired.

The rules Southampton have bent-double aren’t flexible enough to deal with modern football’s business complexities. There was no meaningful clamour for West Ham to enter administration when their parent company, Hansa, nearly did. But although Hansa has numerous non-football interests while Southampton Leisure Holdings…doesn’t, the rules governing them do not differentiate between them.

So unless the Football League decide to invoke an ‘exceptional circumstances’ clause for them, Southampton will ‘get away with it.’ Though, if they do invoke such a clause, potential tribunal panellists shouldn’t book any hols just yet.

Reaction to Saints’ rule-bending has been predictable, as has the fact that the league table has dictated its sources. Barnsley have led the charge, their managing director, Don Rowling, losing himself in a moral maze before criticising Southampton’s “bad management” and neglecting their responsibilities to “other clubs to be run in a proper manner.”

Darlington’s rivals have also had a pop. This is their third spell in administration. And some League Two colleagues have advocated a ‘three strikes and you’re out’ policy. Not least Grimsby chairman John Fenty, whose team happen to be 22^nd in the table.

Part of Luton’s relegation-inducing 30-point deduction was attributed to their administration hat-trick. And Fenty has led calls for multiple-offenders to be offered a more direct route to non-league football: “We are deeply concerned about the number of times certain clubs have gone into administration…bigger sanctions are required for those who spend money they have not secured.”

Joining the call has been Gillingham chairman Paul Scally, who likes ‘joining calls.’ Gills fans and others may have a view on how appropriate his surname is. And Gillingham have never been far from lists of potential administratees, hence the surprise that Scally should openly state that: “If a club goes into administration, they should be automatically relegated.” This is more surprising when you discover Gillingham’s name among clubs who have called on the Professional Footballers’ Association (PFA) for help in recent months.

Fenty believes that such PFA help is “immoral.” You can understand his frustration at clubs financial recklessness when he has worked hard to manage Grimsby’s debts. But he goes overboard in accusing the PFA of “meddling in football in ways that could have a profound effect on the game” – if not on Grimsby’s league position - if certain clubs avoid administration as a result.

In such circumstances, the PFA comes into its own. It is normally only in the public eye when threatening strikes over its share of the Premier League’s TV-billions, or when Chief Executive Gordon Taylor speaks off-message and we are reminded of his exorbitant salary ‘for a Trade Union Leader.’ The agenda is the grim, one-eyed anti-Trade Unionism which disfigured the 1980s and 90s (and which cynics might feel hasn’t exactly died out under New Labour).

It’s a savage indictment of any industry for its employee representatives to be undertaking wage and salary payments, even partially and temporarily. For a cash-rich industry like football, it’s unforgivable.

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BRIAN CLOUGH WEEK

“I read the Clough biographies…they all contradicted each other.”(David Peace, author, ‘The Damned United’, May 2008).

“Johnny Giles issued proceedings but the case did not go to trial” (Guardian ‘Corrections and clarifications column, March 2009, responding to Giles’ claim: “I took legal action against the book…and won”).

“……….” (ITV ‘s March 2009 documentary ‘Clough’ on his managerial stint at Brighton and the last thirteen years of his 38-year managerial career).

Another appalling week for ITV Sport, though they’ll get away with this one. A ‘documentary’ made solely to ‘spoil’ a film that was never made. Hopefully, given the amount of ITV’s own footage available, it didn’t cost much.

With a film, a ‘documentary’ and the book which caused them flying off the bookshelves, Brian Clough has filled more sports column inches this week than anyone still alive; admittedly in a quiet pre-international week, but still some achievement.

History has been kind to him. Irish Republican leader Eamon de Valera said of his nemesis Michael Collins: “history will recall the greatness of Collins and it will be recorded at my expense.” He was right, despite forming a newspaper, The Irish Press, un-naturally devoted to his historical legacy. Clough’s family, apparently, have ITV Sport similarly to hand.

The depiction of the character ‘Brian Clough’ in David Peace’s 2006 novel ‘The Damned United’ has caused the kerfuffle. Peace’s novels (dictionary definition: “fictitious prose narratives of book length typically representing character and action with some degree of realism”) use real people, names and events. His works were based in his native-Yorkshire. And now that he lives in Tokyo, Japan’s largest city is getting the Peace treatment.

It’s a controversial, not universally-popular style, my unease not entirely dissipated by ‘The Damned United’s’ brilliance. The book is based in Brian Clough’s head (cue Old Big ‘Ead jokes), chronicling turbulent thoughts during his turbulent 44 days at Leeds United and portraying him as a foul-mouthed, neurotic alcoholic amid all his genius, hence the family’s disapproval.

As a work of fiction, it stands all tests. The Leeds experience is repetitive, but not a word, repeated or otherwise, is wasted. And it’s all in there, from the tragic early end of Clough’s playing career to the comi-tragic early end of his Leeds one. The book flits backwards and forwards, with the flashbacks in italics for the hard-of-concentration. But this rhythm isn’t disturbing (and also works in the film) and the last chapter neatly juxtaposes his entry to and exit from Leeds. But that’s all gone over the heads of even the tallest Leeds players of the era (hello, Joe Jordan).

Johnny Giles had passages he considered damaging to his reputation removed, although the irony of his claim to have won an action against the book ending up in the Guardian’s corrections column should be lost on no-one. Publishers Faber and Faber settled out-of-court. To Giles’ satisfaction but without accepting liability. Hair-stylists and RTE viewers will have an opinion on Giles’ reputation but when it comes to misleading statements on ‘The Damned United’, Giles is “in the top one”, as Clough himself would have it.

Jordan’s criticisms of the book are more thoughtful (“I never suspected he was drunk in the presence of the players and if you read the book you have to imagine that would have been inevitable”). But he still misses the point and falls into the trap of assuming the film replicates the book and misguidedly criticises it, sight unseen.

He refers to a scene in the film where Clough sets out ash-trays in the dressing-room for Leeds players and contends that only Billy Bremner and Jack Charlton smoked after matches “and Jack had left when Clough arrived at Elland Road.” The scene was set in Leeds’ dressing-room…at Derby…in 1968.

The family’s criticisms of the film are born of similar ignorance. When a beloved husband/father is so darkly portrayed, it’s going to hurt, novel or not. To take the same attitude to the film, however, is plain wrong. Clough’s widow Barbara, it transpires, only read one page of the book – though to be fair any number of pages might have made her unwilling to read on. And the family refused offers to attend film production meetings and read the script.

If they had, they’d have discovered a rom-com, with Clough and his long-time friend and assistant Peter Taylor in the Hugh Grant/Martine McCutcheon roles. Timothy Spall, who plays Taylor, doesn’t do it for me as a romantic lead – not my type, alas. But while Michael Sheen’s Clough portrayal is as affectionate as it is outstanding, it is Taylor’s film. He comes out with reputation untarnished – true to life, of course. And each time Clough and Derby chairman Sam Longson (Jim Broadbent, more brilliance) clash, there’s a shot of Taylor, cringing, knowing and fearing the tears in which it will all end.

The film is not without historical blips, which can’t be excused by compressing six years into 97 minutes. Dave Mackay is made to seem treacherous when taking over from Clough at Derby, for no good artistic or dramatic reason.

And Clough’s television joust with his Leeds predecessor Don Revie (Colm Meaney – an Irishman - Revie to a tee!) is portrayed as a knock-out victory for Revie. The real interview was a far more even contest, with Clough explaining his motivation for taking the Leeds job, an explanation otherwise absent from the film, and faithfulness to that would have added to the drama, considerably.

If Clough’s family had given it a second-thought, they’d have known they weren’t going to get ‘Apocalypse Now’ meets ‘The Lost Weekend.’ Especially not with that cast. TV-producer Don Ward, the family’s public voice on the matter, should have known. But with his own Clough book due, he’s almost duty-bound to be combative.

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A TALE OF TWO MITTYS

Some of the problems with the people’s game are some of the people in it. Two of these, Stephen Beer and Alastair Saverimutto, have recently been solved, hopefully never to be seen again. History warns us, though. In 1976, Stockport chairman Freddie Pye said: “I think these days Ken Bates has lost interest in football.

O LUCKY MAN!

Weymouth finance director Ian Winsor must feel a right charlie. The club’s financial woes will take up a future column. But they’ve been saved from extinction by their 94^th new board in recent times – a knowing Dorset Echo sub-editor headlining the story “Latest new era for Terras.” Only after the ‘Stephen Beer’ episode, however.

Beer – who promised, then withdrew, a £300,000 investment, is recovering in hospital from the ‘minor stroke’ he suffered travelling to the press conference announcing the investment-that-was-never-going-to-be. He needn’t be short of visitors, judging by the queue of people claiming he owes them money – more than the number chasing money from the Tevez farrago.

Winsor undertook ‘due diligence’ on Beer (I overuse inverted commas…but not here) and declared him fit and proper. Yet he discovered neither Beer’s colourful financial history nor his growing list of alleged-creditors.

Beer’s involvement with nearby-Torquay United two years ago prompted Torquay’s Herald Express to investigate his finances. And a combination of journalistic delving and the paper…asking its readers if they knew him, unearthed gems beyond Winsor’s reach.

His creditors include one of “the region’s largest sporting clubs” who wish to remain anonymous, perhaps out of shame. It isn’t Torquay, though. Beer paid them up by “doing the cleaning” at Torquay’s ground. It wasn’t quite doing the washing-up to pay for a meal in a restaurant – Beer runs a contract-cleaning company – but it was embarrassing and, it quickly emerged, hardly unique.

Beer’s Weymouth involvement had business acquaintances throughout Devon choking on their coffee as they recalled what Beer owed them, and told the Herald Express. Individual debts were rarely large but they totalled £20,000 and didn’t suggest Beer had £300,000 going spare to flush down a financial toilet such as Weymouth.

Beer’s hospitalisation jogged his memory too. He suddenly remembered he didn’t have £300,000 at all and was only the front man for a “group of businessmen” – none owed money by Beer, presumably. Their details were not recalled. Though if, as some allege, they only existed inside Beer’s head, this would have been difficult.

Beer added: “I never said I had that amount of my own money to spend”, though phrases such as “I saw the club was in a mess so I told them I was interested in making a substantial investment” and “I believe in this place, it is a lot of money I’ve invested” mysteriously created that impression.

Winsor suggested Beer got “cold feet” and that while he had “a bit of money…he’d heard so much bitterness through speaking to people in Weymouth that he got scared.” Those pesky people, eh?

Winsor continued digging his own hole: “I asked Beer for a letter from Abbey saying the funds were in the process of being transferred…he said he would get it…because believe me (mmm…) as I would not have got up in front of (the press conference) without it.” It is unclear what Winsor would have done if Beer had made the conference without any such letter but it would surely have been fun to watch.

Oh, and “Beer’s solicitor couldn’t do anything because he had not been acting for him for long.” There are no words…

And finally, just when you thought things couldn’t descend further into farce: “There was nothing to suggest that he did not have the money. Mind you” (wait for it) “there was nothing to suggest that he did.” It’s a wonder Winsor still has the vote, let alone his job.

Yet Winsor deserves a little sympathy. His due diligence on Beer may have lacked…well…diligence, but it fully complied with ‘Fit and Proper Persons’ regulations – a far more damning indictment of the regulations than of Winsor.

There are allegations that Beer presented a cheque to Weymouth’s bank with “spelling mistakes and correction fluid marks.” But that doesn’t tie in with claims that Beer got cold feet – it smacks more of an attempt to discredit Beer, an unnecessary exercise.

The Herald Express revealed that Beer had only recently moved out of housing association accommodation in Torquay. And in 2006, he appeared on the Jeremy Kyle Show, discussing how he was dealing with his weight problems (judging by his Weymouth publicity photos, “not very well”).

‘Fit and Proper Persons’ regulations can’t reasonably be expected to cover past living arrangements (Jeremy Kyle Show appearances are another matter). Yet Winsor should have discovered some of Beer’s problems. Torquay isn’t far.

One hopes Beer returns to full-health, but not to football. And that Winsor is more ‘diligent’ the next time a financially-stretched, contract-cleaning, daytime-TV star comes bearing gifts.

DEATH OF A SALESMAN

Three things summarise Alastair Saverimutto, erstwhile Bournemouth chief executive and co-owner. His first local newspaper interview on his appointment last July. His ‘leaving statement.’ And the fact that he could have waved the bailiffs in as he left.

Regular readers will know Saverimutto is not one to use seven words when seven-hundred will do – not all of them necessarily real. He is over-fond of jargonistic claptrap better suited to pretentious tossers from the mid-80s and tends to talk around the truth the way modern jazzmen treat melodies.

It is rare that football fans are relieved when a property developer buys into their club. But Chester City fans should be. One week, Saverimutto clears his Bournemouth desk, the next there’s Chester takeover rumours everywhere. Some Chester fans probably couldn’t bear to look.

A simple ‘ta’ and ‘ta-ta’ would have more than sufficed. The less he said, the better, given the chaos and debts he left behind. Instead, we got a vocabulary-heavy, substance-light account of his brilliance, for those of us, i.e. everyone, who missed it at the time.

“You wonder whether the club is cursed” he noted, with a trademark lack of self-awareness. “For the record, the debts have been controlled and maintained (at) £250,000” he added. A paragraph later: “For total clarity (a Saverimutto-ism usually pre-empting nothing of the sort), the £250,000 debt has notably increased.” Nothing major, just “missed payments to HMRC” and “rent and staff wages.”

Everyone else’s fault, of course. “The failure of the Baker business-sale (Paul Baker, Bournemouth co-owner) and “Adam Murry’s failed effort to buy into the club” did make his task more difficult. But luckily: “Contrary to what is reported, I managed to maintain debts at a controllable level.” Hence the arrival of the bailiffs.

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THE SEMI-UNPROFESSIONALS

In 1986, the non-league game concocted the General Motors Acceptance Corporation Premier Inter-League Cup, known as the GMAC Trophy and nicknamed the Jesus and Mary Chain Trophy.

Northern, Southern and Isthmian Premier Division clubs competed in this contemporary of the Simod (Football League Full Members) Cup and that short-lived exercise in futility, the Screen Sport Super Cup, for clubs who would have played in Europe but for the post-Heysel ban.

No-one liked them, no-one cared…about them. They all disappeared in decent haste. And the GMAC was dismissed as “proof that non-league football was equally capable of concocting spurious competitions as its professional counterpart.”

Non-league football has subsequently proved ‘equally capable’ of superfluous gimmickry, bone-headed chairmanship and financial insanity. Ebbsfleet United, Lewes, Merthyr Tydfil and Weymouth could disappear as a result.

The internet has given us ‘social interaction’ via web-sites such as ‘Bookface’ or whatever. In my day, it was called ‘talking.’ It seemed to work. Democratic football clubs seemed, mostly, to be working too, under the auspices of the Supporters Trust movement. But the internet had to blunder in.

The ‘MyFootballClub’ (MyFC) web-site searched for a club to buy in 2007, using £35 annual subscriptions from its 32,000 members; the idea of starting a club from scratch obviously too much like hard work, judging by what has happened since they alighted, then shat, upon Blue Square Premier Ebbsfleet.

Unsurprisingly, to anyone who had thought it through, the majority of registered members thought “sod this for a lark” when it came to membership renewal, leaving the operation – and with it the club itself – hundreds of thousands of pounds short of budgetary requirements, a significant black hole even in the basket-case economic context of modern football.

Even on its own terms, MyFC has been disastrous. The idea of thousands of sat-at-home internerds, possibly more into dungeons and dragons than football, picking the team ahead of a manager who saw the players train or play every day didn’t survive the remotest scrutiny.

MyFC at least had the sense not to introduce this ‘power’ at least until some members realised why they couldn’t find Ebbsfleet on the map (the team plays in Northfleet in Kent). But by then, only a few hundred were actually voting on issues…and mercifully voted to let FA Trophy-winning manager Liam Daish name the team rather than Elwood Gutworthy-wannabes in their windowless bedrooms.

Supporters Direct, who’ve spent years doing this properly, dismissed MyFC as “a one-off gimmick…(Ebbsfleet) is a real club, these are real finances and real fans. The question needs to be asked what happens if the novelty wears off?” And the answer needs to be that MyFC commits its remaining funding towards securing Ebbsfleet’s future as a normal club again…and then sods off and stays away from football forever.

Lewes’s wounds are self-inflicted. They’re bottom of the Blue Square Premier, having slashed budgets on winning promotion, with all the timing and judgement of a Monty Panesar lbw appeal.

The budget announcements put a dampener on promotion celebrations, with a post-promotion 6-0 drubbing at Hampton attributed to player protests at the cuts.

Unsurprisingly, manager Steve King and most of the squad buggered off sharpish. Lewes were managed to bottom place by Kevin Keehan – not Kevin Keegan in the flimsiest possible disguise, but almost as bad. And he only resigned last week – the club unable to afford to sack him.

Administration is their logical next step. But chairman Terry Parris wants leniency on the rules on full payment of football creditors. This rule has been much-debated – it results in well-off players receiving full payment while small businesses have to write-off all but all of their money. But it has logic, designed to prevent clubs gaining unfair advantages by offering salaries they can’t afford. Alas, its deterrent effect hasn’t permeated modern football’s thicker skulls, including Parris’s.

Fresh from his university of life-is-simple graduation ceremony, Parris told the ‘Non-League Paper’, out loud: “The best chance we have to get extra investment is to take the club into administration, but what’s the point if you have to pay creditors?”

He added: “there needs to be more allowance by the Conference to manage debt with longer-term solutions” – clean overlooking the longest-term solution of all, not mounting up debt in the first place. “Wiping-off debt has lots of advantages” he concluded, correctly. “Foxtrot Oscar” the Conference responded, correctly.

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