Yes, yes, it's written by Martin Samuel - but put your prejudices aside and actually read this...
Northern shock at Newcastle strikes fear into Mike Ashley
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/martin_samuel/article4769431.ece
Martin Samuel
Sir Bobby Robson was given his first manager's job at Fulham in January 1968, and was sacked nine months later. He found out about it by reading the back page of the Evening Standard at a Putney station. Robson recalls that later he looked around the ground from the centre circle at Craven Cottage, with tears in his eyes, and vowed this would never happen again. Nine years later, the director Robson believed was responsible, Sir Eric Miller, a property developer and Labour Party supporter, knighted in departing Prime Minister Harold Wilson's infamous Lavender List, committed suicide while under investigation for fraud, with four writs seeking restitution of funds. “So that shows how well he reacted to pressure,” Robson said, in a rare moment of iciness.
There should be no surprise, then, that the battle to oust Mike Ashley from Newcastle United should be over almost before it begun, because the difference between those who play the game and those who own it is that nothing in life will prepare a person for having a crowd of 50,000 or more on the march against him, unless he has walked out at Old Trafford in a Chelsea shirt, or missed an open goal in front of a full house at Wembley.
In similar circumstances, Dennis Wise, Newcastle's executive director (football) and the other bogeyman in this tale, would probably not have sold. Wise did not seek confrontation by turning up at St James' Park on Saturday, but he would not have issued a statement the next day, as Ashley did, as good as admitting that the protesters had won and he would sell Newcastle to the first serious bidder.
It is Ashley who has blinked in the face of the taunts. As a friend of the owner, Wise could have resolved Ashley's difficulty by offering his resignation when it became clear his relationship with Kevin Keegan, the manager, was unworkable. He did not. That is not his style. He will have known how poorly his appointment would be received from the start; as it was at Leeds United, another stronghold of northern parochialism. He did not care then, he does not care now. Ashley does, because he has never experienced anything like this and is shaken to the core.
Ashley, it was said, was used to confrontation and bad publicity: but not on this scale. He sold the City a pup with the flotation of his company, Sports Direct, one of the most overpriced share issues since the dot-com bubble burst, and remains a hugely divisive presence, frequently dismissing the predictions of experts and calling Philip Dorgan, a critical analyst at Panmure Gordon, a corporate and institutional stockbroker and investment bank, a “moron”.
The thing with Panmure Gordon, though, is that when it takes umbrage, Tony Caplin, the chairman, does not lead an angry mob of brokers, bankers and asset managers through the streets, brandishing placards. Ashley has never felt the need to go into hiding because the City is angry with him. “Mike, I'd keep a low profile this afternoon, mate, I've been on the Panmure Gordon message boards and there are some wealth management advisers that are pretty hacked off, I'm telling you.”
So these guys come into football club ownership, having been huge successes in the business world, thinking their financial smarts will be just as effective when applied to a Premier League club. Ashley clearly thought there would be 50,000 people chanting his name and, at first, he was right. What owners are never prepared for is the flip side of that coin, which is, when things go wrong, 50,000 people telling you to sling your hook. David Pleat summed it up best. “If they chant 'Sack the manager', they think about sacking the manager,” he said. “If they chant 'Sack the board', they definitely sack the manager.”
The best example of this boardroom bravery is Kevin McCabe, chairman of Sheffield United plc, who sacked Bryan Robson in February after a furious demonstration by supporters. “I am disappointed that in some respects the fans could not be more patient because I know more than anyone the tremendous effort Bryan Robson was putting in behind the scenes on our youth development as well as with the first team,” McCabe said. “Sometimes, if they only sit and think, the people they abuse are the people that are doing their best.”
And yet, despite this, McCabe fired Robson. He knew - more than anyone, he said - that he was doing a good job, but the supporters had spoken and McCabe's unease was all-conquering. What a stroke of luck that no vocal protesters follow the property development game, then, or the Scarborough Group of which McCabe is also chairman might be run in an equally lily-livered fashion. Whether Robson was doing a good job or not - and he seemed to have foul luck with injuries, not least to James Beattie, the star striker - is almost irrelevant. McCabe believed he was making progress, so why sack him? It hardly bodes well for Kevin Blackwell, Robson's successor. Presumably, if supporters shout loudly enough he will get his P45, too; and then the next manager and the manager after that.
There are exceptions. The Glazer family suffered unprecedented vitriol and rejection when they bought Manchester United, but rode it by putting 41.1 million square miles of water between themselves and the problem, and absolutely refusing to engage in debate. No self-serving PR stunts, either, just quiet support for the manager and the odd, low-key appearance at Old Trafford. The fortunes of the team turned around, too, and this is something many of the new generation of owners do not appear to understand. If the team do well, you will be liked; if they do not, you probably won't, and there is very little you can do to change that. It is not just on Tyneside that football is black and white.
Even if the Premier League clubs were owned by the 20 richest men in the world and all could spend money like an Arab sheikh or Russian oligarch, come the end of the season, one would win the league, 16 would not, and three would be relegated, just as it is now. And those that were going down would still have the fans on their case, no matter what the investment or personal sacrifice, because by football's peculiar business rules, they would be judged to have failed.
Football is unique because two separate entities have to be satisfied and they are often pulling in opposite directions. If the club are making a fortune, but fighting relegation each season, the investors will be delighted, but the season ticket-holders will be up in arms; if the club are on the brink of the title, but behind the scenes the bank is about to foreclose, the supporters will be ignorantly delirious, but the directors mystifyingly forlorn. Football is the one business in which profit is frowned upon, because all money is required to be reinvested to chase an impossible dream. A chairman attempting to apply the standard rules of finance to a football club will be castigated, although, bizarrely, few do.
Ashley would never have expanded his Sports Direct empire without exerting due diligence on a takeover, yet he bought Newcastle without properly studying it, only to be shocked by the masses of debt. He would never have installed executives that were incompatible, but this is what he did by employing an old-fashioned manager and then grafting on a continental technical structure, with third parties in charge of development and scouting, rendering Keegan redundant in the transfer market.
Ashley appeared bemused by this controversy in his statement, which indicates that he still does not understand how football works. It is possible for an employee other than the manager to talent spot - essential, one might think, with Keegan admitting he had not followed football closely in three years - but because the technical developer is a middleman between board and dugout, the appointment must be made by the owner, and the manager, as equal partners to ensure trust in the relationship.
Would a leisurewear company appoint a head of development and a head of sales with completely differing ideas about the market? Maybe, but these would also tend to be the businesses that get bought out by men such as Ashley while in acute financial distress.
Some might argue that Ashley's mistake was aiming too high. If he had Arsenal as his blueprint - and many chairmen do these days, the only problem being finding a genius such as Arsène Wenger unemployed or looking to drop two divisions to make it effective - he could have invested in a club such as Brentford or Queens Park Rangers (before the Formula One takeover) and built them from there.
He could have appointed a coach, made his friends the technical directors and worked towards the Premier League, rather than in it, by scouting the world for young players, spotted early and bought cheap. The complication is that lower-league supporters have passions, prejudices and ambitions, too, and lower-league chairmen are under no less pressure.
“If things continue in the same vein, then the small minority of supporters who continue to spout their vitriolic remarks will force the closure of this club,” an angry chairman wrote on his club website last Friday. “I have no problem with constructive criticism, but things have been taken too far. I have personally not taken a penny out and to have certain sections of supporters accusing me and my family of taking money from the club disgusts me. I am getting to the end of my tether.” Mick Woodward remains the owner and chairman of Grays Athletic, but left his post as manager the next day. Looks like Pleat was right: the frightened money men always take it out on the guy in the tracksuit.
