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'But Mr Chairman, you're barking...!' The Top 10 crazy football club owners

Thespence

by Thespence
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Thespence

Thespence

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Ashley does not even make the top 10:

 

 

10) Freddy Shepherd (Newcastle)

If you thought Mike Ashley was the most controversial of all Toon chairmen, then you're clearly not familiar with the work of dear old Freddy. In March 1998, he was caught in a tabloid sting when he was exposed for mocking the St James' Park fans for the amount of money they spent on club merchandise, calling Geordie lasses "dogs" and branding fans' hero Alan Shearer "Mary Poppins". Oh yeah, all while frequenting a brothel...!

 

 

9) Ken Bates (Chelsea, Leeds)

Cuddly Ken has never shied away from controversy. Among those to feel the barbs of his acid wit are Martin O'Neill ("It takes one to know one. I'm surprised Martin O'Neill actually knows a word as big as cretin."), Ruud Gullit ("I didn't like his arrogance. In fact I never liked him.") and the FA ("At first they were a shambles. Now they have descended via farce to make them a laughing stock.") But his crowning glory came in the 1980s when he proposed to put electric fences around the Stamford Bridge pitch to keep the fans off. Well, it had worked when controlling cattle on his dairy farm. Sadly for him, the GLC rejected his plans on the grounds of 'health and safety'.

 

8) Michael Knighton (Carlisle)

Knighton almost bought Manchester United in 1989 for the princely sum of just £20million, which really would have been some deal. But after a brief show of keepy-uppys and a couple of volleys into the net at the Stretford End, Knighton disappeared when his financial backers pulled up. He went on to buy Carlisle three years later and promised to take them to the Premier League. He even had a spell managing the side between 1997-98 - overseeing relegation to Division Three rather than promotion to the promised land of the top-flight. By then, though, he had hit the headlines for very different reasons, admitting in 1996 that 20 years previously he and his wife had seen a UFO. The local paper in Carlisle, the Evening News and Star, broke the story under the banner heading 'Knighton: Aliens Spoke To Me'. Pity they didn't give him a few hints on tactics...

 

7) Martin Edwards (Manchester United)

As chairman of the world's most famous football club, keeping a low-profile ain't the simplest of things to do. But there are ways to make it easier. And then there is the Martin Edwards way. Revelations about him visiting prostitutes in Brazil and Switzerland were followed by a police caution in 2002 for following a woman into the ladies' at Mottram Hall Hotel and peering under the door of the cubicle she was in. Which apparently she didn't consider to be toilet humour.

 

6) Sam Hammam (Wimbledon, Cardiff)

Quite frankly as mad as a box of frogs, the Lebanese businessman's many mad moments are far too numerous to list in full. They include: pledging to buy Dean Holdsworth a camel if he scored 20 goals in a season, threatening under-performing players with a trip to the Opera, locking Robbie Earle in a room until he agreed to leave Port Vale for Wimbledon and inserting a clause into Spencer Prior's Cardiff contract that he had to eat sheep's testicles. He said of Wimbledon in March 1999: "We have to remain the English bulldog SAS club. We have to sustain ourselves by power and the attitude that we kick ass. Before we go down we'll leave a trail of blood from here to Timbuktu."

 

5) Peter Ridsdale (Leeds, Cardiff)

Known by football agents as 'Father Christmas", Ridsdale oversaw a period of largesse at Leeds that was so over the top the club is still paying the price today. During his reign at Elland Road the club was coughing up for 70 company cars (at an annual cost of £600,000), ran up a £70,000-a-year bill for directors' travel in private jets and paid off sacked managers David O'Leary and Terry Venables to the tune of £5.7million. He eventually left with the club £79m in debt. Including a £240 bill for the goldfish in his office!

 

4) Simon Jordan (Crystal Palace)

Sample quotes: “Here’s a newsflash for you f*****s. If you think you’re going to undermine me or the manager you are wrong. Each and every one of you will go before me. If you don’t want to pull your fingers out, form an orderly queue outside my office on Monday morning and you can all f**k off. (To Palace players at half-time in a match at Grimsby).

 

"When I was asked whether I got on with other chairman what I said was, 'it’s fair to say that a fair proportion of them are tossers, but I am pretty sure they think the same thing about me'. It’s a bullshit world for certain clubs, it’s not honest and full of integrity, and I don’t respect that." (On the Premier League and its chairmen).

 

"I was sick and tired of reading about David Gold trotting out his story about being a poor East End boy made good. We have heard it enough times now David! You were a poor boy, and now you’re sitting on a big pile of porn with loads of money. I said if I had to hear that story again I would impale myself on one of his dildos." (On David Gold).

 

Aah... the football world will be poorer without Jordan.

 

3) Spencer Trethewy (Aldershot)

As a then 19-year-old property developer, Trethewy pledged £200,000 to buy Aldershot, even appearing on Wogan to discuss his benevolence. Three months later, he was kicked off the board when it became apparent he didn't have the £200,000. He was jailed for fraud in 1994 for running up a rake of hotel bills he couldn't pay, and nothing was ever heard of him again. At least not until October 2007 when he re-appeared - now as Spencer Day - as owner-manager of Chertsey Town having amassed a fortune in unspecified business dealings.

 

2) Terry Smith (Chester)

American-born businessman Smith achieved notoriety for his two years as owner of Chester between 1999-2001. A former coach of the Manchester Spartans American Football team, he took over the managerial reins when Kevin Ratcliffe quit. In his four months in charge, the side suffered a string of heavy defeats, his training  methods were ridiculed, he took the players to a fast-food restaurant for their pre-match meal (result? a thrashing) and delivered the Lord's Prayer as part of his team-talks. Much to the disappointment of no-one in Chester, he sold up and got out of town in October 2001.

 

1) George Reynolds (Darlington)

A former smuggler and safe cracker (fit and proper person's test anyone?!), he bought Darlington in 1999 and spent £20million on a new stadium he named after himself. Five years later, just after the new ground was opened, he left - having taken the club into administration. He was tried for tax evasion in 2005 -after being stopped with £500,000 of cash in his boot - and was sentenced to three years imprisonment.

 

http://www.mirrorfootball.co.uk/opinion/blogs/mirror-football-blog/Newcastle-s-Freddy-Shepherd-Chelsea-s-Ken-Bates-Leeds-Peter-Ridsdale-Palace-s-Simon-Jordan-and-the-Top-10-crazy-football-chairman-article320687.html

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Guest firetotheworks

Guest firetotheworks

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I constantly go between liking Simon Jordan, and then absolutely loathing him.

 

That Shepherd bit needed the seven bells statement tbh.  :lol:

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Guest malandro

Guest malandro

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Ashley hasn't done anything whacky or eccentric. He's just been a stupidly naive, and remorseless c***.

 

This

You don’t think pulling on a replica kit and trying to be one of the lads is eccentric? Or doing the conga around the executive suite in front of the oppositions big wigs, or making wagers that involve your chief executive getting his nob out and running around the pitch? This last one is totally bizarre if true.

 

I wonder how many of the above were mad enough to buy a club without checking the books?

 

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Village Idiot

Village Idiot

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I would have thought any "Top 10 crazy football club owners" list would include Jesus Gil...? And any number of Brazilian owners...

 

Oh, wait - they forgot to put the word British in the title :rolleyes:

 

Surely Jesús Gil would take the prize, though. He even had his own TV show, with him bathing in a jacuzzi and a dancing band of stripper girls. Crook (sentenced several times to prison) and cunt of the highest order. Hilarious though.

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