Does anyone really believe that managers bully their owners?
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Bruce Buck, chairman of Chelsea, says
that he never feels sorry for sacked managers, probably because he
negotiates their pay-offs.
He has a point but so did Harry
Redknapp when he pronounced himself very comfortable with the money Tony
Fernandes has been spending on survival at Queens Park Rangers.
Redknapp said, as a manager, he presumed his chairmen had competence, financially. 'They're not silly men, they're successful businessmen,' he said. 'I'll leave it to them - it's their business.'
Calling the shots: As boss of Air Asia, Tony Fernandes is no patsy
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He's right, of course. The idea that
owners are ploughing through their life savings, the unwitting dupes of
managers and agents, ignores the fact that these are some of the richest
men in the world, operating in brutally hard-nosed global markets, and
can look after themselves.
To presume they are bullied into saying yes to every managerial demand is preposterous.
Yet as the new financial year approaches, and accounts are published, football club owners have been cut quite a length of slack.
'McLeish era cost Villa £6m,' read one headline. 'Dalglish cost £10m to sack,' read another.
This makes it seem as if the manager alone incurs the debt, not the misjudged appointment.
It is as if Aston Villa owner Randy Lerner did not make the decision to appoint Alex McLeish in the first place, or John Henry had no option but to dismiss Kenny Dalglish, having pursued his vision for all of 15 months.
Villa's accounts contain an exceptional charge of £5.9m, covering both McLeish's arrival and his rapid departure.
There was a compensation payment of £2.5m to Birmingham City, and the rest made up by termination settlements.
Sacking Dalglish cost Liverpool £9.6m. Wages rose to £131m annually, too, and no doubt Dalglish's signings account for a slice of that.
Yet both men were employees. Nothing more. They did not hypnotise nor blackmail their owners.
So it wasn't the McLeish era that cost Villa an exceptional £5.9m. It was the Lerner era. His man, his call, his mistake. He pays for it, dearly.
But just as Buck ruthlessly washes his hands of managers the moment Roman Abramovich writes a cheque, we should not ignore that the senior decision-maker at any modern football club is no longer the man in the tracksuit.
This is the era of the owner-manager. The men at the top have never wanted more say in the running of their clubs. The time when managers were left to buy and sell is gone.
These days, owners have favoured agents and advisers and present managers with players almost as gifts.
Open secret: Tottenham manager Andre Villas-Boas (left) wanted Joao Moutinho (right) at White Hart Lane
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It is no secret that Andre Villas-Boas was very keen to bring Joao Moutinho to Tottenham Hotspur this summer. He got Clint Dempsey and a goalkeeper, Hugo Lloris, instead.
It has worked rather well but this is no more the Villas-Boas era at Tottenham than it was his era at Chelsea. He gets some of what he wants, some of what his boss wants, and he stitches it together as best he can.
If Tottenham's accounts later become a point of weakness, or he fails and is paid off, the buck stops in the boardroom.
French fancy: Harry Redknapp (left) went to France to persuade Loic Remy (right) to join Queens Park Rangers
'We work with the team and on the pitch,' Redknapp added. 'We are not involved in players' wages. We are not involved in that side of the business.'
Of course, the reality is a little more complex. Redknapp still travelled to France to watch Loic Remy, to meet him and try to convince him to come to QPR.
Yet it was Fernandes who dragged the deal over the line and Fernandes who made sure his club outbid Newcastle United for the player.
So Fernandes should know what his club can afford. He owns an airline. None of his planes run out of fuel halfway, so why should QPR?
Why's Sam still kept waiting?
Something does not add up in Sam Allardyce's contract position at West Ham United.
The club say they are happy to wait until Premier League survival is guaranteed before opening talks on a new deal; Allardyce says he is content with this arrangement, too.
Yet his contract expires at the end of this season. No club would let a valued player get even close to becoming a free agent.
Contract delay: Sam Allardyce says he's content to wait
As it stands, if any rival fancied employing Allardyce, he could simply be bought out of the remainder of his agreement and start next week.
Why would West Ham entertain such vulnerability? It is almost as if they are secretly hoping Allardyce will be taken off their hands.
Loan star: Romelu Lukaku has proved a shrewd loan signing by West Brom
West Bromwich Albion were ordinary against Chelsea last week without striker Romelu Lukaku, who had scored three goals in two games prior to the fixture, and scored again in the win over Swansea City on Saturday.
How fortunate that Lukaku's parent club Chelsea could ensure West Brom were strong against every other team in the Premier League, but not them. Another triumph for the loan system.
Absolute confidence: Sir Alex Ferguson
It is a lot easier to win the Champions League when you don't have to go through the hardship of playing the matches.
Sir Alex Ferguson's assertion that his team have been denied progress by referees three times, and would have won the trophy on two of those occasions 'without a doubt', should therefore be taken with a pinch of salt.
Porto were helped by an incorrectly disallowed goal against Manchester United and an unusually weak opponent, Monaco, in the 2004 final, but they had to come through two rounds between those ties and kept three clean sheets in those games.
Ferguson's absolute confidence that his team would have beaten Inter Milan in 2010, had Rafael not been sent off during elimination by Bayern Munich, also seems a little misplaced.
Inter knocked out Barcelona in the semi-final, deservedly, having been the better team at home, winning 3-1, before holding out with 10 men for 62 minutes at the Nou Camp.
This being the sort of resilience real, as opposed to imagined, European champions display.
Eastern promise lost in January sales
No team from eastern Europe have ever made the final of the modern Champions League.
There were only four appearances in the old European Cup. Steaua Bucharest and Red Star Belgrade won it in 1986 and 1991, Partizan Belgrade and Steaua Bucharest didn't in 1966 and 1989.
No Russian or Ukrainian team have reached the final, although Spartak Moscow could undoubtedly have triumphed in 1995-96.
This was the last year there was no English representation in the quarter-finals, mainly because Blackburn Rovers were the sole Premier League qualifiers and performed horribly. Spartak, who won Blackburn's group with a 100 per cent record, were a dream to watch.
They had two brilliant ball-playing centre halves in Viktor Onopko and Yuri Nikiforov, outstanding wide players, Ilia Tsymbalar and Dmitri Alenichev, and a good striker in Sergei Yuran.
Top striker: Sergei Yuran (left) helped make Spartak a dream to watch
Moved on: Willian's sale did not help Shakhtar
By the time the competition reconvened after its mid-winter hiatus, however, the Russians were a changed team. Onopko and Yuran had been sold. They lost 4-2 on aggregate to Nantes of France.
Many who saw Shakhtar Donetsk against Chelsea in this season's group stage had similarly high hopes of the Ukrainians.
They won at home and lost away, but were a far superior team over two legs. Much would depend on whether they kept their players in the January transfer window.
The sale of the impressive forward Willian to Anzhi Makhachkala, for a fee in the region of £30m, gave the answer to that.
This week Shakhtar were eliminated by Borussia Dortmund 5-2 on aggregate.
Dortmund are a good side, but once again an east European contender has been sold short.
With so much new money in the region, this should be changing. Yet Donetsk are the embodiment of the modern financial powerhouse club.
In a tournament crying out for more variety, the limit of their ambitions was a real shame.
Andre Villas-Boas did not actually condone or advocate Gareth Bale's dive against Inter Milan on Thursday, but he has not stopped such travesties occurring.
As any poor behaviour that is not eradicated is tacitly encouraged, he shares responsibility here. Maybe he will realise his error when Bale, and perhaps his Tottenham Hotspur team-mates, are denied several blatant penalties by suspicious referees.
Bale's diving is not ignored. It is widely discussed, widely debated, everyone is aware of it and, unless he changes, it will return to haunt them all.
And while we're at it...
It would be easy to interpret the five-point deduction London Welsh received last week for illegally fielding scrum-half Tyson Keats as the Rugby Football Union's revenge.
London Welsh challenged the RFU legally in the summer to win promotion to the Premiership, having initially been denied a place for wishing to use Oxford United's Kassam Stadium as their home.
Misleading: Ex-London Welsh team manager Mike Scott
No doubt some will presume that the spiteful RFU have used this misdemeanour to get even. Except playing Keats in 10 matches was no mere oversight.
It involved extensive deception from rugby manager Mike Scott, who falsified documents and misled everybody, including his employers and the player.
Scott has received a life ban so severe that he could not coach an Under 11 team. London Welsh think his culpability exonerates them. It doesn't.
Scott may have acted alone, the club may have been fully co-operative, indeed pro-active, in the RFU investigation, but his activities were still to London Welsh's gain.
A point per game has been the standard deduction in previous instances, and Keats featured in nine league games illegally, including the four London Welsh have won this season, against Exeter Chiefs, Sale Sharks, Bath and London Irish.
Nine points would have been an equally justifiable deduction, or 16, considering each of those victories involving Keats were worth four points.
Instead, the RFU settled on an arbitrary figure that took into account the club's misfortune in trusting Scott.
It leaves the Exiles fighting relegation, but not relegated. This was no vendetta. Indeed, it could have been far worse.
Blame it on Rio
The Maracana Stadium in Rio de Janeiro is a mess with England's friendly fixture against Brazil on June 2 looming.
There is no grass on the playing area, no roof over parts of the arena and thousands of seats are missing. Business as usual then.
When the Club World Cup visited Brazil in 2000 it was a similar story.
Rebuilding project: The Maracana Stadium work is putting the Confederations Cup in jeopardy
Just two days before Manchester United's first game, the Maracana looked like a building site.
Somehow, the hosts got it ready in time.
Now the summer schedule, including the Confederations Cup, appears in jeopardy.
FIFA are making disapproving noises but would not dare remove this World Cup dry run from Brazil, let alone the main event in 2014.
They will just have to live with last-minute chaos and make the best of it. As will we all.
It was explained to me last week that the reason the proposed Arsenal takeover went public before being placed before Stan Kroenke and his fellow shareholders is that the club are not for sale.
Roman Abramovich and Sheik Mansour could do their work privately, because Chelsea and Manchester City were available, and they did not have to win over or place pressure on the selling parties.
The model for this Arsenal move, apparently, is the Fenway Sports Group takeover of Liverpool.
Tom Hicks and George Gillett had to be helped out of the door. They did not want to sell, so Fenway leaked their interest, creating a groundswell of public support that ultimately proved unstoppable.
Yet this tactic has more than the odd flaw. Surely the public agitation begins when the private negotiations have reached stalemate.
Not the ideal model: Former Liverpool owners George Gillett (left) and Tom Hicks
If the offer to Kroenke is so generous - there is talk of a £400m profit - why not try that method first and, if unsuccessful, then attempt to enlist disaffected supporters and capture popular opinion?
This starting point seems destined to antagonise, which will make the existing owners more stubborn in their resistance.
Whether Arsenal supporters will be convinced by the nod to Fenway is also debatable.
They would hardly consider Liverpool's fortunes an upgrade on their own.
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Can hardly expect someone to pump tens of millions to nearly a billion into a project and not impose conditions or influence. Hopefully you get a good balance of investment and heeding advice from the right people.
- BarryBwana , Canada, 12/3/2013 02:00
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