A good piece by Henry winter in today’s Times about Blackpool. I can’t link it because of subscription but this is the first part of it.
“Two men with a ladder did the honours at Bloomfield Road yesterday, one holding the steps steady, the other climbing up and removing an advertisement for Oyston’s estate agency. It will take longer to expunge completely the taint of the Oyston family on this famous old ground but thanks to Blackpool’s indefatigable supporters, the fumigation process is under way.
Invited to join “the big clean-up”, fans reported eagerly for duty to clear the North Stand, some clutching tangerine buckets. As fans prepared to return to the stadium after the ousting of the Oystons, the cleansing was symbolic as well as much needed. Scrubbing away the guilt of the authorities will take rather longer.
It is a stain on the name of the EFL, arguably the Premier League initially, that it failed to act when it became apparent that the Oystons’ running of the club involved running it down. The EFL meets tomorrow to decide whether to deduct points from Blackpool for going into receivership, a possibility causing understandable outrage as the League itself failed to call the odious Oystons to account, to question their motives and antics, to ask where all the Premier League money had gone.
Blackpool Supporters’ Trust, and tireless “Oyston Out” campaigners such as its chairman Christine Seddon, showed more backbone, showing up EFL inaction.
It is the fans who are the true guardians of the game, protecting clubs, promoting integrity, cherishing history and resisting the charlatans. It is the fans who shake buckets and raise funds, organise boycotts, lobby MPs, and print up protest paraphernalia, even ensuring they have the required fire certificates to take banners into grounds.
The EFL, FA and Premier League should think about the two men and a ladder, and the tens of thousands of supporters protesting about controversial owners from Blackpool to Bolton Wanderers, Charlton Athletic to Coventry City, Port Vale and beyond.
Many well-intentioned people inhabit the corridors of power, and some follow clubs who have slid down the pyramid thanks to uncaring, unthinking owners, yet the leadership of these national bodies have let them, the clubs and the game down. They stand accused of being Neros in blazers, fiddling while clubs burn.”
The other week, Gregor Robertson did a good piece on Swansea, the club whose fan-led takeover and development was held up as the model to follow when they got in the PL. It makes salutary reading -
“What the hell has happened to Swansea City? It feels like a pertinent question after the events of the past ten days in south Wales. A club who a few years ago were held up as an example of co-operative, supporter-led ownership and intelligent leadership have become riven with bitterness, mistrust and resentment and, on Saturday, supporter protests.
“No ambition, no investment, sold out,” one banner read and Swansea’s transfer deadline day, which swiftly took on the appearance of a desperate fire sale of the club’s most valuable assets, will certainly go down as one of the more perplexing in recent memory. It was followed, 48 hours later, by the resignation of Huw Jenkins, the club’s chairman of 17 years ............
......... We were the model club, I suppose. For any club that isn’t the biggest, to get themselves into the top flight, to gradually build every year. We had a philosophy, ‘The Swansea Way’, but we’ve lost our way,” Steven Carroll says.
However, it is the effects of the decision of Jenkins and his fellow investors to exclude the trust from negotiations to sell a majority stake in the club, in 2016, to Levien, the managing general partner of the Major League Soccer side DC United, and Kaplan, principal of Oaktree Capital investment fund, and vice-chairman of the Memphis Grizzlies basketball franchise, and their US-based consortium that may have the most lasting impact on Swansea.
“Everything we worked for — as a group of people, not just the trust, all shareholders aligned, trying to do the best for the football club — one decision to sell the club behind the trust’s back took that ownership model and destroyed it overnight,” Phil Sumbler, the supporters’ trust chairman, says. “I think we probably became just another Premier League football club, struggling to survive on a season-by-season basis.”
I’m not saying we should be thankful for what we have but maybe there is a touch of “but for the grace of God there go we.” knocking around in the EFL.
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