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Club ownership

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TheRonRaffertyFanClub
March 5, 2019, 3:28pm
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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.





“If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.”
― John Stuart Mill, On Liberty."
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marinerdazza
March 5, 2019, 4:01pm
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The points deduction is a difficult one. Make one exception, no matter how justified, and it sets the precedent.

There are enough dodgy figures around who aren't being held to account, or indeed precluded in the first place. You can guarantee that if an exception is made, some other club will try and exploit it.

This of course ignores the hypocrisy of the EFL blaming someone else for their own uselessness.

Really don't know which way I'd call it.





One of the league 2 promotion spots for next season will disappear overnight if they get a deduction though...
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moosey_club
March 5, 2019, 6:33pm
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Where there is excessive money there is corruption/ dodgy deals/unscrupulous characters....the Premier League is awash with cash and is riddled with it...just look at the sorry state of affairs going on around Cardiff City in the wake of the Sala affair, its disgusting.

Martin Samuels highlighted a few questionable dealings of Cardiff  in the Mail a couple of weeks back, especially involving Willie Mackay the agent involved in the Sala deal and how Cardiff seemed to have paid above going rate to sign Mackays own sons as players, neither of whom have shown any particular previous talent to be at that level.  
Sounds very much like a Glen Downey arrangement.

and down the bottom of the pyramid there are clubs facing extinction for thousands of pounds.....fractions of what some of the agents take out of the game.


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fleabag1970
March 5, 2019, 6:52pm
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And VAR will make sure all the right desicions are made 😂


]Remember its just my opinion  ..... It might not be true ............
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louth_in_the_south
March 5, 2019, 7:45pm

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You only had to watch that vile man Mackay trying to weasel his way out of any blame for the Sala crash to see what a disgusting person he is and the greed of agents to get a deal done . Don’t know if anyone heard Gareth Bales agent whining on Talksport this morning but he’s another prime example of scum agents trying to blatantly engineer a multi million pound deal .


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