Fit and proper person wanted - opposition focus Saturday, 14th Sep 2013 00:00 by Clive Whittingham Outside the glitz and glamour of the Premier League, another famous old name of the English game is being allowed to go to rack and ruin. LFW looks at the plight of Birmingham City. OverviewPeople like to give football, and English football in particular, a really hard time. When the England rugby team wins something we suddenly all become rampant rugger fans, donning our green Barbour jackets and demanding pubs turn the vile football off and put “Sarries” vs “Quins” on instead before sitting round and lamenting why the footballers can’t behave more like the rugby players. Of course, soon the rugby players regress back to the dislikeable, fat, public schoolboys they were before — chucking one another off passenger ferries, causing structural damage to small foreign bars by lighting each other’s farts and what not. Once that happens it’s off with the rugger tops and all off down to Lords for the cricket. And we look at the cricketers sweeping all before them and talking very politely in the post-match interviews, and we demand that pubs turn the vile football off so we can all watch a five day test match play out to a rain affected draw, and then we sit around and wonder why the footballers can’t behave more like the cricketers. Of course, cricket players are rather prone to celebrating their successes by slumping on a city centre curb in the middle of the night and working their way through a packet of Marlboro, or whopping the old chap out and pissing all over the wicket. But once we’ve run out of other far less popular sports to fawn over we simply switch our attention to the football in another country. “Look at the Germans,” we cry, wondering round the streets of North Finchley in our Borussia Dortmund replica shirts. Safe standing, cheap tickets, fan-owned football clubs, tremendous atmosphere at matches, no club debt. Ahhhhh, the Germans. But we’re all wrong. We must be. English football is one year into the biggest television deal signed for a soccer league anywhere in the world, ever. Sky and BT, the two biggest pay-media companies in the country, have businesses now heavily built around live football. If English football ceased to exist tomorrow Sky would be dead in this country within 18 months, and BT would be saved only because it is not yet quite as balls deep in the Premier League as it would like to be. Despite more matches than ever before being screened on television, it’s also just enjoyed a season of record season ticket sales in its top division. Richard Scudamore can sit in his layer and scoff at the negative press. English football is just fine thank you very much indeed. What’s to be guarded against, however, is complacency. Should the quest for live Premier League football rights drive one of either Sky or BT to the wall, or become too rich for one of them, then the money being pumped in via the broadcast deal will never be as high again. And then what? Not exactly built on solid foundations all of this is it? After all, in English football somebody like Carson Yeung can turn up from Hong Kong and buy a famous old football club like Birmingham City pretty much no questions asked. He can then run up a stack of debt, be arrested on money laundering accusations, have his assets frozen, and effectively leave the club to drift off into the abyss — again, with nobody doing very much about it. In fact, the only time the league steps into such situation is when the administrators are called in. Then they promptly deduct ten points from the football team. That’ll learn the international businessmen I’m sure. Because of what has gone on with Yeung, Birmingham look a good bet for relegation to League One this season having been in the Premier League just two years ago. Their best players have been sold, their worst players have been sold, and the team is now barely competitive in the Championship. English football, at the top end, has no need to care just yet with the Premier League still awash with monied success stories, but it should be some cause for alarm that recent members of the top flight — Coventry, Portsmouth, now Birmingham — are collapsing and sinking in this way. Amidst it all — the debt, the relegation, the Championship struggles, the player sales, the falling attendances — The Guardian reports that Birmingham have one of the highest paid directors in British football in Peter Pannu. The paper’s superb investigative reporter David Conn wrote in April that on top of a £687,611 salary, Pannu has also receives a £405,000 “consultancy fee”. Pannu told the Birmingham Mail that the latter amount was “pocket expenses” for staff in Hong Kong. A stock market expert told the paper the payments were “irregular” and “poorly explained”. Conn also says Pannu took a £300,000 lump sum out of the club into his own personal account, claiming he was owed the money as a portion of a legal settlement with former owners David Gold and David Sullivan — reported at £400,000 but nearer to £3.1m according to Pannu. And while all this is going on the league does nothing. While Coventry City are taken into administration by a company which then buys it straight back and moves it 30 miles down the road to Northampton, the league does nothing. When Gianni Paladini, whose litany of misdeeds at Queens Park Rangers is familiar to us all, suddenly appears as a potential new owner at St Andrew’s the league does nothing. One would hope the General Medical Council’s ‘fit and proper person’ criteria is stricter than the Football League’s. The main thing English football is getting wrong is treating clubs as businesses, and football as a business. They’re not, and it’s not. Football is a sport, and clubs are community assets. While we continue to fail to recognise that you’ll get just as many examples of Birmingham and Coventry-style situations as you do Man City and Chelsea success stories. And who suffers most? Those poor sods sitting up in the School End tomorrow afternoon.
InterviewThis week we took to the Small Heath Alliance and BCFC message boards to seek the opinion of the Blues fans on the current situation at their club. Here’s a selection of what we had back, and if you want to check the full list of responses click on the links above… First and foremost, the takeover situation. Is it any closer to being done? Any light at the end of the tunnel? Who are the interested parties? “Nobody knows. Local journalists haven't even got hints. We've heard nothing off the owners in months. The only news we get are board users making up rumours every Friday that we might be bought out by a Timmy Mallet lead consortium comprising of Big Ron, Mr Motivator, Toyah Wilcox and that bloke who used to present the weather by jumping across a giant replica of the British Isles in the Thames.” How was the interest from Gianni Paladini and his consortium received by supporters, and how has that bid developed? Not a popular man at QPR. “At first everybody was horrified, and referencing 'that' documentary. Then when we realised that we're at the lowest ebb and anything is better we warmed to Paladini. A bit like if you were living in hell, and got the chance to upgrade to Milton Keynes - not ideal, but better.” “All talk, no action. From what I gathered, he tried to buy the club for next to nothing and got knocked back.” “The 4 Year Plan documentary did him no favours but such is the concern with present owners we'd take anyone right now. For that reason many welcomed his interest especially as he lives local and claims to be a fan of BCFC.” Are their protests and things at games against the current owners? What's the situation with them? “Our owners know what'll happen if they returned to St Andrews. They'd get shot.” “Blues' fans are of an old school mindset. You have to appreciate that if you've got a glory hunting bone in your body here you either follow the traditional big four or even Villa. The fans left to support Blues almost revel in the mentality of 'Look how great our fans are, we don't expect success, we're here for the team, let's just get pissed and have a laugh'. Doesn't matter that the club is being ripped apart. Doesn't matter that the kids (Redmond's the brightest home grown prospect in 40 years) are sold to provincial, rural teams for £1.5m. We're Birmingham City, and we're destined to fail so who cares? There is the perception that protests and banner making is a 'Villa trait'. Annoying really, but more fans seem to be coming around to the idea that ignoring what's happening is a rubbish way to be.” “There is nothing and there will continue to be nothing. At most, you may see a flag or two. We have given them an embarrassingly easy time but that's largely because they are never in the country. Any protests at the club would only affect the staff working there who are trying their best in difficult circumstances to keep the club running. Any protest would have to be made in Hong Kong to have a affect - there's talk of papers running a story etc but other than that, it's difficult to know what we can do to change anything.” How is the team shaping up on the pitch in amongst all this? Seems to an outsider that a lot of quality has gone out and a lot of stop-gaps and cheap options have come in. “First we sold our Premier League players; then we sold our decent Championship players; now we've sold the kids and we're left with players who failed trials at Oldham and Oxford. We're pretty awful these days. The standard is parks and we'll probably go down.” “If I was QPR, the only person I'd be worried about is Randolph - our keeper. He's proven to be a very capable keeper who will earn us several points this year but even so, I would expect you to find a way past eventually. Burke is always good for a goal but it's very likely that Clark will decided to not play him. Across the whole team, we are weak. We have a lot of players who are playing at the highest competitive level they have this year so it's unsurprising that it's taking time for everything to click. Our main weak link is up front as I said before but you go into the match with a stronger defence, midfield and attack than us.”
What do you make of Lee Clark as a manager? Widely viewed as a harsh sacking at Huddersfield, and working with his hands behind his back at Birmingham, but is he actually any good? “Mixed opinions. He's doing an impossible job, we have maybe one or two players left who are worth any money. But he still has no idea what his strongest and best team is. And he pulls funny faces in interviews and says "no comment" a lot.” “Have you ever seen Mike Bassett England Manager? His tactics are often baffling, he routinely criticises his players in the press; and has media breakdowns where he talks about being embarrassed to leave is house; how hard life was growing up in the east end of Newcastle; about how he had to 'fight for his Christmas presents as a kid' - all stuff that he thinks will ingratiate himself with the fan base, but comes out looking mental.” “No, he's not good. In all fairness, he's doing ok considering the circumstances but he isn't a good manager. If he had money, we wouldn't trouble the playoff spots. The small amount of money he had last year was squandered on players who never really broke into the squad despite being told they can leave for free at the end of the season, we are lumbered with now.” Hopes, ambitions and fears for this season? “Hopes? That we stay in the Championship. Ambition? Top half finish. Fear? Administration and relegation.” Links >>> Official site >>> BCFC Forum >>> Small Heath Alliance >>> Joys and Sorrows Blog >>> Birmingham Mail local paper Tweet @loftforwords Pictures — Action Images Photo: Action Images Please report offensive, libellous or inappropriate posts by using the links provided.
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