What Price Justice?

When Harry Redknapp walked free from court last week not only did it set a chain of events in motion that saw the England Manager lose his job, it led to reports in the press that the trial itself had cost £8m.

Football Business tweeted on Friday: So an £8m 5-year investigation to find that someone who was accused of fiddling tax on less than 200 grand was innocent #moneywellspent and we were far from the only ones to share those views.

In fact so fierce was the outcry that the HMRC released a statement last week denying that the court case had cost anywhere near that much and instead insisting that the actual cost was somewhere in the region of £1.3m, indeed it further suggested that the £1.3m figure also included the trial of former Pompey Chief Exec Peter Storrie, who it emerged had been acquitted of similar charges last year.

A spokesman was unequivocal: “There's been a lot of nonsense talked about the cost of this investigation to HMRC.” They told press, with their figures coming in at around £300,000 apparently. The other million comes from barristers fees, which in Dec 2011 stood at just over £944,000.

So the question begs itself: What price justice? And does it actually matter how much it costs to see justice done?

You can see why people got vexed by this. The investigation into Redknapp has gone on for five years and was all to do with the sort of sums that Carlos Tevez takes home per week.

But, is that the point? Surely you don’t want to get into a situation where you are looking for value for money in justice and cases don’t go to court because you can’t afford to see it through?

However, on the other side of that you do have to wonder if, in these times of fiscal hardship and cutbacks and budget deficits whether it should have taken five years to investigate something and bring it to trial – especially when you consider the fact that Storrie had already been cleared (that detail wasn’t reported – and rightly so, for fear of prejudicing the court case).

Personally I am inclined to think that, when all things are considered, the cost of things isn’t important when it comes to the law. You can’t get in a situation where people think to themselves “I can get away with this because they can’t afford to investigate.” And the actual cost of the crime – as we have pointed out already, in this case it was considerably less that what some Premier League players earn in a week – shouldn’t really be a consideration.

Of course, in this particular Messrs Mandaric, Redknapp and Storrie have been vindicated in their belief of their innocence and are free to carry on their lives. That being the case, it easy to point fingers and suggest that money has been wasted. But I wonder if that had been said if the Spurs boss and the Sheffield Wednesday owner were in prison this week?

If the HMRC are to be believed, rather than the more lurid reports, then the £1.3 million is a tiny, miniscule drop in the ocean compared the bank bailouts, or MP’s expenses. Or indeed just over a sixth of what the outgoing England Manager was paid – and probably just about what he received as a pay-off.

Points of Principle

On Monday night, it probably would have been beneficial for all concerned if Luis Suarez had slipped quietly back into action after his eight game ban was completed.

But it didn’t happen, did it?

And it didn’t happen for two reasons. First he was booked – and in the view of many in the Football Business office he was lucky not to get sent off – for kicking Scott Parker, and second, because Kenny Dalglish decided that a matter that should have had a line drawn under it was not, in fact, closed. Instead he decided that everyone – yet again – needed to hear his opinions on what did or didn’t happen between his player and Patrice Evra that day at Anfield.

The Liverpool boss has been widely quoted as saying in his post match interview: "It's fantastic to have him back. He should never have been out in the first place.”

Leaving aside whether the Uruguayan should or shouldn’t have been suspended for his comments that day (and lest we forget the words he used to Evra are not in dispute, merely whether they were intended in a racist way) surely Dalglish is a clever enough individual to know that what he was saying was potentially inflammatory given that the two sides meet this weekend, for the first time at Old Trafford since it happened in October.

When the giants clashed the other week in the FA Cup The FA (in, it must be said, a rare attack of good sense) wrote to both clubs and asked them to refrain from talking about the incident, but unfortunately no one seems to issued such an edict this time around.

And yet, this is no ordinary rivalry. Liverpool v Manchester Utd is perhaps the bitterest antipathy in English football, it is a game that can always have the potential for trouble, even before Suarez and Evra is added into proceedings and certainly it didn’t need the rather unfortunate input of the Liverpool boss.

But should we be surprised? Everything that Liverpool FC have done recently has made a bad situation worse. The stupid t-shirts the squad (including Suarez) and the Manager wore at Wigan before Christmas outraged anti-racism campaigners and according to reports even insiders at Anfield think they were a mistake.

Then there was the bluster about their appeal against the ban – one which they backed down on, when, lets be honest, it became expedient for them to do so. This was topped off with a rather daft statement they made on their website which insinuated Evra was guilty of all manner of things. The whole unedifying escapade shows the club in a bad light.

It is tempting to suggest that they should have showed some humility, but the time for that has passed. What they should have now done was nothing at all, but unfortunately no one told their manager.

Someone who was famously shy and distrustful of the Media when he was a player and reticent to speak to them in his first spell as boss, now can’t stop making statements – and football is all the poorer for it.

Managing To Make Money From The Players

It is not for us –for all sorts of reasons – to speculate as to the guilt or otherwise of Messrs Mandaric and Redknapp.

But there is one thing we can speak about, which has become common knowledge as part of the evidence is the issue of managers receiving part of the fees for selling players to other clubs.

Redknapp, it emerged, received in the region of £200,000 for selling Peter Crouch to Aston Villa in 2002, and these payments are common place.

They were written into his contract, so just be clear, I am not suggesting in any way that anyone to do with the transfer acted improperly and the payments were perfectly legal and above board – but were they right?

Is it not a conflict of interests, or more accurately, can a conflict of interests not be suggested? For example, to take Peter Crouch since he is the named player in the deals, if Crouch was scoring goals and Portsmouth were going for Promotion and a club comes in with a big bid, does the manager – in this case Redknapp - keep him in order to further those promotion prospects, or does he recommend the player be sold for personal gain?

As James Lawton put it in The Independent last week: “The practice in general opens up the issue.”
“At what point,” argues Lawton. “Might a manager, conscious of the uncertainties of a results-oriented business where pressure on the jobs of even the most distinguished operators has never been so great, be tempted to put his own interests before those of his club, and by extension, the fans who supply its lifeblood?”

And isn’t that the crux of the thing? Is it right that this is allowed to happen?
Redknapp isn’t the only manager to benefit in this way, of course. It appears that Dario Gradi’s fabled Crew Alex production line also produced plenty of cash for him as he personally benefitted from the transfers of the likes of David Platt, Robbie Savage and Dean Ashton. Gradi’s presence on the board at the Alexandra Stadium on Gresty Road further exacerbates the situation.

Although the Italian is no longer the Manager of the now League Two side he still retains his right to a percentage of player transfers out of the club – and with the likes of Nick Powell and Max Clayton currently starring for the England U-19 side he may well be getting to top up his ISA again soon.
There are, I am sure many within football who cannot see what the fuss regarding these payments is about. In his aforementioned piece in The Independent last week, Lawton quotes “an experienced football administrator” as saying: “The system can be justified... a manager, who has no kind of job security, does a good job, makes the club a huge profit on an individual player, so why shouldn't he have his share? Like the bankers do when they improve the figures.”

Although even here this person agrees that there is a potential for wrong-doing to at least appear to be done. "The potential problem lies in the possibility of some managers and players maybe being tempted to collude over their short-term interests rather than the long-term ones of the club.” Which is an interesting way of putting it.
The issue at hand here is not whether these payments are legal and above board – they clearly are – the issue at hand is rather they are right.

And if that is hard to quantify, then what might be harder to do is to decide whether to allow the practice to continue. At this point, now these payments are in the public domain, do the authorities need to have a look at what is going on here and perhaps act accordingly, before this rather murky aspect of football business really get too far out of hand?

Feeling Blue In The Blue Square

If ever you needed a remainder of just how precarious the business of professional football is then the events of last week at two conference clubs have shown us.

Darlington have grabbed all the headlines thanks largely thanks to the dramatic nature of their rescue by two fans right as the deadline to stop them falling into extinction. The money will grant them a three week stay of execution and everyone at Football Business wishes them all the best.

However it isn’t just Darlo that are right on the brink. Kettering Town have had a tempestuous last few years and that came to a head in the last few weeks with a very odd chain of events.

First, Manager Mark Stimson who had only joined in September (himself the third boss in a matter of months) but left after the club was placed under a transfer embargo. He was replaced by Mark Cooper, a man who had much success at the club in his first spell (and ironically had left Darlington in October).

That was on January 4th but just three days later Cooper was already “considering his position” at Nene Park. It turned out that when he was appointed he was promised funds would be forthcoming and the embargo would be lifted. This did not happen.

The players meanwhile hadn’t been paid for a three months. Cooper showed his displeasure at this and said: "There's only so long they [the players] can keep [playing while not getting paid in full], to keep putting your neck on the block when you have got bills to pay and children to feed and I have sympathy for them.

"Kettering, in non-league terms, is a big club. It's gone backwards. It needs help quickly. Things need to change or there isn't going to be a club."

If that is not bad enough, it was to get a lot worse. Last week Cooper announced his role as Manager was “on hold” as he and the players had “had enough” of the situation as it was.

On Thursday the club faced a potentially key day. There was a hearing at which the club faced a charge of “failing to pay football creditors.” They were fined £3000 and were deducted three points (although this was suspended until Feb 28th on condition that the club has paid all its debts by then.

Chairman Imran Ladak – a man who appointed Ron Atkinson as Director of Football and Paul Gascoigne as Manager in the past lets not forget – is confident that the club can have a future: “I do believe this result means the club is in better shape. And, like I said, there were certain people waiting on the outcome of this hearing.”

And it is to be hoped that these “certain people” can take the club forward in a way that they have not been for a while.

The Chairman of the Kettering Supporters Trust, Mark Severn isn’t quite so sure, saying to Ladak in an email that: “"This is perhaps as deep as it [the club] can get into crisis before extinction.”

While Severn thanked Ladak for his efforts on the club’s behalf, others are not so sure. A “Show Ladak the red card” campaign has been running – one of the posters for this has been seen in the dressing room at club’s ground, which tells you all you need to know.

In the meantime experienced defender Ashley Westwood took charge after Cooper refused and although his (possibly temporary) reign began with a defeat against Wrexham, they did win a game this week – their first for a while, by beating Gateshead.
What the future holds in store for either Darlington or Kettering remains largely unclear, but it is certain that the fans of those clubs – just like countless others before them – are going to be ones that are hardest hit by this.

The players too have much to ponder, whilst it is sometimes difficult to feel any sympathy for the highly-paid millionaires of the Premier League who go off an a sulk (Carlos, I thinking of you here) and indeed when we think of footballers we often think of them as all earning thousands a week, but that is not the case at this level. These are normal blokes, under the same pressure as the rest of us.

And the servants of Darlington and Kettering deserve better.

Football Business Hopes For 2012

It’s that time of year again when people start making predictions, discussing what might happen throughout the year ahead. Sport is particularly useful for this as you will doubtless have seen if you have bought a paper in the last few days.

And 2012 has many, many sporting events with which to exercise the pundits, in addition to the Olympics, there is Euro 2012, there’s the Ryder Cup and there is the Premier League, of course.

The latter can be dealt with quickly – Manchester City will win that championship with Manchester United second. Simple. Spurs will be third and Chelsea will be fourth.

So instead of a boring list of predictions, I thought it might be interesting to discuss the Football Business hopes for 2012.

Number one in that list is something that’s been bugging me for years.

Manager’s to stop talking about referees in Press Conferences:

If you have read these blogs since July you are bound to have read me moaning about this. It is the most annoying aspect of modern football. It happens without fail, every weekend, some manager or other says that the referee has cost his team the points. There is another variance of this, the Manager says “I never criticise referees, but….” Harry Redknapp is always saying this, and for a bloke who “never criticises” the officials he doesn’t half do it a lot.

There is a close cousin of the “never criticising” Manager, and it’s the manager who says “we never get any decisions go our way, so if we got one today, then good.” Mick McCarthy is particularly good at this and it too is extremely annoying.

People to Stop Buying Seating Tickets and then Standing Up For The Whole Game

This is a plea from someone who follows their team to away games in the Premier League.

Please, please sit down.

At nearly every game this season I have had to stand because the followers of my team have decided that they aren’t sitting down. It is annoying, and thoughtless. There are people out there who can’t stand very well for long periods but who don’t want to sit in the disabled section – I know because I am one of them and our viewing experience would be greatly improved if those in front would stick their bum on the seat that they have paid an extortionate amount for.

On the back of the ticket it always says “persistent standing is not allowed,” and yet it seems that if loads of people choose to stand this rule is not enforced (conversely if its just a couple of blokes the stewards can’t wait to wade in.)

The End To Roadwork’s On the M6

This a motorway I spend a lot of time on and there is very little that fills me with dread more than the overhead matrix sings telling you that whichever junction you want is closed and there are “long delays.” Then you sit behind lorries for hours in the middle of the night – for it is usually late when this happens getting upset.

What can they be doing on there? Why does it need to be done constantly? Please stop!

An End to Pointless Football Clichés

We have all seen them. “The lads worked hard,” “it’s a great bunch of lads,” “the fans are fantastic,” or my personal bête noir “110%” It is impossible to give 110%, so stop saying it. It must end in 2012. Oh and every player is not a legend, every game is not “amazing” and not every defeat is a “crisis.”

The Constant Misuse of the Word “Literally” To Be Outlawed

Jamie Redknapp, I am looking at you. Mr Redknapp famously said that “Paul Scholes is an unbelievable player. He has a picture of the match and he literally paints it in front of you.” No, Jamie he doesn’t.

Using “literally” in  literally the wrong context is awful. Just yesterday someone said to me that “it was literally coming down cats and dogs,” errr no it wasn’t. Please either use this word correctly or don’t use it all.

And finally, just because I watched him commentate on the Norwich v Spurs game over Christmas….

Ray Wilkins to go Back to Management and leave Sky Forthwith

He spoilt that game with his “my word,” and “what a great player” “tremendous effort from the guys” and so on. It was extremely annoying and, if he commentates on the Newcastle v Man Utd game tonight I will be extremely annoyed.

Is Football Immune To Economic Pressures?

There were some pretty dire economic figures on the news last week.

Many shops were slashing prices by up to 70% in a desperate bid to attract sales and takings on the high streets are down this Christmas on what they were last year.

The figures still sound pretty impressive, though. Up to £4bn taken this weekend, with some reports saying Britain was spending upwards of £1.5m a minute on Christmas stuff and popular toys at risk of being completely sold out.

However it is a curious economic picture, with takings in shops across the country down by £20m a week compared to October this year and it does look as though times are tough on the High Street.

About the only sector of the country not feeling the economic pinch, it seems, is top level football.

Read the gossip columns each morning and teams are said to be spending astronomical sums on players in the January window. Manchester United are to be close to spending nearly £40million on players, if you believe what is on there today at any rate, with Chelsea also set to buy all sorts of players.

When the spending in the last transfer window – which ended on August 31^st -  was totted up, clubs had spent something in the region of £485 million.

That in itself represented a significant increase on the previous year’s spending with some putting it as a 33% rise – hardly in keeping with the general economic picture.

So are the big clubs totally removed from economic reality? The answer on the face of it is yes – with many clubs breaking their transfer records in the last 12 months and players wages reaching what seems to be astronomical levels, some players again reportedly, are believed to be on £200,000 a week.

But that maybe doesn’t tell the whole story. Outside the top level teams are struggling as badly – and perhaps worse than they have done -  for years and even within the top tier there is only certain teams that are doing any spending at all. Everton for example have hardly signed a player for a cash sum in years.

Football expert at accountancy firm Deloitte, Dan Jones explained recently "This summer's spending [was] largely focused amongst the top end Premier League clubs most strongly competing for domestic and European success and the consequent financial rewards.”

So the big six teams, then, and the likes of Stoke City, who spent £22m on the back of their rich owners benevolence are the only ones to really splash the cash.

But then of course, even those clubs aren’t totally immune from High Street pressures. Hardly any of the Premier League Clubs have raised ticket prices in the last few years (indeed my own, at a mid table Premier League outfit has been the same price since 2008). Now, those prices were too high anyway, and they remain so, but at least those fans that are already forking out too much for their clubs aren’t being asked to pay even more.

Many fans are now opting to stay away all together, as pubs are offering live games from foreign channels – a practice that was thought to be illegal until a Portsmouth landlady won her case the other week.

The problem that football will have in the future is that largely, as we have written on these blogs before, clubs aren’t self-sufficient, with many relying on their rich owners to sign cheque’s and although the UEFA financial fair play rules, which come into force soon are meant to stop the sort of massive losses that the likes of Manchester City have recorded, there are ways around it, as the deal to sponsor City’s ground has shown.

So it could be some time yet for the economic austerity that is affecting so much of life elsewhere truly hits football.

All that remains to say is to wish all our readers and customers a very Happy Christmas. We are open throughout the Christmas period, but the blogs will return in the New Year.

Thursday Night's, Channel Five - And The Hotel Owners Hopping Mad

There was a lot of bluster and nonsense surrounding Manchester United’s Champions league exit. A lot of people said some pretty stupid things.

It was “embarrassing” said Patrice Evra. It was a “penalty” according to Sir Alex Ferguson. And the headline writers went into overdrive.

And in fairness to Evra, the players probably should feel embarrassed, they are highly paid and excellent footballers and ones who should have managed to qualify from the group in which they found themselves.

You have to have less sympathy with Sir Alex, as his comments were a little bit ridiculous and met with short shrift from UEFA president Michel Platini who said: 'The world does not revolve around England, I like England a lot, it's football is fantastic, it's supporters are wonderful but you shouldn't criticise the Europa League just because you've played in three Champions League finals.”

But one fact that came out of all fluff and conjecture did make us take notice it is that Manchester United stand to lose around £20m in TV money as a result of their dismissal from the group.

That £20m is before, you suspect, the lost ticket revenue, the prize money the programmes, the shirts, the merchandise is taken into account – in short it is a big loss.

Dan Roan, Sports News Correspondent at the BBC paints a bleak picture, on his blog he wrote: "Given the interest repayments United have to pay each year to service their vast debt, an exit from the Champions League is highly damaging. Being condemned to what many fans will see as the Thursday night purgatory of the Europa League is an embarrassment for a club of such ambition. The defeat also raises serious questions about the Glazers' ownership and will intensify the pressure on them to invest in a blockbuster midfield signing.”

Now, that might just be hype, but whatever financial pressures are, it is quite clear it is a situation that would have been best avoided, and one which has wider implications than might have been first imagined.

It is not just the football club’s that are worried about lost revenue. The City of Manchester itself relies on football income to help its tourist industry – an industry that is worth £5.4bn annually, or to put it another way, the equivalent of 75,000 full time jobs.

The previous occasion when Manchester United didn’t qualify for the latter stages of the Champions League was back in 2005-6 and according to the Chair of the Manchester Hoteliers Association there was a marked drop off in hotel bookings in that period, of course this year there is the fall back – for both United and City – of playing on the Europa League, but are those games as attractive?

The average champions league visitor, it seems would spend on average £776 on their visit to the city and that is revenue that might be missed out on. Depending, of course on how seriously the two clubs take the competition.

So it seems that whilst the Manchester teams are smarting at the results last week, it is the City of Manchester as a whole that may have to pay the “Penalty.”

Welcome to Channel Five on a Thursday night – its not that bad, you know.