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Not everyone is convinced by the crocodile tears and PR onslaught of a controversial midfielder’s transfer saga, Mark Brophy among them.

Joey Barton’s departure from Newcastle United a few days before the end of August was the end to a long, tortuous tale. The club claim he drew away from negotiations on a new contract shortly after the sale of Andy Carroll without replacement in January, followed by the withdrawal of their contract offer, and ever since it has seemed likely that Barton would leave. Despite other influential players also leaving in that period, Barton’s public pronouncements through the summer have guided the story rather than the series of transfers.

In terms of events the narrative is a straightforward one. A player concerned about the direction their club is taking, and seeking a new and improved contract with a year to go on the old one, doesn’t receive an offer meeting his expectations. As the summer draws on the player engineers a bust-up with club staff and is informed he can leave immediately on a free. Just before the end of the transfer window another club makes an offer which he accepts.

What is different here from, say, Samir Nasri’s move from Arsenal to Manchester City is Barton’s use of social media to communicate directly with fans. Whereas Nasri criticised Arsenal supporters both before and after his move was complete, Barton tweeted his version of events always in a way guaranteed to appeal to Newcastle fans. The bust-up itself partially took place on Twitter, Barton repeatedly criticising the way the club was run, though he was careful to restrict his criticism to the club hierarchy.

He claimed he would only leave for football reasons to a Champions League club, his frustration at the club’s transfer dealings being a factor. He then claimed he wanted to stay but was continuing to wait for a contract offer from the club. Even at the 11th hour, having spoken to QPR, his eventual destination, he communicated his need for time and space to think, the inference being that he was torn by the possibility of leaving a club for which he felt a genuine affinity.

The saga as viewed through the Barton prism fed into widespread supporter disquiet at the running of the club. He portrayed himself as a victim, being forced out by a club wishing to rid itself of a high-earning player who no longer fitted their preferred profile. There’s a certain amount of truth to this in the sense that if the club felt he was worth it they would have offered him more. A display of reluctance to leave even when offered more money again played to the wish of the fans to believe that the player feels the same as they do.

Many fans took his tweets at face value, which gained him considerable support in the stand-off. That might not have been true had he attempted to put his case via more traditional media, being filtered by the view of the reporter in question. If Barton’s primary purpose was to highlight the club selling last season’s best performers without adequate replacement, then it is ironic that his actions had the opposite effect, in diverting focus from worries about the club overall onto endless discussion of himself.

The Twitter rant that provoked his transfer listing did not precipitate a change in modus operandi at the club but instead created an opportunity to gain a lucrative transfer for himself. The Champions League suitors happily confirmed initially by his agent failed to materialise. He leaves to a club with a no more impressive list of summer transfers than Newcastle, though with better communication of their ambitious vision for the future following a very recent takeover.

With a year left on his contract he had no need to go anywhere immediately and, whatever reluctance to leave he may have felt, leave he eventually did. So this cannot in truth be portrayed as a move for footballing betterment, with neither club likely to trouble trophy engravers any time soon. If leaving by choice, as seems to be the case, the improved contract must have helped concentrate Barton’s mind. Now the transfer has gone through, it is his protestations of loyalty which most jar, a 21st century equivalent of badge-kissing.

Why then did Barton bother with a PR exercise in self-justification aimed at fans of a club he was agitating to leave, if that is what he was doing? Cod psychology might suggest Barton’s overriding need to be loved, but he could more reasonably have been driven by a wish to maintain the possibility that the interest of other clubs would persuade Newcastle to offer the contract he desired. If Barton’s time at Newcastle is to have a legacy, it may be that players become aware of an easy method of hedging their bets publicly while pushing for a lucrative move behind the scenes. 

From WSC 296 October 2011

Steve Menary explores the growing number of transfer fees that remain undisclosed and the reasons behind it

Debate over the size of transfer fees is part of football, but an increasingly endangered part. Players now – certainly at lower levels – are increasingly sold for “undisclosed” amounts. Clubs, players and agents are within their rights to withhold the relevant figures but this trend is also short-changing fans.

AFC Bournemouth reputedly received £1 million from selling striker Danny Ings to Burnley recently, but the fee – like that of six other players sold over the past year – was undisclosed. Estimates suggest debt-free Bournemouth will eventually earn £3m but manager Lee Bradbury is bringing in free transfers and loans.

With club accounts repeatedly delayed, Cherries fans are split. Chairman Eddie Mitchell is either praised for righting a debt-laden ship or decried as an asset-stripper. The situation works in reverse too. Driven by an ambitious chairman, a club splashes out untold sums on players for undisclosed fees, then the chairman disappears as the club collapses. Those left picking up the pieces are often the fans, who – if transfer fees had been disclosed – could have queried their club’s spending much earlier.

Transfer fees are lodged with the FA and available in club accounts but the figures quoted are often an amalgamation, and few lower-league clubs voluntarily make any financial details available anyway. FIFA-licensed agent Faizal Khan explains: “To aid cash flow, it may be a transfer fee of £20m is paid in instalments over three years with a player in exchange and other benefits. The £20m deal may only be £7m in cash today and be made up of instalments, player bonuses, a high-profile pre-season friendly and lump sums after the player makes international caps to, in time, all add up to £20m.

“To not rock the boat, it is sometimes best not to disclose everything. If the selling club publishes that they sold a player for £20m yesterday and do not spend near £20m in that transfer window on replenishing the squad, some fans will go beserk.”

That creates pressure on managers and owners, but the most thick-skinned of the latter simply carry on regardless, particularly in the lower divisions where there is less focus. “Figures are reported in mainstream media and you get that figure from people close to the deal, like the buying or selling club or the agent,” says Nick Harris, chief sports news correspondent at the Mail on Sunday and editor of sportingintelligence.com. “Sometimes those figures are accurate, sometimes that are very wide of the mark. Premier League clubs will be scrutinised as more journalists are asking questions, but in the second or third division, if the local papers don’t have the will or the power and the owners don’t want people to know, there’s not a lot you can do.”

Since October 2010, clubs transferring players internationally must lodge details – including fees – with FIFA’s Transfer Matching System, which was used for 2,451 international transfers in the first transfer window of 2011. The combined transfer value of those deals was $320m (£197m) and FIFA estimate more than 4,000 clubs use a system that is bound by Swiss data protection laws and confidential.

With FIFA mired in allegations of corruption and the debacle of the failed England 2018 World Cup bid, there is an urgent need for more transparency in football. The Football Supporters’ Federation (FSF) recently launched a campaign to make the game subject to the Freedom of Information Act. This, however, would only apply to governing bodies rather than clubs. “We haven’t got a policy on disclosing transfer fees, but it’s something most fans would want to see,” says Michael Brunskill, FSF director of communication.

The FA and Football League do not have policies on disclosure of transfer fees, while Premier League spokesman Dan Johnson says: “It’s down to individual clubs and some feel it is commercially sensitive so choose not to. Also, it’s sometimes a case that what the buying and the selling club wish to present are slightly different variations – adding in or not taking account of various clauses such as appearance, international or success payment triggers in the contract.”

Even the most blinkered fan must appreciate that disclosing how much money has been paid out or received during a transfer window is not conducive to good business. If a player is attracting interest from a club flush with cash from a big sale of its own, a bigger fee will be demanded.

In the longer term, annual disclosure of money spent during a season would at least give fans greater clarity on what is happening to their club and some of their money.

From WSC 296 October 2011

Fans are raising funds for their clubs through a variety of means, writes Rich Middleton

You would be hard pressed to work out what a gnome dressed in a Mansfield Town home kit has to do with former Stoke and Swansea striker Paul Connor. Saying that, the link between Oxford United’s Jake Wright and a crested mug could be considered to be equally confusing. But both footballers have been direct recipients of creative financing as fans turn to new and increasingly innovative methods to fund players’ salaries.

Read more…

The arrival of a Chechen billionaire has cause some strange developments at Swiss club Neuchatel Xamas, Paul Joyce investigates the new owner’s erratic influence

When Chechen billionaire Bulat Chagaev became the new owner of Neuchâtel Xamax in May, many supporters were optimistic. Swiss champions in 1987 and 1988, Xamax had struggled to stay in the Super League since promotion in 2007. Chagaev, who is also the main sponsor of Terek Grozny, promised to raise the club’s annual budget to CHF30 million (£23m). “We will quickly take on the most incredible challenges in Europe, starting with the Champions League,” he predicted.

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Saul Pope follows offical attempts to control rising racism in the Russian Premier League, which are proving ineffective and ill-targeted

The first phase of the Russian season has been a busy one but unfortunately most of the action has involved incidents in the crowd rather than excitement on the pitch. In 15 rounds fans have twice racially abused Anzhi Makhachkala’s Roberto Carlos with bananas, and other black players with monkey noises. Zenit, Spartak and Dinamo Moscow supporters have torn out seats, fought the police and thrown fireworks at several venues. There has also been tension between Moscow sides and the newly powerful teams from the Caucasus.

The problems are not new but they are on the increase. The most disappointing aspect has been the failure of the football authorities to find an adequate way of dealing with them. It is disappointing, yet to Russian football fans not surprising.

The Russian Football Union (RFU) regularly fines clubs whose fans have offended, but seems impotent when it comes to punishing individuals – and much less powerful than the clubs themselves. The identities of those who abused Roberto Carlos remain a mystery. Following the first incident at Zenit St Petersburg, RFU president Sergey Fursenko told the press it was “essential that Zenit seek out this perpetrator, prevent him from coming to matches, and give [us] his name and place of work”. He suggested this would teach like-minded people a lesson, but Zenit didn’t agree – the club claimed to have found and disciplined the racist, but wouldn’t reveal his name “for his own safety”.

An image of the fan who threw a banana at Roberto Carlos at Krilya Sovetov three months later was published just hours after the incident. Fursenko said he would be immediately brought to justice and the  Premier League’s security director said they would get his name. He is still at large.

Part of the problem is that current laws are outdated. A new “fans’ law”, which would make it possible to blacklist individual troublemakers, was first mentioned more than two years ago in WSC 265 and is supposed to be enacted later this season. Fan groups – who get the blame for much of the trouble at stadiums – are opposed, fearing the police would abuse any extra power they were given, and claiming they’re being made scapegoats for a general slide towards a more violent society.

The authorities are at least making a show of taking their concerns seriously, probably because they fear the worst. Led by intelligent but shadowy individuals with disaffected, nationalistic youths as footsoldiers, fan groups make up considerable parts of crowds and are capable of causing mass disorder as well as creating more articulate demonstrations. At the Russia v Armenia Euro 2012 qualifier held in St Petersburg in June, fan groups revealed a banner saying: “Before the law.” During the second half they emptied an entire stand, leaving behind a second slogan: “After the law.”

Of course, the fan groups may be resisting something that won’t work in any case: observing the law properly is a weakness of both law enforcers and citizens in modern Russia. Writing in Sport Express, Evgeny Dzichkovsky felt only draconian measures would truly overcome the problem: “If we don’t want fans to kick Russian football to the gutter, they need to live in fear of real punishments, not cardboard ones. Pavlov created an efficient mechanism for this a long time ago… So that the clubs don’t simply buy their way out of trouble and work seriously with their fans, they [the fans] need to be put into a situation where they are unable to act in any other way but one.”

Maybe efforts would be better put into tackling the root causes of the problems. While the talk is currently of punishment, few are asking why there are growing nationalistic and aggressive cabals at stadiums in the first place. Racists are usually criticised with the caveat that the whole world is battling with such problems, as if the monkey noises and the flying fruit are a regular part of matches everywhere. That such a famous player as Roberto Carlos was abused seems to have caused more upset than previous incidents among ordinary fans. However, regretful comments on Championat.ru were combined with banana jokes, moaning about political correctness gone mad and claims of Russians being victimised.

The first step to solving such problems might lie in Russia realising – at all levels of society – that their crowd problems are worse than in other European leagues of similar stature. The second would be trying to understand why. Expensive and long-winded it might prove to be, but it would bring about better results than even more cardboard laws.

From WSC 295 September 2011