Search: ' Financial Fair Play'

Manchester City have been mocked for low attendances but the criticism is a cheap shot which ignores glaring facts about their supporters, states Matthew James

Back in Manchester City’s darkest days of the late 1990s, as they battled the likes of Macclesfield to escape the third tier, the odd article began appearing in the press mocking attendances at certain home games. They caused outrage among City fans, always sensitive to media bias. They even generated sympathy in neutral readers, who regarded them as unnecessarily mean-spirited and unfair, given the traumas the club had experienced and the fact that crowds had generally been good.

A decade and a half later and the numbers are under scrutiny again, except this time with no lower-league mitigation. Now the issue is that only 37,500 turned out for a Champions League match against Roma, and the reaction was immediate. Rio Ferdinand, inevitably, took to Twitter to treat us to his instant opinion, ridiculing the expansion of the Etihad, while on ITV the increasingly Keane-esque Paul Scholes criticised what he saw as the supporters’ apathy towards the competition.

Fan loyalty is always a sensitive issue, and reaction is naturally defiant when the criticism comes from the enemy, but did they have a point? On the surface, the stadium enlargement might look a folly if you can’t fill it for a Champions League game, but it should be noted there is a waiting list for season tickets. As for the Scholes comments I would say it probably is true that the fans have yet to fall in love with the competition, due to a lack of special nights in their first three campaigns.

If you’re looking for excuses you can point out that it was the third home game in ten days, and then there is the ever-present issue of cost, but in reality it looks like an anomaly, plain and simple. The attendance was back up to 45,000 for the CSKA Moscow debacle, while there has been no pro-rata drop-off in interest in the other competitions. League games are played to full houses, while the two League Cup matches either side of Roma drew a creditable average of 36,500.

Behind all this discussion are the questions of how many supporters City have, how many do people think they have, and how many do those people think they should have. There is an assumption that trophies and star signings would attract them in droves. One of the key indicators used to chart the rise of a newly successful club is the number of replica shirts cropping up in pubs and playgrounds, particularly beyond the usual catchment area, and the light blue has certainly become a more common sight. But while impressionable kids and needy adults in far-off towns may be happy to suddenly claim allegiance, and even spring for a shirt as the price of reflected glory, there is a huge step up in commitment to being willing to board a coach and trek to the stadium. City simply do not have reservist armies of fans ready to step in.

And why should they? City are traditionally a parochial club, drawing their support almost exclusively from Greater Manchester, including some of its poorest areas, and building beyond that to the point where tickets become like gold dust could take a decade or more of success. With City’s recent history prior to the foreign takeovers it’s impressive that they even maintained the foothold they did, given people had an option across town that would actually bring them some happiness. Fans of, say, Newcastle United are rightly lauded for their commitment, but it has to be noted they don’t have to share their city with anyone, let alone the Manchester United empire. A market analyst who was ignorant of the peculiarities of fandom would be amazed City didn’t go the way of Bebo and Betamax long before their current renaissance.

The crowd for the first Champions League home game of the season was undoubtedly underwhelming, and given City’s financial situation it is understandable that people would seize an opportunity to take them down a peg. But I believe the support deserves to be cut some slack, thanks to dues paid over years of disappointments. One thing is for sure, if all that cash were to disappear and the club imploded once again, the same people would be there for Rochdale as they were for Roma.

From WSC 335 January 2015

The annual WSC writers’ competition was set up for amateur writers with a legacy left by long-standing contributor David Wangerin, who died in 2012. Submissions had to be based on any aspect of last season. The winner in 2014 was Charlie Monaghan’s account of how diving has infected all levels of the game

“Oh come on! He gave me the option!” An 11-year-old’s desperate plea for a foul to be given in a game of keep-ball during training on a chilly Saturday morning. Glaring, I shake my head and make a mental note. At the end of the session I get all the boys together – the squad is strong for the relatively low level they play at and should go on to win the league – and we summarise the main points worked on this morning. I remind them of where we are meeting tomorrow for our game and what kit to bring. Before they disperse, I introduce a new team rule.

Read more…

Gary Andrews explains how 3G pitches are becoming a more attractive option for non-League clubs, despite resistance from the FA

As the 2012-13 non-League season reached its climax, plenty of clubs will have envied Maidstone United. This wasn’t due to the Stones’ league position – they finished second in the Isthmian League Division One South and were promoted through the play-offs – but instead it was because of their 3G pitch, which registered just one postponement during the season. Non-League is more susceptible to bad weather than higher divisions but even allowing for the inevitable winter postponements, this year’s extended cold snap, snow and rain led to huge fixture pile-ups across the divisions, as reported in WSC 314.

Read more…

by Richard Purden
Hachette Scotland, £8.99
Reviewed by Jonathan O’Brien
From WSC 311 January 2013

Buy this book

Even Celtic supporters – some of us, anyway – are often irritated by the self-mythologising flannel regularly parped out by sections of the club’s fanbase. “A cause”, “a rebel club”, “different”: all these claims are routinely made, with not very much at all to back them up. At face value, Richard Purden’s collection of interviews with Celtic fans – some famous, some not – looks like an attempt to perpetuate this sort of empty puffery. There’s more to it than that, though, and Purden shows plenty of imagination in his choices of interviewee. One of the best chapters in the book is a conversation with Roberto Longobardi, a longstanding Celtic fan from Rome who is so dedicated he visited the grave of Johnny Doyle, a winger who died aged 30 in 1981, during an away trip to Kilmarnock.

Longobardi cannot stress enough how much he detests the “shameful” Paolo di Canio, who is still held in high regard by a lot of Celts. “The only thing worse than a mercenary is a fascist,” he says. “We shouldn’t celebrate Di Canio’s time at Celtic because the Nazis and the Holocaust still hang over us.” He also tells Purden that Enrico Annoni, a “very good servant”, took the time to learn about the club’s history; unlike Massimo Donati, who, when unable to answer Longobardi’s questions about Celtic, mumbled sheepishly: “I don’t live in Glasgow.”

Simple Minds frontman Jim Kerr contributes a predictable but entertaining fusillade against the commercialisation of modern football, noting that “we know far too much” about the players’ wage packets and wives. He likens a pre-game ritual to a pre-gig one, not wanting to let the people down. Eddi Reader of Fairground Attraction tells how she tracked down her father’s old Rangers-supporting friends in a hardcore Bluenose pub. Composer James Macmillan’s heartfelt declaration that Catholicism is intrinsic to understanding the whole Celtic thing might raise eyebrows among those who regard the club as open to all.

Pat Nevin’s is the most distanced perspective, having started off as a Bhoys fan and ended up following Hibs. For some reason, he detests Martin O’Neill’s hugely successful 2000-05 side, deriding them as unwatchable and a “slightly more sophisticated version of [Wimbledon]”. Nevin claims incorrectly that the gifted Lubo Moravcik was frozen out: in fact, Moravcik played in two-thirds of league games under O’Neill then retired, not because he had been pushed to the margins by beefy-thighed warriors, but because he was 36 years old.

A few errors have slipped through, such as when Purden writes that Dermot “the Kaiser” Desmond is worth “145 billion euro”, a decimal point having vanished two points to the east at the crucial moment. He goes on to say that a “financial stake in Celtic isn’t just business”. Gordon Strachan, who was crucially denied the £800,000 required to sign Steven Fletcher in 2009, might disagree. Those aside, this is a diverting enough read, even if a number of the contributions stray the wrong side of maudlin, uncritical adoration.

Buy this book

by Simon Jordan
Yellow Jersey Press, £18.99
Reviewed by Matthew Barker
From WSC 306 August 2012

Buy this book

Simon Jordan has never been the easiest of people to warm to. The public perception has generally been that of a perma-tanned flash git and there is little in this book to suggest otherwise. However, plenty enjoyed those inspired rants in his short series of Observer columns (“If I see another David Gold interview on the poor East End Jewish boy done good I’ll impale myself on one of his dildos,” etc).

Anyone hoping for more of the same in this autobiography is going to be disappointed. Yes, there is some fun to be had here, but the prose can be so clunky at times, full of bland cliches and feeble geezerisms, that it is clear Jordan benefited from a decent sub-editor when it came to his newspaper work.

The arc of Jordan’s time at Selhurst Park encompasses some crucial moments, both for Crystal Palace and English football at large. Beginning with the failure of ITV Digital and ending with his club in administration nine years later, there is a simmering anger in these pages, erupting in a perfect storm after 2004’s promotion and Iain Dowie quitting after the traumas of the following season. The fallout was bitter. To prove a charge of fraudulent misrepresentation in the ensuing court case, investigators even seized the departed coach’s laptop.

Jordan is keen throughout to portray himself as the progressive young buck, kicking against the grey-haired, grey-suited establishment of club owners. Some of the promised score-settling turns out to be pretty tame. It is no great surprise that David Sullivan comes across as a nasty little man, making a point of loudly asking Jordan in the middle of the Birmingham boardroom if he was gay. The witty riposte – “Why? Do you fancy a crack at me?” – was equally crass.

Former Charlton chairman Richard Murray challenges Jordan to a fight after an invitation to lunch is turned down, while Steve Coppell, Peter Taylor and Trevor Francis are all portrayed as cheerless mopes of varying degrees. Steve Bruce, despite the whole gardening leave episode, remains “a firm friend”.

There is, as you might expect, a fair bit of bragging too. Our man flits between his “exclusive Chelsea penthouse suite” and Puerto Banus, living in a world full of “beautiful ladies”. Even more galling is his boasting about his friendship with former Wimbledon chairman Charles Koppel, a “close ally against all football bullshit”.

For all that, reading the final chapters, Jordan’s frustration and eventual weary resignation as he bemoans the grip of agents and watches as a succession of homegrown talent leaves the club, is palpable. The passages describing his attempts to avoid insolvency have a gripping inevitability; the sums of money quoted are startling and depressing. Jordan invested and lost a lot. And you have to feel for him.

Palace appear to have done better than most clubs after the shock of administration, but the game’s landscape continues to alter and present new challenges, with the Elite Player Performance Plan and Financial Fair Play both starting to kick in. Maybe Jordan should write a column about it.

Buy this book