Once upon a time, earlier on in my real career in book publishing, I was present at some tense negotiations in which a nicotine moustachioed representative of the National Union of Journalists lost the room a bit with the old adage that ‘property is theft’. At the time, our smooth operator of a company MD plunged his head into his hands, the look on his face something akin to that of a Newcastle United supporter on being told that Joe Kinnear would be returning to Tyneside. This week, however, while pondering how Royston Drenthe has continued to prolong his career…
All posts tagged Finances
Dilemmas of Football Ownership: History and the Need for Change
For the second of our posts exploring the theme of football ownership, we are pleased to welcome Jon Keen, a long-standing supporter of Reading Football Club and founding member of STAR (the Supporters’ Trust at Reading). Jon is also a regular contributor to Reading blog, The Tilehurst End. Here, Jon unpacks the issue while asking the inevitable question of how it came to all this? Jon can be followed on twitter at @urzz1871. … Remember the days when hardly anyone knew who owned their football club? Or if they did, they cared even less? When the only time you heard about a club’s…
Dilemmas of Football Ownership: Are Foreign Owners or Dodgy Owners the Problem?
When Vincent Tan, the Malaysian owner of Cardiff City, made the – apparently unilateral - decision to change the club’s colours from blue to red, I posted a few remarks on Twitter intended to express some solidarity with those Cardiff supporters who felt that this change was the last straw. Some fans had even made the painful decision to stop going to watch their own club as a result. I’ve long had an interest in football history and its emblems and wrote a blog about the subject in 2012. I can’t remember the exact words of my tweet but it…
How Swindon Town’s Link with Tottenham is Starting to Divide
We live in an era where the inviolable independence of football clubs is starting to become a thing of the past. After our recent examination of Charlton Athletic’s Belgian connection, guest writer Alex Cooke turns his attention to the somewhat looser but still significant link between Swindon Town and Tottenham Hotspur. Alex is a freelance writer and blogger and contributes to TheWashbag.com and WeAreGoingUp, largely on the subject of the Robins. He tweets on football as @stfconly. … ‘Everyone in the game is watching it with great interest’, according to Jed Roddy, the Premier League’s head of youth development and…
Which of Leicester City’s Players Will Step Up?
In this month’s issue of When Saturday Comes magazine, I cast an eye over Leicester City’s financial prospects as the club homed in on promotion to the Premier League. In all, my article was perhaps a little kind on the Foxes as I gave the benefit of the doubt to the view that the untold riches on offer post-promotion would wipe out the serious ‘ifs’ that surround the club’s economy. Those question marks are sizeable ones. A £34 million loss for the last recorded accounting period (2012-3), including staff costs of £26.1 million is far from small beer and if the…
Steve: "This pattern of local, long-term ownership was widespread, for a very...
The Scratching Shed: Good post. There's no question football clubs have to be better protec...
Lanterne Rouge: Cellino and Pigeon Detectives? Good grief. Recalls his fellow countrym...
JD: It's long been my maxim that once you sell out to a crook, the only wa...
Robbie Leslie: A very penetrating and thoughtful piece. Looks like we can lay the bla...
