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Turners end their Canary courtship; everything is now back in that stormy melting pot

2nd September 2008 By Latest News Leave a Comment

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It was the shortest, official club statement of recent memory – but the one with, potentially, the biggest implication.

For in a brief, two paragraph statement, the hopes of an ordered succession to the ownership of Norwich City Football Club ended abruptly. Andrew and Sharon Turner had resigned.

The Norfolk-based 'heirs apparent' of TV chef Delia Smith and her husband Michael Wynn Jones had, presumeably, decided not to pursue their interest in the Championship football club. Down in deepest Kent, something in the corporate jungle stirred as Towergate billionaire Peter Cullum waited and watched with interest following his abortive – and bruising – approach this summer.

“It is with regret that Norwich City today confirmed Andrew and Sharon Turner have resigned as Board Directors,” the statement ead.

“In a statement, majority shareholders Delia Smith and Michael Wynn Jones said: 'We would like to place on record our thanks to Andrew and Sharon for their hard work and endeavour since they joined us and their interest-free loans to the club totalling ?2.5 million.'”

The Turners were, for now, staying silent as the founders of Central Trust ended their 15-month flirtation with the club. Having arrived amid much hope and expectation in the summer of 2007 – and all with that 300th-odd place on the Sunday Times Rich List attached – they were clearly in the next league millionaire-wise to Delia and Wynn Jones.

It may, however, simply be the case that they too recognised that they were not in the kind of league you now need to be; that football was a play thing for the Cullums of this world, not the Turners.

Whatever the precise reasons for their abrupt departure – and boardroom relations had been strained for several months – it merely ensures a period of deep anxiety and unease descends back on the Norfolk club; City's long – and, indeed, medium-term – future thrown back into a potentially very poisonous melting pot.

According to those close to the club's principal shareholders, they remain in a robust and determined mood.

With 12 years experience of running a football club under their belts, they remain all-too well versed in the financial pitfalls of owning a Championship football club.

For like every other professional football club, it doesn't play by the same rules as any other business institution.

Everything that you ever learned from running a business like Central Trust, you leave outside the boardroom door. Take that first step across the threshold and the game changes; good money pours in after bad.

Put all the processes, the people and the best-practices in place that you want, but if you entrust player selection to a manager of Peter Grant's inexperience you will end up with David Strihavka, Ian Murray and Julien Brellier.

Once in the building; once signed to two, three or four-year contracts, you are then beholden to pay those contracts up. Whatever happens. Them's the rules; that's the reality. And that's before you start to factor in the agents' fees and the transfer fees that enabled such moves to happen.

Do as much 'due diligence' on a player as you like, but if his Mrs refuses to settle, he has a fall-out with the gaffer within the first six weeks, he develops a serious gambling addiction, he picks up a chronic inury problem…. the list is endless. But that's what you're judged on. Human flesh and bones. Eleven of them; every weekend. At three o'clock. Not a balance sheet at the end of the first quarter.

It's a rough trade. Arguably getting rougher and rougher.

You watch Mike Ashley's 'love affair' with Newcastle United and wonder how much he regrets dipping his toe in the murky waters of the Tyne; Simon Jordan is ready to listen to offers for Crystal Palace – they are right back where they started in the middle of the Championship for all the ?60 million plus that Jordan must have thrown at the problem of sustaining a long-term place in the Premiership for a club of Palace's ilk.

Are Marcus Evans' reams coming true down the road at Portman Road? What's getting for his money this season, other than a load of grief on the back of two straight home defeats. Not what he signed up for; nor is Shola Ameobi and his 'hamstring trouble'.

Clearly there are other tensions at work – not least the general economic climate. For a company that has, in the good times, worked the loan market to such lucrative effect, Central Trust will not be immune to the ill-wind that's blown through the financial markets of late.

It could be a case of all hands on deck there; and with a young family to consider too, the Turners could yet have found themselves spread too thinly as various pressures mounted.

They had 14 months to get a real feel for Carrow Road; an insider's look at the way a football club operates and, maybe, simply didn't fancy the rough-house rules that exist.

The whole Cullum-gate affair will have left all concerned battered and bruised; in seeing off that big beast of the corporate jungle, relations may have become strained as the Turners played by the 'City' rules; keeping opinions to themselves whereas the Smiths might have preferred to fight their corner with less of a 'gentleman's agreement' attached.

Perhaps, in the midst of it all, the Turners recognised that – compared to the Towergate billionaire – they too would only ever be seen as 'poor millionaires'; that their riches would never be enough to satiate the wild expectations that Cullum's potential involvement fired into life.

Forget all the other bits and bobs; the reality of buying a Plc, in short. But the perception was that Cullum was about to whack a ?20 million cheque on the table for Glenn Roeder to spend on players.

Having witnessed first hand what ?20 million actually got you – a return ticket to the Czech Republic in Strihavka's case – perhaps the Turners simply figured on letting Cullum find out the had way just what a devil of a business running a football club is.

Unleash the beast of supporter expectation… right, you go and squeeze those dreams, those hopes back into the tin they came from.

The expectation that Cullum and his billions will now be riding to Norwich's rescue up the A11 will be running like a wild fire across the message-boards. Dampening such fires down and dealing with those same, fundamental realities of any Carrow Road takeover will test everyone concerned. To the limit, one fears.


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