This is not going to make me popular. My tin hat is near and handy. But the news today that Barnsley are now under the ownership of a consortium, which includes a Chinese billionaire, unsurprisingly made the ears prick up.
The circumstances that have led the Yorkshire club to this juncture are clearly very sad indeed – outgoing chairman Patrick Cryne has terminal cancer and recently wrote a letter to the club’s fans to say he was “living on borrowed time” – but however poignant the route, Barnsley now find themselves with some owners with deep pockets.
This doesn’t necessarily mean those deep pockets are going to be utilised immediately. It doesn’t mean cash will be hurled around willy-nilly. And it doesn’t mean they will be looking to play out their ‘It’s just like watching Brazil’ song for real anytime soon. But it does mean there were people out there willing to consider the prospect of investing some cash in a Championship club.
You know where this is going…
The message emanating from the Norwich City corridors of power differs slightly depending on who is delivering it but the upshot is the same: Keep your grubby hands off – this club is not for sale.
Ed (Balls) was willing to accept that if offers were made those with the majority shareholding would at least listen, but equally made it crystal clear that no-one from the club would be pro-actively seeking any external investment.
Delia and Michael however, in the now infamous interview with Henry Winter, were rather less willing to entertain the prospect.
Michael was first up: they will never sell.
Delia compounded this: ‘The supporters will be very disappointed to hear that. But no way will we sell. We don’t even listen to any enquiries.’
There’s little need to try and read between the lines. We get it.
Since that damaging interview various attempts have been made to soften the message but however many times the words are re-arranged into a different order, the conclusion is the same with an added ‘it’s not as if there is a queue of billionaires all jostling for a piece of Norwich City FC’.
Quite why our club is so unattractive to those with said deep pockets has always remained a mystery. Are we not sexy enough? Are we *too* provincial? Do the sums not stack up? Or is it because in footballing circles it’s understood that Norwich City is staying in the family, so there is no point in even enquiring?
When the time comes for Delia and Michael to call it a day, her nephew Tom will be the recipient of their shares. Quite how that fits with the ‘no one shareholder shall hold more than 51% of the shares’ is probably a debate for another day but – and I stand to be corrected – Delia and Michael currently circumnavigate this rule by their c76% shareholding being split between them both.
I’ve briefly met Tom. He seems a very nice chap. He was complimentary about this very website. He’s also not going to be able to do anything creative with his shareholding when the time comes, at least not without a fight. Delia made clear his shares will be governed by a board of trustees, so should (heaven forbid) Tom wish to sell at any stage he will have to get their permission first.
Clearly Delia and Michael have an awful lot of love for this football club and feel very protective of it. We all do. None of us want to see us become another Coventry, Charlton or Blackburn. But equally none of us would object if we took the Bournemouth, Wolves or Leicester route.
We are acutely aware that lots of money does not automatically equate to success and no money does not automatically send you southward but if the choice is retaining or selling your crown jewels, then surely every avenue possible should be explored to help you keep them? Right now there appears an acceptance from the very top that this is our lot. Like it or lump it.
The perceived risk of someone other than themselves being in charge of this football club appears too great to be even worthy of a second thought for Delia and Michael.
Let’s dream for a moment though. If hell did freeze over and they found a worthy, upstanding, Norwich City supporting, English, Norfolk-based billionaire, just imagine the sheer level of due diligence that would be undertaken before any dotted line was signed. We could all rest safe in the knowledge that if it happens the groundwork will be done to death, along with the psychometric testing, the polygraph test and the boardroom initiation.
But that’s all hypothetical of course, which, given the size of the financial black hole we seem to be heading toward, is a shame.
Not a shame because we are yet to find our Mr or Mrs Right – he or she may indeed not be out there. But a shame because even if they are, there’s absolutely zero chance of finding them. And I’m not sure that’s how it should be.
Eloquently and persuasively put. I agree all options for additional investment should be explored, it would be interesting to know what Barnsley did in order to identify said investors?
My natural caution still leads me to thinking that there isn’t an pipeline of billionaires queuing up to buy & invest in any interested football club. My local club, Reading, has a chequered history of foreign owners and are largely back where they started but I would be delighted to be proved wrong.
Football is changing rapidly, the article in last Saturday’s Guardian about the business plan underpinning the Manchester City expansion & investment is potentially taking them beyond the reach of mere billionaires.
I grew up during the Canaries golden patch, running from the mid 70s to the early 90s, and I would love those times to return but success is always relative, we were second best to Ipswich in the 70s, got relegated in the season we won the Milk Cup and ultimately won nothing with the wonderful team of the early 90s.
So, by all means, we should shoot for the stars but we should still try to keep our feet on the ground.
Excellent article that ticks all the right boxes
The real tragedy of Norwich City is that they’re caught between two stools, billionaire or fan ownership, the only sustainable business models for modern professional football. For the reasons you’ve spelt out, Gary, they won’t take the dodgy money and motives of the former, and at least in England the latter only happens when clubs collapse and have to be rescued by local communities. The ‘self-funding’ route espoused by Norwich with the most honourable intentions is clearly going nowhere except mid-table mediocrity or league 1. I sincerely hope I am wrong but sadly suspect I’m not. Incidentally I read the guardian article about man city with mounting horror at the prospect of a global football empire; everything that’s wrong with Big Football, and the reason more and more real football fans are going to non-league.
“caught between two stools”
there’s a joke in there somewhere…
Hi Gary
I have said a few times on this site it is the conditions that will deter any potential investors to city.
I don’t know what other businesses the Smiths have so Delia and hubby might just be living on her royalties from books and reruns must be hard for poor millionaires.
I mentioned on another article today that my wifes stepfather is a Barnsley fanatic and texts have been pouring in about hiw they will leave city stranded in the championship.
As you say the word must have gone out that city is untouchable so don’t attempt an offer, no one is going to want to invest when they know it is a forgone conclusion that the Smiths are going to be hard nosed, This is supposed to be the thing they love most and eventually will smother it to financial death and as the old saying goes you hurt the ones you love.
All the good things will be forgotten when and if city get releated again but this time we will have no saviour and the banks will not be pressing for the money owed to be returned, surely the other board members must see the club needs investment or are they all cowtowing to the Smiths.
a very good article as always Gary, but can I pick up on 2 things that help see why there is a Barnsley deal and not a Norwich deal on this occasion.
As you mentioned, Patrick Cryne has terminal cancer, he has no succession plan and as a result, is forced to sell. Currently, Delia and Michael don’t have this problem, so nothing has changed in the “looking for investment” approach.
The second is that this is Chinese investment and Barnsley play in red, don’t be surprised if a little gold stripe is added to the kit next season.
I am sure Mick Dennis can confirm either way, but I would imagine that the board feel that the self funding approach is working. I would imagine that if I was in their position, I too would think “we’re making a good fist of this….” and I too would try and keep the model working and and trust in the team (by team here, I mean not only the players, but Steve Stone, Stuart Webber, marketing teams et al). We as fans who love our club all demanded Delia to sort it out, we demanded change and Delia along with the board have taken a big step towards a different model, a model that has meant a change in structure to what we have been used to, this new model is not meant as a quick fix, its a long plan that will require 3 or 4 more transfer windows. Sure we all want stability in the premier league and we all want it now, we know that’s where we should be anyway, and we have all debated the reasons why we are not there many times, Hughton should have gone earlier or Hughton shouldn’t have gone, who knows.
This new model isn’t the reason we have no money, Failure to stay up when we gambled is why we have no money. We signed players we shouldn’t, kept players we shouldn’t and sold players or dithered and missed out on players that would/could have kept us up. Mistakes were made and the board are doing everything possible to correct that.
I’d love a Norfolk Billionaire to surface and successfully plough money into our club so we can go to Real Madrid away in a few years, but right now, our owners don’t want to sell and so we have to accept a self funding strategy that is working.
To my mind, Marcel Franke is a perfect example of why this new structure is working and will work. We have a player, that came to play, he took the opportunity to leave the second tier of German football to prove himself in the second tier of English football, it hasn’t worked (so far), so he is heading to Germany to play, not sitting on the bench or in the U23’s to soak up wages just in case we change our mind like the Turner’s, Whittakers and Bassong’s of last season. A loan deal means if we need him come the summer he’s still ours, but for January to May, we just do not need him here draining money.
I do wonder if it is a love for the club, what make the stowmarket two are acting towards the holding of power . Or a desire to own and keep in the Smith dynasty ?
Because I do not see the best interests of the club and it’s supporters in there. There is very little in the way of progressing more a stagnant and stay still.
No doubt I’ll get shot, but do not care. in my book any credit they had for saving the club has long since been used up
Yes, your article is interesting, but I think Matt makes a series of valid points there too. This time last year, we were all screaming for a different model and approach, which we have now got. But because this model is – necessarily – taking time to embed, and we are hovering mid-table with parachute payments about to run out, we are all back to screaming about the ownership model and investment structure again.
As Matt says, there is a self-funding investment structure in place, managed by Stuart Webber, and through it he is endeavouring to rectify the transfer and investment failures of the last two/ three managers, going back to Chris Hughton, including the inability to capitalise on the investment in the Academy. Whilst football has become, unfortunately, an immediate results business, the laying of longer lasting foundations does not happen quite so quickly.
Whilst I am sure that Delia and Michael now regret that Times interview, let’s assume now that it can be interpreted differently. Since Delia and Michael are not making money from City, we can assume is what they meant there is they wish to stick to the cooperative model of funding that maintains City as a community based club. Tom Smith plays a significant role in the Community Sports Foundation, I understand, and this is a significant example of what is meant to them by a community based club.
Now, on the prickly subject of investment, I don’t believe that people like Stuart Webber, Ed Balls as chairman, and even Daniel Farke himself, would be particularly interested in the club, if there was really no likelihood of no new investment being made ever, even if there was a specific, immediate case for it. And as Dave Blowers analysis last week showed, such a case will not happen until 2019, even if we are not promoted at the end of this season. However, once we are in a situation where our expenditure significantly exceeds our income, before player sales come into the equation, the shareholders will have to look at the balance sheet and how they replace the lost parachute revenue. A further cut in the player wage bill, once the last expensive holdovers from the Premier League are removed from it, and the sale of 1-2 top players, without hugely weakening the time, won’t in all likelihood completely replace that income. So there will likely need to be some additional investment again, whether or not it is their own income, or someone else’s.
In respect of their own income, it’s been noted that their last zero interest loans to the club were repaid in our last season in the PL. Why were they repaid then? Well, one, because the club could afford to at that time, and two, because if the club might need that money again in the future, it is better that it is earning a more significant interest rate in the meantime, in order to enhance its value. The Smiths have not invested in the club in order to make money from it – they don’t – but in order to ensure its longer term sustainability. Such a sustainability is not possible unless periodic investments can be and are made at critical moment, in order to prevent a fire sale of all the club’s best player assets. You can bet the Smiths and the current management structure have thought about this.
There is no self-funding structure in place. That’s just a good marketing line.
If the model truly is self funding, then practice what you preach. If you’re in the Premier League and spending £107m with just a £97m income and then seek to justify the mad January spend with the line, “it’s what the fans wanted.”
Excellent piece Gary, sure to rattle more cages. With on field matters barely worthy of discussion it is inevitable that attention is turned to the reasons behind the demise.
“You asked for change, Delia gave it to you, if it’s not working its your fault”
Utter garbage, the change the people are talking about wasn’t the rearranging of a few deck hairs on the titanic, it was a change at the very top. No one called for this mess, it’s simply an exercise in self preservation.
Are they seriously trying to tell us that the only other person in the whole world worthy of owning Norwich city is a Norfolk billionaire? That failing that Delia smith or a random relative must hold the club in thrall for ever?
Thereby hangs the crux of the frustration, the mounting sense of rancour, of antipathy and the erosion of goodwill. Whatever Delia smith and her colleagues do or say, they will find zealous defenders and apologists who will attempt to shout down the protests.
I’m sure that the smiths do deeply regret the Times interview, so Ill judged was it and so damaging to their brand. Their problem is that once they bared their true thoughts and feelings they altered a great many perceptions and reinforced a great many others.
There are two possible outcomes to this conundrum, three if you count the sudden and most welcome upsurge in city’s fortunes culminating in success.
One is that the smiths change tack and welcome investment, relinquishing control in return for a fat profit and some ambassadorial role which precludes theM from decision making.
Two would be that the clubs steady decline continues and the loss of revenue from declining crowds and the acrimony force their hands.
Option two would leave the club in a far bigger mess than they found it in and has already nearly happened once. McNally averted it by using some long overdue common sense.
The self funding model isn’t working, it’s already led to chronic underperformance on the pitch and great unrest off it. If you think the level of complaint is extreme and unwarranted and it hurts your sensibilities just wait until they sell James Madison!