Everyone with a Twitter account agrees about the expulsion of Bury Town from the Football League. Something must be done!
Fans, MPs and journalists want:
tougher rules about club owners
more monitoring to stop clubs being run badly
spread the money around more fairly
oh, and an independent inquiry
and, um, give more power to fans.
Forgive me for not joining the chorus. You see, I was saying all this nearly three decades ago. I believe I was actually the clever clogs who coined the term “the blazers” to deride the old duffers running the game.
But what I thought and spouted then was arrant tosh – just as most of what has been written and broadcast about Bury (and Bolton), and 99 per cent of the chuntering on Twitter, is glib nonsense.
Let’s go through that list of what everyone thinks should be done to stop another Bury happening:
Tougher rules about owners.
The EFL’s much-mocked owners’ and directors’ test (formerly known as the “fit and proper person test”) is a 4,000-word document. It is comprehensive and stringent. It is far tougher than, for instance, the similar test applied by the Charity Commission to people who run charities.
Steve Dale, cast as the villain in the Bury story, would have been stopped from buying the club for a quid in December 2018 if the test had been applied. But the EFL didn’t know about Dale’s purchase of Bury until it had happened.
And if the EFL had blocked his takeover retrospectively, Bury would have gone out of business straight away. He was only able to buy the club because it was teetering on the brink of bankruptcy.
I understand why people want to believe that the EFL leadership and staff are all useless – because if that were true, it would be easy to solve the problem of failing football clubs: just get better folk in at the EFL.
I used to think all football administrators were senile, but I have come to understand that I was being extraordinarily arrogant. The folk I got to know at the EFL are good people. None of them is stupid or indolent. I couldn’t do better than them, and neither could any of those demanding: “Something must be done!”
More monitoring of clubs to stop them being run badly.
Stewart Day, the Bury owner before Dale, did some good things at Bury. He tried hard, for instance, to develop their academy. But his building business ran into trouble and he had no money left to put into his other failing business: 134-year-old Bury FC.
So he used the club’s stadium, Gigg Lane, as surety against loans for the club. It was a desperate move, but it was neither uncommon nor illegal. And how else could he raise money for the club? He couldn’t borrow against future ticket sales, because crowds were so miserably low.
Bury didn’t publish their accounts after May 2017. That was against EFL rules and against company law.
But if the EFL had stepped in and punished Bury – by docking points or imposing a transfer embargo – they would have hastened the club’s demise.
The Bury story isn’t about a failure of monitoring. It’s about a company failing to comply with monitoring procedures and then just failing.
Spread the money about more fairly.
There is a superficial appeal in the idea that some of the dosh sploshing about in the Premier League should be used to save clubs like Bury.
But the rules of both the EPL and the EFL prevent clubs from giving each other money – and for good reason. If, say, Manchester City were to give Bury a few million, that would be palpably unfair to other clubs in League Two. And it would encourage other chairmen to spend irresponsibly if they thought a wealthy neighbour might bale them out.
In fact, Manchester City did try to help. They let Bury use their old training facilities at Carrington for a peppercorn rent.
An independent inquiry.
There will be one. I expect a Parliamentary Committee will huff and puff with self-righteous indignation. Perhaps some good ideas will emerge. Perhaps not.
But no inquiry will find an answer to the underlying issue, which is this: companies sometimes go under.
Give more power to the fans.
Hmm. Let’s think how that worked out at Notts County. The supporters’ trust saved the day when County went into administration in 2003. They ended up with 60 per cent of the shares. Six years later they sold them to Quadak Investments for £1. Sven Goran Erikson was appointed manager, Sol Campbell signed, and there was a plan to be in the Premier League in five seasons. The trust did their due diligence, and were persuaded that Quadak were backed by Middle Eastern royalty.
They weren’t. So NCFC didn’t make it to the Premier League. They went into the Conference instead, all because the supporters’ trust had allowed themselves to dream.
And so what is the answer? What is the something that needs to be done?
Well, this week I got into a small twitter spat with a Villa fan (as you do).
Immodest as ever, I invite you to read our exchange:
Him: A Premier League team losing to a League 2 team is an embarrassment.
Me: Nope. I’m still enjoying winning the EFL at your place. Tonight was a run out for our resssies.
Him: And when this season ends, your club will be back where they belong in the Championship while we will remain among the elite. Spending a ludicrous £1m after being promoted, small club mentality that is.
Me: How tragic, as football mourns Bury, that you measure ‘ambition’ by the amount of dosh a club spaffs up the wall. Tell Bury fans that this morning. #ncfc ambition is to show the game doesn’t have to be like that. Invest in kids and coaching: harder and braver but infinitely better.
Spot on Mick. Football Clubs are businesses, large and small, and businesses go bust sometimes. Look at the large retailers of 15-20 years ago, how many are still around? If any business spends more than it earns, the end is nigh. Simple
Yup. In the proverbial cold light of day all too true, and a healthy corrective to the sentimental tosh about Bury, which seems to me all too typical of the public discourse in these pathetic cake-and-eat-it, bring-back-the-empire, Brexit-befuddled dog days of silly season 2019.
Football fans are all too good at spending other people’s money, especially if it comes from oligarchs, oil states, betting companies or porn barons. What’s truly exciting about the ‘Webberlution’ at Ncfc is the attempt to run a football club as a proper business, unlike every other (yes every other!) Professional football club in England.
As readers of this great website may recall, I gave up on Big Football a good while ago (with a residual interest and pride in little old Norwich, my former home of 30 years) and took out a season ticket at Dulwich Hamlet. Even at this level , conference south, Dulwich are the only self-financing profitable club in the division, with crowds of 2000-plus and a new stadium on the horizon. They recently went full-time professional (at this level paid all year round, and training three morning’s a week) and an almost entirely new squad, taking a while – it must be said – to settle.
I often wonder how other clubs keep going, with crowds barely a tenth the size. The answer seems to be dodgy local businessmen/wannabe heroes in most cases, I.e. just the kind of spivs and chancers that got Bury into trouble. In any normal economy most of them would have gone to the wall long ago…
Mick.
By all accounts up here in Blackpool it is being rumoured that a consortium had and still has £7m and a ready to step into the breach and save Bury.
EFL are refusing to change their decision and the seller has asked for the expulsion to be approved by all EFL clubs not just the board.
It is also rumoured that the full £7M is sitting in a bank account and the EFL has seen proof of this money.
EFL are in a difficult position and now some of the Bury players are looking at taking legal action against them.
surely now is the time to call an EFL meeting of all clubs and put it to a vote once and for all if all clubs vote on reinstatement so be it and vice versa then close the matter.
When some one buys a club they have to show the EFL they have a plan on how to run and finance the club but does that mean they actually have the money, like Sunderland when it was sold the money thst came from relegation was used to pay of the American surely that can’t be right yet the EFL let it happen.
In other countries and other sports when you take a club on you have to put up a BOND that is a guarantee for any future depts and wages the EFL should have a similar system.
Whilst I enjoyed the article I was put off by the brexit party advert in the middle of it , very distasteful for a football site
Oh mate … am so sorry. Those who know me, will know that’s the last thing I’d want on MFW. Alas, these are third party ads, controlled by algorithms beyond my comprehension but based on the internet activity of the devise/pc in question. Apologies again.
This, as Mick wrote and others have said above, is a very difficult issue. There are no easy answers on tap I’m afraid.
I would be very much against the concept of, say, Man Utd or City helping out as has been mooted elsewhere. What would that do for Accrington, Rochdale or even Fleetwood who are at least trying to keep their heads above water?
It’s the same in every business. If the guy at the top is dishonest the employees are out of a job, he “legitimately” folds the company and starts up again under a different name.
A massive global company I worked for over a long period of time would buy a smaller business simply to get the licence for their products which could be made far cheaper elsewhere. Within a year the manufacturing site would be closed and all in situ had redundancy notices.
The site would be closed and sold off – sometimes even for housing with local authority connivance. Double profit.
This attitude runs through the veins of businessmen and football is no different.
I’m as sorry for Bury supporters as I am pleased for the Trotters.
As I’ve said for a couple of years now, maybe Delia and Michael aren’t so bad after all.
A very good read.
Weird, just retread Mick’s article 3 times and couldn’t find any mention of Br exit! Then noticed a reference in a later response, think R.N. needs to calm down.
As if I’d permit such an advert on MFW (that is in my control)!
Must admit I didn’t see it either!
Spooky.