Yes, English football needs leaders – but not mercenary opportunists like Joel Glazer and John W Henry
Henry Winter
, Chief Football Writer
Monday October 12 2020, 5.00pm, The Times
Yes, Joel Glazer, I saw you. I saw your contempt for English fans. I was there outside the main entrance at JJB Stadium in Wigan on May 11, 2008. I was chatting to Manchester United supporters an hour and 20 minutes before kick-off, genuine football people whose life revolves around this great club you’re privileged to own, proper football souls who care for the greatest game as well as their beloved club. And you swept past, smiling smugly.
Yes, Joel, I saw you, you ambitious ruler of the English game. I saw your bouncers pushing United fans out of the way, your fans. I saw your look, your sense of self-entitlement. I saw how out of touch you were with English football, the passion, the flaws, the glory, and you still are. As now, I saw then that you don’t understand the responsibility of being guardian of Manchester United, the absolute honour, and the opportunity for leadership for club and sport. You’re not fit to spend a second in the distinguished company of Sir Alex Ferguson and Sir Bobby Charlton, legends who have given so selflessly to club and sport.
We know your game, Joel. Your game is simple, fistfuls of dollars. Fair enough. Money’s your business, turning sport into business, into dollars. Sadly, you don’t have any emotional connection with United. Your game is the Bucs and the bucks.
But hear this: we don’t want Joel Glazer running English football. Fans, government, clubs don’t want the representative of a family who have taken almost £1 billion out of Manchester United deciding who is a fitting owner of another club, deciding how much other clubs should receive in broadcast money, restricting opportunity for those wanting to challenge him and his Gang of Six in this disgraceful, doomed “Project Big Picture”.
Welcome to English football: behind closed shops? No chance. We’ll fight the cabal. We don’t want Joel Glazer, or John W Henry at Liverpool, deciding that two places are to be cut permanently from the vibrant, competitive Premier League, that two places are to be cut permanently from the historic, passionately supported EFL?
Who are the leaders? Not you. “The fact that our two greatest clubs are showing leadership at a time when the game is crying out for it is fantastic,” Rick Parry, chairman of the EFL, told the Daily Telegraph. Parry’s right, the game is crying out for leadership, but not the type of commercial opportunism masked as altruism from Glazer and Henry.
Where have all the real footballing leaders gone? The men and women who thought of the interests of their sport first, themselves second? The people not seduced by the power, the inflating of their egos and, occasionally, bank balances? Where are those like David Dein and David Sheepshanks? Owners and administrators who cared.
Richard Scudamore kept the 20 Premier League owners in a line, which Richard Masters has failed to. Adam Crozier was a leader of the FA, too strong for the internal politics, but an undeniable leader. Ian Watmore walked away from the FA, exasperated by the agendas. English football is too riven with self-interest. Gordon Taylor at the PFA loves the game, genuinely, but fails to lead properly, sadly.
So a message to Glazer and Henry as you try to seize leadership of English football. Some humility, please, some respect for this great game, for this footballing country that nursed into life and codified this wonderful pastime that already provides you with such profits.
Please, some acknowledgment that fortunes, footballing and financial, fluctuate. Special status? How entitled you are. Know your history. Big six? Leicester and Leeds have won the title since Spurs have. Villa have won the European Cup more than City, Arsenal and Spurs. This is not to decry any of those magnificent clubs, simply to apply the big picture.
So, Joel and John, you don’t offer the leadership English football craves, the sense of financial probity and community. They do exist within football. I’d trust Mark and Nicola Palios at Tranmere Rovers and Steve Lansdown at Bristol City to lead the EFL better than Parry. Port Vale’s Carol Shanahan would represent and work better for the EFL than Parry; she cares for her club and community, and runs a hugely successful business.
I’d trust Matthew Benham at Brentford to do a better job with the maths than Parry, who is trying to sell football’s soul for £3.5 million a club. I’d trust Tony Bloom at Brighton to get the figures right without wronging anybody. I’d trust Clive Nates at Lincoln City, Andy Holt at Accrington Stanley and Simon Sadler at Blackpool to be more in tune with balance sheets and fans’ concerns than Parry.
I’d trust Aiyawatt Srivaddhanaprabha, Leicester’s owner, and his principled chief executive, Susan Whelan, to run the Premier League with more savvy and empathy than Glazer and Henry. I’d trust Nassef Sawiris and Wes Edens at Villa more than Glazer and Henry; they understand dreams, studious investment, striving to challenge the elite, pushing against the door that Glazer and Henry want to close.
I’d trust Andrea Radrizzani at Leeds to do a better job on broadcast rights than Glazer and Henry, sharing the riches around, appreciating the importance of competition. I’d trust Steve Parish at Crystal Palace to do the right thing when it counted, to think of the greater good.
I’d trust Delia Smith and Michael Wynn-Jones as proper stewards of the national game than Parry. They’re not into Norwich City for the possibility of profit; just the opposite, it has cost them. And how the EFL misses a smart mind and big heart like Dean Hoyle, who has stood down at Huddersfield Town. Now there’s a man with a moral compass. His sons worked in the club shop, he broke down with emotion when his beloved Town were promoted at Wembley, and was so concerned about local childhood poverty that he established breakfast clubs to feed the needy.
So Parry is right: English football does need a reset, but not dictated by those whose start, middle and end is the bottom line. Not Glazer and Henry. English football needs leaders who care for all, but also possess the financial expertise to make the sport a viable business. For years, it has been tottering towards the “cliff-edge” as Parry calls it, and is now teetering.
Proper leaders, those with a real big picture, would have reined in the ludicrous wages, making them more performance-related. Proper leaders would have confronted the unconscionable, extravagant, multi-layered system of paying agents.
This is not a plea to retreat down memory lane, finding sanctuary in the iron-fist Fifties leadership of Alan Hardaker, the Football League secretary who protected convoys on brave Royal Navy duty during the War, who played for Hull, who fought for his sport. It is about tapping into the intellectual property that exists in football, in the minds of Shanahan, Whelan, and the cerebral Palios couple, and working as a collective to sort English football’s myriad ills, to bring the real leadership, not the greed of a Joel Glazer. We know what you’re doing, Joel.
Time to refill seats
It seems partly hypocritical, partly hysterical, that even in the mad world of 2020 it is possible for the wonderful Arsène Wenger to address an audience in the West End of London last night yet all the hard-core Arsenal fans socially distanced are unable to take up the seats they have paid so handsomely for in his old home, three miles to the north.
Live events? Palladium yes, Emirates no. What’s the difference?
Apart from the fact that Arsenal’s abode is outdoor — healthier — and so well organised, as anybody who has been there behind closed doors will attest. Even the urinals are now spaced apart.
Somebody in government is taking the proverbial. Let Fans In.