The following TUST programme notes appeared in the programme for the game Vs Lincoln City - 20.03.2010
Turkeys have the casting vote
Amidst all the clamour surrounding the problems currently facing what can only really be referred to as just the latest bunch of clubs in the mire, namely Portsmouth, Crystal Palace, Cardiff City, Chester City and Farsley Celtic, Chairman of the FA, Lord Triesman, has come out in support of supporter ownership.
Clearly this has all come too late for the likes of Chester City - although their fans are currently reforming the club - and Farsley Celtic who were both wound up in the High Court last week, much to the collective heart-break, consternation, disappointment and anger of their supporters; Just for one moment, try and put yourself in their position. How would you feel if your club dropped out of the footballing pyramid? What would your feelings be if Torquay United ceased to exist? The upset and upheaval would weigh pretty heavily on your shoulders and that of your fellow supporters.
And we will repeat something here that we have mentioned before, especially for those at every club who say "Oh, it'll never happen to us..."and that is that it very, very, very nearly DID happened to us as Torquay Supporters. If it hadn't been for the collective quick-thinking concern and of course the cash of the current consortium, then who knows where it would all have ended? Ask any Chester supporter if you really need an indication of how rapid the slide can be at the hands of an unscrupulous chairman, or of course just cast your mind back a few years.
We simply don't have the space here to give you even a potted case history of the clubs that currently find themselves in a whole load of trouble for a variety of reasons, but the fact remains that no club can depend on its very existence. Even the apparently infallible and mighty Manchester United could potentially find themselves in a fierce financial battle in the years ahead, as the Glazers have saddled an almost debt-free club with liabilities somewhere in the region of £700,000,000.00. That's a lot of zeros and the American investors basically borrowed the money to buy the club, which in effect loads the Old Trafford club with the debt.
NEW BROOM, OLD PROBLEMS Lord Triesman, the independent chairman of the Football Association.
The club now has to service the interest on that debt. It is therefore estimated that between 2005 when the Glazers finally gained a controlling interest in Manchester United and 2009, the Glazer's holding company have forked out in the region of £260 million simply servicing the debts, which basically means that any profits the club makes are swallowed up and no in-roads are made into lessening the actual debt they have been burdened with. The question is what will happen if Manchester United fail to qualify for the European Champions League one season? And what will happen when their profits can't service the debt?
So in response to these crises, Independent FA Chairman Lord Triesman has declared that some form of supporter ownership is a viable option. Although he made no reference to Supporters Direct and the trust movement, despite being a keynote speaker at the Supporters Direct National Conference in 2008, waxing lyrical about trusts and the possibilities of supporter ownership even then, the important thing is the fact that when asked whether fan-owned clubs such as Barcelona or Real Madrid could work in England, Triesman insisted they can.
So why aren't we looking more seriously at these templates in greater detail as an antidote to the malaise in English football? The German Bundesliga seems to have got it right; there is a ban on foreign ownership of clubs, with the '50+1 rule' in place to ensure that any German investor can't own more than 49% of the club. In this country that would put paid to the Glazers at Manchester United, Hicks and Gillett at Liverpool; the strange, exotic or just plain non-existent Munto Finance at Notts County, Sulaiman al Fahim and Ali Al-Faraj at Portsmouth, or the disastrous Mike Ashley at Newcastle United. None of these can take over a Bundesliga club.
The German Football League president Dr Reinhard Rauball said: "The Bundesliga thrives on its stability and balance. The protection of the competition must be maintained."
It may be a bitter pill to swallow for the game, but the alternative to addressing how clubs are owned and run is that the troubles which English football has already experienced will continue. The FA is, after all, charged with the welfare of the game in this country. And even then, that would only address one potential area of trouble for football clubs.
The fact is that the FA has largely failed to fulfil their obligation to regulate the game and protect our clubs. This should become an absolute priority in football, and it should be at the forefront of their remit, especially given the historical facts that stare all supporters in the face. A fit and proper test which actually does what it says on the tin is a very real failing of the FA.
But at the heart of all this talk of words like 'regulation' and 'transparency' lies the problem that ultimately the clubs call the shots, and they have to sign up to introduce improvements in the way our clubs are run. Does the phrase "Turkeys voting for Christmas" ring any bells?
And if you want an example of the difficulties, just look at what happened when Lord Mawhinney tried to get a salary cap in the Championship. The former Conservative cabinet minister and outgoing Football League Chairman - hardly the first person you'd expect to be calling for unnecessary controls - was accused of being a 'communist' by one club chairman. Fortunately incoming chairman Greg Clarke, a former chairman of Leicester City in difficult times, shares the same view as his predecessor.
Something's got to give. The Football League they have their own Fit and Proper Test, as do the Premier League, with the rest of the game from the Conference down having one administered by The FA.
Look At Notts County and the takeover of the club by Munto Finance. It took the Football League an absolute age to actually complete their due diligence on the company. Munto Finance actually purchased the club in Jully 2009, and by the time The League finally announced that Munto Finance had met its 'fit and proper persons' regulations on October 20 2009, there were already serious doubts about the 'investment'. Then on December 10, 2009 Munto Finance put the club up for sale and it was bought by former chairman Peter Trembling on December 12, with Munto Finance basically disappearing off the face of the earth and later being exposed as fraudsters who had in fact taken more out than they'd put in.
So just what did due diligence or the fit and proper persons regulations entail? Clearly they were totally insufficient. For a start, the Football League doesn't even make the owners of clubs public - that's up to the clubs.
Let's come back to The FA and add some balance to this argument and try to be fair to Lord Triesman, he has made some very big noises about these issues since first arriving at Soho Square as FA Chairman in 2008. In fact he was the first within the corridors of power to really attack the problem of debt in football, along with transparency and who actually owned our clubs. You can bet that didn't go down well either.
We're pretty sure that if Lord Triesman had his way, the game might already have addressed some of the major issues it has, which ultimately are causing our clubs to be less well-protected by unscrupulous owners.
In fact at the same Supporters Direct conference in 2008, Culture and Sport Secretary Andy Burnham MP posed a set of questions that Lord Triesman and The FA was never able to answer in the way they needed to as the 'regulator' because of who is really in charge. They still need answering today:
He asked the FA as well as the Premier and Football Leagues to consider whether:
The rules governing finances can be made consistent between the leagues.
There can be greater transparency and scrutiny of clubs' ownership, including the amount of debt used to finance a takeover and whether that debt is "sustainable and in the wider interests of the game."
The rules which penalise clubs falling into insolvency can be reviewed.
The rule which requires insolvent clubs to pay football debts in full, unlike other debts, should be reviewed.
The fit-and-proper-person test for club directors and 30% shareholders needs to be strengthened.
"Competitive balance" can be promoted, "preventing the game becoming too predictable."
"Everything possible is being done to bolster the national side" and there is "a case for introducing a specified number of homegrown players" into club sides.
Shortly after taking up his role at the FA Lord Triesman caused a rift with the Premier League when he hit out at the levels of "toxic debt" among top-flight clubs. He also called for the fit-and-proper-persons test to be strengthened. He said "Transparency lies in an unmarked grave."
Never more than now were those words more true, and it's about time those turkeys mentioned earlier started queuing up in the 'yes' lobby, or it could be too late.
It already is for some, in case you'd forgotten.
