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has shown it to be the most exciting of the lot i m not sure that i would enirely agree with his argument it struck me particularly as i was feeling somewhat removed from the action that it was distinctly odd that all the excitement was over who would or wouldn t be relegated aston villa v liverpool everton v chelsea and fulham v arsenal were attracting very little attention from the twitterati is this the grand scheme of things that the greedy breakaway chairman of the old first division envisioned some twenty years ago i came to the conclusion that in fact yes it was had they bothered to think their plans through to me it is yet another symptom of what is wrong with the governance of english football who is or isn t relegated is clearly an important part of the general excitment of football but it surely shoudn t be the major focus the sacking of ancelotti 2 because this season s performances have fallen short of expectations and the club feels the time is right to make this change ahead of next season s preparations to me provides yet more evidence of just how dysfunctional the premier league has become relegation from the premier league undoubtedly puts serious financial pressure on a club when the drop in broadcasting revenues is netted off against the parachute payment one is looking at a drop of 30m 25m in revenues to this must be added a drop in matchday revenues reduced attendance and lowered ticket prices and a drop in merchandising sales although these will vary from club to club depending on the loyalty of their fans in particular how large the core of till i die fans is clubs may face a contractual drop in sponsorship fees and may or may not have had the wisdom to include relegation clauses in their players contracts in other words any club relegated faces a financial problem but some may face significantly harder problems than those who had planned for the eventuality clubs will also be in different states of financial health to start with last week i was asked by bbc west midlands to review the prospects for wolves and birmingham city should they be relegated on virtually every financial measure wolves looked far more resilient to facing the drop than birmingham city west ham will undoubtedly face serious difficulties too and only blackppol look reasonably equipped to face the drop the football league season is not quite finished but further down the pyramid things are clearer with respect to next season afc wimbledon and crawley town are joining the football league the epitome of fan ownership and benefactor induced financial doping respectively at the other end of the conference national it s goodbye to southport altincham whose luck in benefitting from other clubs financial problems finally ran out eastbourne borough and histon i m sorry to see eastbourne borough go down as they were the most senior english club which is a community interest company cic as an interesting aside the scottish premier league may well have a cic as a menber in the coming season st mirren 3 this is a case that is well worth following as the current owners are seeking to sell the club in a way that was making sure it remained sustainable and debt free 4 lower down the pyramid the upcoming movements are plotted here good to see resurrection clubs afc telford and farsely on the way up it s interesting to note that ilkeston are listed as reinstated good news for their fans following their resurrection 5 but i wonder what for example king s lynn fans or grays athletic fans will make of the reinstatement decision finally i turn to a football story that is relevant to me in my immediate circumstances but which does not seem to have well covered by the english speaking media although due credit to yahoo sport 6 for being an exception the story quite simply is that a major derby match between rapid vienna and austria vienna was abandoned after 26 minutes following a major pitch invasion see here and here disturbing images that we hope we will not see moving further northwards and westwards after thirty minutes of disruption the police felt unable to guarantee the safety of the players in a resumed match we seem to have moved onward from such dark days in england and it was good to note the birmingham city fans staying on at white hart lane to show what they had in common with spurs fans 7 mind you i suspect that thursday night channel five is not really going to catch on on the terraces share this share on facebook opens in new window facebook share on x opens in new window x share on reddit opens in new window reddit like loading posted in broadcasting rights costs economic impact fans football conference governance merchandising premier league promotion pyramid movement relegation revenues sponsorship tagged broadcasting rights costs economic impact fans football conference governance merchandising premier league promotion pyramid movement relegation revenues sponsorship 2 comments how utterly utterly absurd posted by john beech on april 20 2011 there are reports that a dubai sheikh is set to buy a la liga team possibly getafe and add the words team dubai to the club s name 1 this is as absurd as manchester city becoming manchester city team abu dhabi for example or chelsea becoming chelsea team chukotka only to be renamed chelsea team moscow if another report is to be given any credence 2 it betrays both a crass view of a club as the owner s plaything you can add your own bit here about fayed fulham and michael jackson here and a stunning inability to understand that a football club is essentially about local identity and local fans insert your own more positive bit about arsenal and custodians here of course it could never happen in england oh hang on though perhaps it s a bit like having the word dons in your club s name when you are not in wimbledon or as a nod to my readers north of the border in dumbarton for that matter aberdeen any offers on the most absurd possible name for an english club as x team y reflecting the whim of the owner share this share on facebook opens in new window facebook share on x opens in new window x share on reddit opens in new window reddit like loading posted in fans organisational culture ownership tagged fans organisational culture ownership 13 comments did crawley town get it right posted by john beech on february 18 2011 as the excitement mounts over a certain fa cup tie one story in the news seems to have become just a flash in the pan however it strikes me as one that has some puzzling even disturbing dimensions that deserve exploring and there are a number of unanswered questions i m referring not to the decision of crawley town to accept sponsorship from the sun 1 i wonder if they would have been so eager if it were liverpool rather than manchester united or to the fact that a significant share holding is owned by as yet unidentified minority offshore shareholders 2 but to the infamous munich video 3 as daniel taylor reported in the guardian reported 4 crawley posted the video on youtube as well as the club s website without realising that one of the people dancing by the stage frequently makes aircraft gestures to mock the tragedy in 1958 when the plane carrying united s team crashed on the runway at munich killing 23 of the 44 passengers including eight members of the team on the way back from a european cup tie against red star belgrade the video was filmed at crawley s ground last tuesday two days after the 53rd anniversary of the tragedy and the same man can also be seen simulating a plane crashing into the ground and holding up his fingers to count one then nine then five and eight to symbolise 1958 clearly the fan s actions are completely indefensible and go way beyond bad taste and deeply into the offensive taylor also reports there were several takes for the video and crawley have replaced the original one with a version that does not feature the munich jibes the club s information is that the man responsible is a crystal palace supporter the people who made the video are absolutely devastated williams crawley town chief executive said i ve had mike dobie on the phone in tears because none of us had seen it it was intended as a charity song and we would never condone behaviour like that we have found another take missing the idiot who was responsible if there were several takes of the video it strikes me as extraordinary that no one noticed the fan s actions and that they weren t noticed when someone was deciding which take to select for publishing on the website have heads rolled for this incompetence i wonder interesting too is crawley town s assertion that the person involved was a crystal palace supporter if it was as simple as that why then was he present is banning him from crawley town a punishment he has been banned from crawley town for life a punishment you might well see as a reasonable response but it certainly seems inconsistent with the ban handed out to another miscreant in the news recently the stevenage town fan who on the pitch punched one of the players of his own team and has received a ban from grounds not for life but for six years 5 at least one of these two bans seems to me disproportionate there is also the issue of what crawley town then did they informed the police the fan has now been arrested on suspicion of causing harassment alarm or distress 6 whether you consider this reasonable or not it is in marked contrast to the fact that sky did not report andy gray and richard keys to the police nor was there police involvement following this little gem from bernie ecclestone 7 in a lot of ways terrible to say this i suppose but apart from the fact that hitler got taken away and persuaded to do things that i have no idea whether he wanted to do or not he was in the way that he could command a lot of people able to get things done the latter in particular is surely far more likely to be considered as causing harassment alarm or distress yet ecclestone continues unabated as f1 supremo again i am not in any way defending the actions on the crawley town video or bernie ecclestone i am pointing out that there is an inconsistency in the proportionality of response the mutual loyalty between fan and club is a moral minefield in this case club has to accept some responsibility for the fan s actions because they broadcast them not in a live broadcast but in a chosen take of the video which they produced i pose the question though of whether crawley town s responses through which it is the fan who receives all the blame and all the punishment are entirely appropriate share this share on facebook opens in new window facebook share on x opens in new window x share on reddit opens in new window reddit like loading posted in fans tagged fans 3 comments club club or club a 3cs model posted by john beech on february 9 2011 the evidence submitted by the premier league to the house of commons select committee prompts me to write again on the inherent ambiguity of the word club the evidence contains the following statement english football clubs are very resilient with 95 of the clubs in the football league in 1923 still in existence today and the vast majority within two divisions of their 1923 position how can you square this with the equally true statement that over half the clubs in the top 92 have suffered insolvency events since 1990 with frequent cases of administration and a new company being formed by new owners the difference of course lies in what exactly is meant by the word club in one significant respect it is not a word that should in any case be applied to today s clubs it dates from the nineteenth century when football clubs were indeed members clubs run by and for their members associations of two or more people united by a common interest or goal but professionalisation of the game at the end of that century meant that the formation of a limited company became the only practical way to operate members disappeared from the equation the use of the word club persists however nearly always at least in the actual name of the company a breach of the trades description act perhaps if we ignore the meaning members clubs then there are to me three distinct meanings and they are all too easily confused first there is the social construct this is the club that fans normally think of as being the club it doesn t actually exist in any formal sense but is incredibly real to its supporters it provokes the till i die element and the tattoos it is built on heritage culture mentality and mythology to illustrate it i have used in presentations a photo of the famous john portsmouth football club westwood it is notable indeed for its longevity it survives the disappearance and later resurrection of a club and often with slight changes in name think aldershot think accrington stanley or conversely don t think wimbledon and mk dons it is precisely the construct of wimbledon that to some extent is still contested a fight over whose wimbledon is it anyway i m sure readers don t need telling the answer by the way this example serves well to show how this social construct is also embedded in location and identity which gives it its permanence in short it is the club as construct that fans support there is no inconsistency other than the use of the word club when fans find themselves in conflict with the owners of the club and remember there are no longer members of the club to use a second meaning the club as company a different meaning my loyalty to pompey the club as construct does not in any way automatically transfer to a loyalty to messrs mandaric gaydamak al fahim al faraj chainrai or indeed uncle tom cobleyski i doubt too that john eastwood has been tempted to have any of their faces as tattoos this distinction between club as construct and club as company is an important one in particular it should be considered when desperate directors call on fans to get the collecting boxes out to save the club fans will certainly want to save their club as construct but want to think twice about saving their club as current company i e the current board of directors the club as company does not show the longevity or continuity that club as construct does frequently the inclusion of a bracketed year in the company s name is an indication of discontinuity for example middlesbrough football and athletic club 1986 ltd wrexham football club 2006 ltd 95 of the football club companies around in 1923 are most definitely not still in existence the third version of club is the club as crew in other words the players the crew has a continuity but no consistency of membership over time the crew is a case of trigger s broom with players coming and going and sometimes reappearing in an opposition team the days of one club players such as jimmy dickinson portsmouth or jack charlton leeds are long gone as fans we show them our loyalty but the minute they leave our loyalty tends to evaporate as w...
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