"A Powerful Reputation For Accuracy"

It is of little wonder that the media cannot grasp the complexities of our membership of the EU when they fail to even try to grasp the basics of a Football Club’s boardroom politics, particularly when it involves poker games between rich men, one of whom happens to be the founder of a gambling site called Betfair.

I will spare my readers of most of the details, just give a quick summary. First we come to the, very well funded, BBC who breathlessly reports this on 17th January:

Swindon Town has been put up for sale in order to avoid administration, with debts thought to be around £13m….Around £9m is set to be wiped from the deficit if Swindon enter administration for a third time in their history, but they may then face a points deduction.

Strangely enough there’s not one quote in the BBC piece that backs its assertions up and seems instead to be based on this:

When asked if he could guarantee the club could avoid administration, Patey responded: “Not a single chairman in the country could do that.” 

Still, it feeds into the lazy narrative that Swindon has had a long and dubious history of financial problems. Yet since a successful takeover in 2008 it doesn’t owe a penny to creditors who are knocking on the door, doesn’t have an overdraft, doesn’t owe the taxman.

The main creditor is Swindon’s owner Andrew Black and it exists in the form of soft debt of his own money. Swindon’s current situation is that Mr Black, the main shareholder, for personal reasons has decided to sell, and it’s been that position for many months.

But the BBC, in their wisdom, ran with Swindon financial ‘crisis’ story, picking up on a quote which was taken out of context. As a result it has lead to constant accusations from other media outlets that are of a very untrue nature. No wonder Swindon Town received an apology and damages from the Football League Paper, for blatant libel. And now today the Daily Mail has this:

Paolo Di Canio is facing an increasingly uncertain future at Swindon, amid claims the financially stricken League One club will go into administration in the next 24 hours. 

A desperate search for new investment to help offset debts of around £13m appears to have failed and left club bosses fearing they may have little alternative but to call in the administrators. 

As a consequence, Swindon’s entire first-team squad would be put up for sale, in a move that would leave Di Canio agonising over his next move.

But…oh dear…

A DEAL has been reached which will see Swindon Town taken over by a consortium led by Jed McCrory subject to Football League approval, the Advertiser understands.

It is believed that the new owners and the current board, led by Andrew Black, will hold joint responsibility in the running of the club until the deal is ratified by the authorities.

Still, “a powerful reputation for accuracy” is what the media has, despite that you get a far more accurate picture of what’s going on from a humble internet forum.

Update: Just simply marvellous:

Today’s report in the Daily Mail which suggested Swindon Town’s players were all up for sale and that the club was about to be plunged into administration appears to have been the result of an erroneous email.

The Advertiser has learnt that an agent issued the missive, which intimated that every member of the Town squad was available for transfer, last night.
The Adver has also been told that several agents have been claiming to represent players who are not their clients.

Fit And Proper?

Those that have read my blog for a while know that I have long been following the perils of Portsmouth Football Club So it was with some amusement that I have picked up on this report from the Guardian a couple of weeks ago (my emphasis):

One of the most unhappy sagas in English football’s history of club ownership may finally be nearing its conclusion after the Football League declined to approve the bid by the Hong Kong-based businessman Balram Chainrai to take over Portsmouth again.

A central issue the league is known to have considered is whether Chainrai may not pass the “fit and proper person test”, now known as the “owners and directors'” test, were he to buy Portsmouth back from a second period in administration in two years.

For those unversed in football governance it’s worth noting that not passing the football league’s ‘fit and proper test’ is impossible – it’s the equivalent of winning at Mornington Crescent. Being a crook is a requirement, so one has to wonder how crooked Chainrai is to have failed.

It’s one hell of an achievement.

Leading Questions

On our unofficial football forum occasionally we get requests to fill in questionnaires on a variety of subjects but generally related to football in some way, for example this one on the issue of safe standing.

Sometimes we get different requests which are made by universities, such as this one posted last week by Staffordshire University on the subject of ‘Barbaric Britain‘, titled:

In the first phase of this research a third of the people who participated believed Britain was returning to a less civilized, barbaric condition, while the rest thought this was an exaggeration. We’d now like to explore this more deeply.

However despite intentions of ‘exploring this more deeply’ as an example of leading questions I’m not sure this can be bettered – trying to achieve certain responses couldn’t be more obvious, here’s an example of the questions (click to enlarge):

And

The questionnaire has such an amateurish feel to it, initial reaction is that it is one designed for a undergraduate’s thesis. But no, here’s the profiles of the two senior academics involved:

Dr Jamie Cleland, Senior Lecturer in Sport Sociology:

I joined the teaching staff at Staffordshire University in September 2005 and teach on the sport sociology modules. I achieved my PhD from the University of Liverpool in 2008 under the supervision of Dr Roger Levermore and Dr Vic Duke and continue to be research active.

Expertise: Sociological analysis of sport (see research interests below)
Qualitative methods of data collection and analysis

And Professor Ellis Cashmore, Professor of culture, media and sport:

I am professor of culture, media and sport. Previously, I was professor of sociology at the University of Tampa, USA, and, before, that lecturer in sociology at the University of Hong Kong.

Expertise: I have been doing research in race and ethnicity and other aspects of contemporary culture for over thirty years.

Their research findings feature in national publications such as the Guardian, based on an equally suspect questionnaire. Interestingly enough, on Staffordshire Univeristy’s Research Funding Opportunities page we have this:

EU Funding is provided by the European Union, the funding involves a partnership of companies and Universities. The University has recently being working with Italian based organisation CE.S.I.E. This company works towards the promotion of cultural, educational, scientific and economic development by using innovative tools and methods. Staffordshire University, CE.S.I.E and other European organisations have secured over €350,000 from the European Commission. They will be working together to produce a more effective way of improving people’s skills whilst they are at work.

Anyway you can fill in the questionnaire here, not that I for one moment is suggesting that my readers attempt to skewer the results but…er…knock yourself out.

Hurrah Part 2

Following Portsmouth Football Club’s point deduction today, I’m most pleased to learn of this:

A £5,000 FINE has been dished out to UHY Hacker Young partner Andrew Andronikou for “manifestly inappropriate” conduct in relation to a client going through personal insolvency proceedings.

In a consent order made with the ICAEW, Andronikou was severely reprimanded, fined £5,000 and paid costs of £6,500 in relation to his role as a nominee and supervisor of an insolvent individual in 2007.

The institute’s investigation committee said that the complaint against him related to wrongly recommending a creditors’ meeting should be summoned, in that he had not undertaken sufficient investigations into the validity of certain creditor claims. Court proceedings to set aside a decision of the creditors’ meeting by a third party saw his conduct as “manifestly inappropriate” relating to evidence filed by him on the respondent’s behalf.

He was reprimanded and fined £500 last year by the ICAEW in a consent order for failing to meet insolvency reporting requirements.

Not that it is personal from my point of view of course and nor would I even suggest he often wilfully does anything remotely untoward.

The Real Thugs

Above is a picture of my view yesterday from my seat in the shithole more popularly known as Wembley, at the JPT final. A second visit hasn’t changed my views of the place, particularly as it took over 20 minutes at half time to queue for the Gents’ toilet, in a stadium less than half full, and far longer than it did in the old Wembley. Still that’s £798 million worth of progress for you:

Football games were held on the pitch and visitors tested the 2,618 toilets – more than any other venue in the world.

On the right of the picture above is an example of copious blue coated so-called stewards that walk about the place ‘keeping order’. Generally in football stadia stewards tend to have two kinds of colours – yellow and orange (Orange ones are the important ones apparently). However blue was a new colour – to me –  and on the back were the words; ‘Response Team’. So not stewards then. Their attitude was no different though. By keep walking in front of the supporters, so obstructing our view, they were politely asked to stop – after all Wembley tickets are not cheap. The response was robustly unhelpful along the lines of; “tough we’ll kick you out if you don’t like it”.

And previously despite the day passing off very peacefully, with warm weather and friendly banter between opposing fans sharing the same pubs, ‘England’s law and order’ decided that wasn’t acceptable, and so confiscated cans of beer from numerous fans outside the stadium (including from myself) and tipped it away down the drain, much to the delight of female police on horses.

One can only come to the conclusion that authorities are being deliberately provocative.

Well Chuffed?

If you’re going to get a tattoo done as a tribute to your own football team, as pictured above,

Bit sore at the minute but well chuffed…

…at least get the year that your club was founded right

Founded 4 September 1867

Hurrah For HMRC

Before some suspect that I have lost copious marbley things, bear with me. I’ve been following the somewhat protracted administration problems at Portsmouth Football Club closely. They were the first Premiership club to go into administration and they’ve gone into administration for the second time recently – demonstrating once again that many football clubs are living beyond their means. But my main reason for following their plight closely is not because I have any particular affinity with them (yes good luck to them), but due to one man –  the administrator Andrew Andronikou.(pictured above – this is a bit of a personal post)

For those who are not familiar with the man, Andrew Andronikou works for chartered accountants UHY Hacker Young which in their words are:

…one of the UK’s Top 20 accounting and auditing firms

Mr Andronikou’s profile can be found here:

He has extensive experience in Bank receivership and investigation assignments, and also liquidation appointments. He is particularly interested in undertaking corporate reconstruction work, such as Administrations and Company Voluntary Arrangements. Andrew has headed a number of high profile appointments including the recent Administration of Portsmouth Football Club, the first premier league club in history to enter Administration.

Hmm “extensive experience” eh? Not that implies any level of competence of course, and rightly so. A substantial part of Mr Andronikou’s experience was being the administrator during the deeply entrenched money problems at Swindon Town. In summary, for long time until December 2007 we were a financial basket-case – and we were the first club to go into administration twice.

However according to Andronikou – when he was appointed at Portsmouth – he was the ‘saviour of our club’, as he became the only administrator arrogant enough to sign autographs:

This makes me think Portsmouth’s administrator Andrew Andronikou (the only accountant in the country who signs autographs) isn’t quite as media savvy as he imagines he is.

Yet describing him as Swindon’s saviour is a historical revisionism on a scale that the Ministry of Truth would have been proud of. Having been involved during that time, and witnessed first hand Andronikou’s role, (and I’m not sure how to put this nicely), but his actions left the deep suspicion that his mind was not entirely focused on fulfilling his legal obligations to the professional standard that would be expected.

Now I should mention at this point that he also had a close relationship with Swindon Town’s ‘advisor’ Mike Diamandis at the time. Diamandis was appointed as an ‘advisor’ despite being banned as a director for trading whilst insolvent. Yet in truth it was apparent that de facto he ran the club as a Director, some would say potentially illegally

He is the man who – behind-the-scenes – has effectively run the football club for the last five years.

Diamandis and Andronikou have had a close personal relationship in the past, their business record is indeed deeply suspicious. Andronikou was often appointed to a number of Diamandis’ businesses which had gone into administration and no questions were apparently asked – it won’t do to investigate rigorously whether a company was trading insolvently.

Unfortunately for them football fans tend to be a different kind of customer – ones with years of an emotional attachment that far outweighs concerns of finances. So as a consequence, and almost altruistically, awkward questions get asked, much to the discomfort of those with vested interests:

“I have an issue with the supporters trust as well as they could have caused untold damage if we had not ignored them. Their self importance genuinely put the club at risk. I think we all agree a supporters trust is healthy but for the right reasons. I think they have got out of hand. I think it represents about 20 people and that has to change quickly.

The Swindon Trust’s response being:

“The comment about the 20 or 30 busybodies finding something else to do has caused a great deal of anger among fans,” said Davis.

“We (the Trust) have over 950 members, all of whom are extremely concerned about the way the club is being run and the way that Mr Andronikou is supervising the CVA.

So…far from being a saviour, he took our club to within 24 hours of being wound up and didn’t sign off our Company Voluntary Agreement for years after it should have been. Previous to that this was the man that always had ‘mystery buyers’ lined up which never materialised, ignored genuine buyers to the detriment of the creditors because it didn’t apparently suit those in charge and blamed everyone else when things didn’t go according to ‘his plan’.

Not only that he took it upon himself to, despite being someone appointed to look after creditors’ interests, tell the creditors what to do (my emphasis):

“I have the discretion to do what I think is right for everyone. That is where it starts and ends really.  No matter what some people say, as long as I think it is in the interests of everyone to extend the deadline then I can extend or vary it as I see fit.”

So it’s no surprise to see Portsmouth experience the same ‘incompetent’ man:

Mr Andronikou was the preferred administrator – which sparked alarm among Pompey fans.

And as a result it comes as a source of great amusement to myself as a result of HMRC action that I learn this:

A High Court judge today refused to allow Andrew Andronikou’s firm to act as Pompey’s administrators. Mr Justice Alastair Norris ruled UHY Hacker Young will not be in charge.

The decision came despite Balram Chainrai’s firm Portpn Ltd offering £500,000 to the club if Mr Andronikou or another administrator it approves of was appointed.

And the Judge was pretty damning:

Mr Justice Norris added: ‘What’s proposed this time round seems to be exactly what was proposed last time round without addressing the real underlying problem. One would think that the real emphasis should be on reducing the trading losses of the club to turn it into a viable trading business. Perhaps a fresh view is called for.’

‘The general body of taxpayers, the ordinary consumers who do pay their energy bills and the ordinary traders and professionals who provide services such as, coach hire, catering, medical services, ground care and maintenance, must wonder why they should be subsidising the club’s energy bill and why it is that they are involuntary lenders to the club over their outstanding bills and why they will only get back pence in the pound for the services they have provided.’

And with that he blew the final whistle saying: ‘I will appoint Mr Birch and his team to be the administrators of Portsmouth Football Club.’

In other words the least of Andronikou’s concerns was the small business creditors. But we knew that all along. Sometimes HMRC gets things right – albeit like a stopped watch still being correct twice a day.

Free Speech Goes AWOL

Old Holborn highlights a rather worrying development this afternoon regarding the on-going, and now getting very tedious, racism row between footballers’ Luis Suarez and Patrice Evra:

Manchester United’s game with Liverpool was preceded by the police confiscating several thousand copies of the Red Issue fanzine because of a spoof cut-out-and-keep poster showing a Ku Klux Klan hood on its back cover [seen above].

Leaving aside the fact that normal laws don’t often apply to football fans, the Police’s justification for such actions are deeply sinister indeed (my emphasis throughout):

The police’s match commander, Ch Supt Mark Roberts, said:

“Officers are now seizing the fanzines and in consultation with the Crown Prosecution Service we will take appropriate action against anyone either found selling this particular fanzine or provocatively displaying the image in public.

Let’s be clear that no complaints by the general public were received regarding this image, instead the Police have taken this action upon themselves:

“Officers have also been made aware of a T-shirt on sale outside the ground that is also deemed to be offensive. We are also seizing these items and anyone found wearing one will be required to remove it and hand it to police.

Deemed to be offensive by whom? Oh just the Police, so…

“At this stage we have arrested one man in relation to the T-shirts on suspicion of a racially aggravated public order offence and we will be continuing to work with the clubs to minimise the impact of the image, which we consider to be offensive.

“I have taken this cause of action as both items are potentially offensive and we cannot be in a situation where hundreds or thousands of people were displaying offensive images at a football match. The consequences of taking no action could have resulted in public order incidents inside or outside the ground.”

To minimise the impact of the image? So a situation now arises where the Police can now confiscate arbitrarily, reading material because they deem it offensive even if no-one else did. And unbelievably and with deep irony the image confiscated is actually accusing Suarez, and by extension Liverpool, of racism – criticising and ridiculing his recent racist comments.

So, in a bizarre, ridiculous and very surreal twist, what is in effect anti racist material is impounded by the Police on the grounds of being potentially a racially aggravated public order offence.

One wonders what Ch Supt Mark Roberts would do if these chaps had been British.

HMRC

I can only agree with Trooper Thompson’s comments here regarding Harry Redknapp’s trial yesterday:

Now, check out this quote from the same article:

Chris Martin, from Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC), said outside Southwark Crown Court that the taxman had ‘no regrets’ about pursuing the case.

He said: ‘We accept the verdicts of the jury but I would like to remind those who are evading tax by using offshore tax havens that it always makes sense to come to talk to us before we come to talk to you.’

How creepy is that?

As someone who runs a small business and had run-ins myself with HMRC – indeed they’ve resumed proceedings against me again last weekend after 8 months of ‘silence’, for money I have proved I don’t owe – the above quote neatly illustrates the impunity and arrogance with which they act. Despite a jury’s verdict they make it clear they don’t agree with it and that’s it’s wrong.

Unfortunately the malaise of unaccountability runs deep within our country.

Wembley

Some readers may have noted that my football team have booked themselves a place in the final of the ‘watch-the-paint-dry’ trophy. This strangely has left me with mixed feelings. Yes it’s great to be in a final and have the opportunity to win some silverware, but it also means paying another visit to the new Wembley.

For me the new Wembley epitomises all that’s wrong with modern football; the greed, the money, the corporatism, the buffoon-like administration by football authorities and also the woeful lack of imagination in new stadium design – in short I can’t stand the place.

A visit to the old Wembley, particularly with your team, was one of the pinnacles of a supporters’ life, it was one of the most magical grounds in the country -just walking down Wembley Way towards the twin towers raised goosebumps – the atmosphere inside often left me ‘deaf’ afterwards. However that’s not to deny that the old ground had serious failings. There were many many faults; the lack of facilities, that the seats were too far away from the pitch, the view in many cases was atrocious especially towards the back where the roof obscured 2/3rds of the pitch, and the legroom…? What legroom – RyanAir’s capacious by comparison.

So clearly the old Wembley was in need of a major revamp – a massive improvement in facilities yet retaining the old magic was required.  This was also the case with many stadia which the Bradford fire and Hillsborough showed up, with tragic consequences, the inadequacies of centuries old buildings which hadn’t largely been touched since they were built. So the opportunity arose where we could build innovative, safe and exciting stadia. Some got it right like Sunderland, Huddersfield and the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff, but many went along with the “off the shelf, boring, MFI all-you-will-need-is-a-screwdriver” option. Wembley though is in a different league of its own. So what’s wrong with it?

Well its dubious good points are that it’s impressively large from the outside, but significantly smaller inside – like a Tardis in reverse, and it’s efficient (and no, escalators do not belong in football grounds) and it has comfortable seats – yeah well so does my living room.

In summary it’s a reasonably effective modern building. But then so is my local Tesco’s, but I don’t get excited when I have to visit it – I’m more concerned about the impact on my credit card. And that’s the problem. Wembley is less a football stadium and more a soulless leviathanic credit card machine that has been dumped in North London. The fact that it should host football matches is clearly an afterthought. TV commentators often complain about the empty seats in the middle corporate box section – it looks an embarrassment but yet it is a fitting tribute to the current state of the game and to the priorities of Wembley.  The ultimate symbol of a game that has turned into an ‘us and them’.

And then there’s the arch. What’s that about? Apparently it replaces the twin towers as the iconic feature of the stadium:

 The 2,000 tonne, 315 metre-long steel arch replaces the Twin Towers as the iconic feature of the…stadium.

Well sorry it doesn’t, it just looks like a left over from an Alton Towers roller coaster ride. One wonders whether the FA went to Bolliger & Mabillard for its ‘signature piece’.

Still, it only cost £798 million and was only a year late…