Football chairmen are rarely liked. Whilst it may be a position that millions dream of having, it can often be a thankless task. As a chairman you are not judged on the things that you hold most dear: revenues, profit margins, net gains and all those other juicy financial buzzword goals. You are judged by the fans and on their terms, judged on the scale of your ambition and your generosity in pursuit of that ambition. This disparity between what the Chairman and the fans consider success is the fundamental reason why their relationship is so often so strained.
To a chairman, success is financial stability, maybe even making a profit, or for the less ambitious, steering a club away from administration. To fans a successful football club is one that wins games. Consider Arsenal’s current situation. As a club, their revenues are phenomenal and their business model is the envy of every club in the Premier League but their fans are despondent, desperate for Wenger to spend some of the ‘warchest’ the media refer to every year. The fans don’t care that their club is generating record profits, they’re paying hundreds of pounds for a season ticket as the quality of football declines.
Football fans will only be happy when the chairman’s ambition matches theirs, of course this is only possible at the upper echelons of the game. Your Manchester City or Crawley Town type clubs. Any attempts at consolidation and financial security are simply seen as the end of the club’s ambitions. Ken Bates has managed to find himself on Leeds fans’ hitlist this summer for investing in corporate facilities rather than players. He attempted to explain this as improving the club’s infrastructure and long-term earning capacity but he was preaching to the wrong crowd. (It didn’t help that he then called them morons). The fan wants short-term success and instant results, they have no financial stake in the club, just a permanent, incredibly hard to satisfy emotional stake.
Mike Ashley is considered a villainous chairman by many Newcastle fans following various terrible decisions at boardroom level. He is displaying all the traits that football fans despise. He sold Andy Carroll and did not reinvest the money back into the squad. He sold the Captain Kevin Nolan and is in the process of releasing Joey Barton. He couldn’t display less ambition if he wanted too.
Chairmen are of course within their rights to run their clubs however they wish, but when their decisions show a lack of ambition or generosity like Ashley’s or are judged to affect results on the pitch like Bates, they will be blamed. It’s lonely at the top and the only way to win over the fans is to start winning games.
Written by Philip-Wroe for FootballFancast.com
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