Vale in the national press - re-posted

[Jacko51]

Henry Winter in this mornings Times.

 

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/sport/football-fans-need-help-in-their-fight-against-bad-owners-79dcltfm6

 

Football fans need help in their fight against bad owners

 

Henry Winter, Chief Football Writer

 

 

Two men with a ladder did the honours at Bloomfield Road yesterday, one holding the steps steady, the other climbing up and removing an advertisement for Oyston’s estate agency. It will take longer to expunge completely the taint of the Oyston family on this famous old ground but thanks to Blackpool’s indefatigable supporters, the fumigation process is under way.

 

Invited to join “the big clean-up”, fans reported eagerly for duty to clear the North Stand, some clutching tangerine buckets. As fans prepared to return to the stadium after the ousting of the Oystons, the cleansing was symbolic as well as much needed. Scrubbing away the guilt of the authorities will take rather longer.

 

It is a stain on the name of the EFL, arguably the Premier League initially, that it failed to act when it became apparent that the Oystons’ running of the club involved running it down. The EFL meets tomorrow to decide whether to deduct points from Blackpool for going into receivership, a possibility causing understandable outrage as the League itself failed to call the odious Oystons to account, to question their motives and antics, to ask where all the Premier League money had gone.

 

Blackpool Supporters’ Trust, and tireless “Oyston Out” campaigners such as its chairman Christine Seddon, showed more backbone, showing up EFL inaction.

 

It is the fans who are the true guardians of the game, protecting clubs, promoting integrity, cherishing history and resisting the charlatans. It is the fans who shake buckets and raise funds, organise boycotts, lobby MPs, and print up protest paraphernalia, even ensuring they have the required fire certificates to take banners into grounds.

 

The EFL, FA and Premier League should think about the two men and a ladder, and the tens of thousands of supporters protesting about controversial owners from Blackpool to Bolton Wanderers, Charlton Athletic to Coventry City, Port Vale and beyond.

 

Many well-intentioned people inhabit the corridors of power, and some follow clubs who have slid down the pyramid thanks to uncaring, unthinking owners, yet the leadership of these national bodies have let them, the clubs and the game down. They stand accused of being Neros in blazers, fiddling while clubs burn.

 

The governance of English football is at a key moment. The three main footballing authorities interview for new chief executives, who could, if enlightened, make a real difference to safeguarding clubs. If the Premier League simply seeks an exec who does not worry about the soul of the game, or the match-going supporters, just somebody who can get top dollar, pound or yen from broadcasters, then it is to be hoped the FA and EFL appoint individuals with some empathy with the game, with the character to stand up to those owners harming clubs.

 

It’s happening again, the curse of unpopular owners now striking at Vale.

 

Fans march from Burslem Town Hall to Vale Park, opposing the retired businessman Norman Smurthwaite, demanding to know where recent windfalls, from the sale of Jordan Hugill and Checkatrade and FA Cup runs, have gone and why he won’t sell at a sensible price.

 

Last weekend during the League Two game at Notts County’s Meadow Lane, 1,200 travelling Vale fans chanted “Norman Smurthwaite, get out of our club”.

 

These are passionate fans, mobilising to defend their club, taking it in their stride when Vale Social gets flooded so the Supporters’ Club meeting is moved to Burslem Golf Club. “We are facing football oblivion,” the supporters’ club chairman Mark Porter told the gathering. Vale are perilously close to slipping into non-League.

 

Echoing Manchester United fans’ early “green and gold” protest against the unloved Glazer family, Vale supporters adopted their historic colours “Black and Gold Until It’s Sold”. The Stoke Sentinel ran a “Vale in Crisis” series and although Vale’s travails have not registered widely on the national agenda, their problems fill another episode in the tragi-drama afflicting the game.

 

Take Charlton Athletic, a once model club turned into a soap opera by the Belgian businessmen Roland Duchâtelet, whose recent utterances, including the proposal of selling the club to the EFL, suggest somebody bordering on the deluded. Again, fans have rallied to their club’s aid, and if some of their more extreme tactics have cost them some sympathy, at least Charlton devotees have acted while the EFL hesitates.

 

The game is crying out for leaders with courage. The old notion that it is an owner’s business to do with a club as he or she sees fit is outdated and morally wrong anyway. Trashing a club is bringing the game into disrepute. The EFL should be having a word with Ken Anderson, the rather strange owner of Bolton Wanderers. Life is bleeding from the Championship club. “Bolton close training ground because of food shortage,” read the headline in The Bolton News yesterday. Staff have not been paid for February. As the authorities look on, it is left to the Bolton Wanderers Supporters’ Trust to consider having a (large) whip-round to help. The authorities plead it is out of their hands, that the Owners’ and Directors’ test, the check formerly known as the Fit and Proper Persons’ test, means that, effectively, they can allow anybody to swan in and mess about with an English institution providing they don’t have a criminal record. As the sad, old saying in football goes, Robert Mugabe could buy an English club and the EFL would wave him through.

 

The FA, supposedly the guardian of the game, should become more involved, asking more questions. How is Sisu, the wretched hedge fund draining the life from Coventry City, allowed to get away with years of silence, litigation, and damaging a historic club? Because the authorities did not act. Is Joy Seppala, chief executive of Sisu, one of the most loathed people in football, standing accused of utter contempt for Coventry fans and English football?

 

Yes, and the EFL and FA should have summoned Seppala to explain her plans for Coventry. Is Seppala really as heartless as depicted? All the signs are that she is. Get out of our sport.

 

It should embarrass the EFL that Coventry have to inform the League by today where they will be playing next season. It could be the Ricoh, owned by the rugby club Wasps, who will not extend the lease because of Sisu legal wrangles, or elsewhere. Coventry council leader George Duggins, of Longford Ward, Coventry, pleaded with Sisu not to “play Russian roulette with the future of our great football club”. There have even been questions in the House. But not enough from the EFL. So it has been left to fans to campaign and pray. Coventry would be dead without their supporters, waving their “Save Our Club” placards.

 

And how would officials at the EFL, the Premier League and the FA feel if a name so synonymous with the heart of football, who brought in some of the most significant innovations in the game such as all-seater stands, disappeared on their watch? Shame.

 

Clubs can survive bad owners, like Leyton Orient in the Francesco Becchetti era and Portsmouth under the questionable likes of Vladimir Antonov, through the constancy of fans. O’s supporters stayed loyal and now have proper owners in Nigel Travis and Kent Teague. Pompey Supporters’ Trust saved a national treasure with all the commitment and expertise of those who raised the Mary Rose. The Eisner family, mainly the American businessman Michael and his son Eric, have come in and proved capable and caring owners of Portsmouth. Importantly, they listen and engage, and genuinely seem to enjoy the Pompey experience.

 

Years of protests appear to have paid off at Ewood Park where Blackburn Rovers’ owners, Venky’s, the Indian family poultry firm, seem to have heeded fans’ anger at their chaotic management. They are not interfering, they are not listening to the wrong people, not relying on agents with agendas, and Ewood Park is a much better place. One family member quietly travels to Ewood to watch games. Yet Rovers fans understandably are cautious. It seems only yesterday they were smuggling chickens on to the pitch to hold up games and holding up banners reading “Made in Blackburn, Destroyed in India”.

 

The authorities, including the three new leaders when appointed, must begin to follow fans in standing up to rogue owners and, if necessary, getting the ladder out and bringing them down a peg or two.

[Bycarsbill]

I did read it in my copy of The Times this morning, but I don't suppose it'll make the slightest bit of difference to The Smurf!

[geosname]

Thanks Jean

[Aussie Rules]

Thank you Jean, goodness knows how I stuffed up and deleting the original topic thread - but I did. My apologies for doing so.

 

Barry

[KEV.WILLIE]

Don't think that the Neanderthal knows that the Times even exists!!!!!

[philmpv]

Don't think that the Neanderthal knows that the Times even exists!!!!!

 

If we were talking Razzle, it would certainly catch his attention

[Bede]

Maybe re-print it in Razzle.

[Bede]

Ha! Says it all!!

[ollyandpatch]

Selfish horrible person.

[man in the pub]

I did read it in my copy of The Times this morning, but I don't suppose it'll make the slightest bit of difference to The Smurf!

 

He might only see it if it makes the pages of Razzle.

[man in the pub]

He might only see it if it makes the pages of Razzle.

 

Sorry Bede didn't see your post, great minds.

[Jacko51]

Nice link to B&G website in the comments section at the end of the article.

[wwindsor]

I did read it in my copy of The Times this morning, but I don't suppose it'll make the slightest bit of difference to The Smurf!

 

Whether it makes a difference to smurthwaite or not is not the issue, we are getting the word out there regatding this man and his actions. It might stop future investment, not only in the club but in his other businesses. His world is collapsing around him and we WILL NOT STOP DESTROYING HIM.

#blackandgolduntilitssold

[PVTony]

If Smurf sees this item in the press, he won't care he's too thick skinned. It might even boost his ego. His name being advertised, making him (in)famous.

[wwindsor]

If Smurf sees this item in the press, he won't care he's too thick skinned. It might even boost his ego. His name being advertised, making him (in)famous.

 

It will embarrass him, its not a positive article, its a negative one!!!. Seeing his name associated with the wrong doings at Vale Park and the mention of protests and Black an Gold, how will that boost his ego???