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THE LEADER: HOW DID IT COME TO THIS?

4:00pm Thursday, 11th February 2010

DR ROGAN TAYLOR: THE MADNESS IN THE ASYLUM  

The BBC Radio 5 interview with West Ham's new co-owner, David Gold, this week was little short of revelatory. It was like peering through the opening of a creaking door into an old madhouse. Inside, there they were, swanning around pretending to be King Louis IV or Napoleon...and they were the ones supposed to be running the place. Meanwhile, the crazy inmates suffered from the delusion that they were feasting at a banquet that would never end.

We all know players, in the Premier League especially, are paid silly amounts of money these days. And the managers too receive millions every year in salaries. The top execs of the clubs also collect a hefty wedge for their high profile roles. But who would have thought a 'Senior Car Park Attendant' at a club would be getting £70k plus?

David Gold, who with business partner David Sullivan - purchased West Ham recently was refreshingly frank about the sheer lunacy of some of the contracts they inherited, both of some players and of much lesser mortals in the Club. Gold didn't want to mention the actual title of the guy who gets over seventy grand a year, but he said the responsibilities of the post were equivalent to those of a car park manager.

Then there's the part time chauffer. Gold was quoted on the BBC website: "We had a player liaison officer who just drove a few of the players around and he was paid £50,000 a year". The club picks up the tab for 110 mobile phones and blackberries used by (some quite low level) staff. Wonder what the monthly bill for that lot is?

Only the day before, the other David - Sullivan - had talked of a financial 'Armageddon' if West Ham got relegated this season. He said they were looking for across-the-board cuts of 25% in all salaries at the Club. It almost looked like sanity was breaking out for a moment but his partner quickly explained, "If we can cut our salaries by 25%, that would solve our problems," Gold told BBC Radio 5 live. "But it's not something that you are actually going to go out and do."

I must admit my impression had long been that most football clubs paid lousy wages to everyone other than the chosen, gifted, or lucky, few. They were like great castles where Lords and Knights strutted around, surrounded by minions and spear-carriers who were so 'honoured' just to be there that they served for a pittance - some would even have paid their masters just to work there.

But it seems it isn't so. Not at West Ham anyway. How is it that serious businessmen - proven commercial operators in the outside world - can be so naively incompetent when operating a football club? Surely the PL boss, Richard Scudamore, was right (with reference to Portsmouth) when he said that no PL club should become insolvent given the guaranteed income they enjoy. These days they start with nearly £50m of TV right revenues in the bag before they even sell a ticket.

Never was it clearer that football really does live on another planet. The ordinary laws of 'business' simply don't apply; the laws of physics don't even seem to work: apples fall upwards from the trees on planet football - employees get paid more than employers.

Apparently, even the tea boy gets a blackberry.

Dr Rogan Taylor is the Director of the Football Industry Group at the University of Liverpool. He is also a writer and broadcaster, with five football books and numerous radio and TV contributions. He has acted as a special adviser to The FA, The Premier League and Premier League Clubs.

GERRY COX: MANAGING GREAT EXPECTATIONS  

I was at Wembley last night for a gala night hosted by the League Managers' Association, and it was a truly fascinating evening. The President's Dinner is in only its second year, but had a star-studded line-up on stage in front of many of football's movers and shakers.

Fabio Capello was guest of honour, as he was last year, and he was joined on the top table discussion by three former England managers in Terry Venables, Graham Taylor and Sven Goran Eriksson. With Howard Wilkinson, chairman of the LMA and another former England manager, albeit for a brief spell, it made a total of five England managers from the past 20 years.

There were some fascinating insights into what it is really like being in one of two jobs that every member of the public in England thinks they can do (the other is Prime Minister). As Graham Taylor pointed out, he realised the enormity of the job just a few days into it when he saw cameramen camped outside his house trying to capture his every movement.

But what was most interesting for me, as a journalist who has dealings with managers on a daily basis, was the fact that when managers are taken out of the sound-bite context of a press conference, they have so much of interest to say that we have not heard before.

It is an in-joke in journalism circles that you can often write what a manager is going to say long before you sit down at his press conference on a Friday lunchtime or Saturday evening. In the worst cases, they get such extensive briefing notes from their PR teams about what they cannot say, that they either have nothing of interest to impart or they skirt around the real issues, talking in clichés or repeating themselves ad-infinitum. This does a disservice to the fans, media and most of all themselves. It is increasingly rare to find a manager with the confidence to speak their minds, and depressingly common to find that when they do, it often comes back to haunt them.

The exceptions are a pleasure to deal with. Harry Redknapp is from the Venables school of no-nonsense, tell-it-as-it-is football truisms, regarding reporters as equals (in terms of their genuine passion for the game) and expecting a certain level of both understanding and compliance. Unfortunately it only takes one instance of an off-the-record comment being reported, or a quote taken out of context to make a story 'sing' and the gloves come off. Gianfranco Zola is another manager you want to hear more from, and he usually delivers because he is such a genuine guy that he speaks from the heart, not from a script crafted by those who do not know better.

Invariably we as the media fall out with managers, who usually get the hump for one of three reasons: they lose (understandable), they are stitched up (unforgivable) or they are found out (unthinkable). In any given week, at least two of the above apply to even the best managers in the world.

So the reporter's relationship with a manager can be fraught at times. We have a job to do, which is to record for our readers and the club's fans as faithfully and interestingly as possible, what the most important man at their club thinks on the latest win/draw/defeat/tackle/dive/referee/FIFA directive/haircut/song/etc.

Of course a lot of it is inane, a lot of it is boringly sensible, and most of it is sanitised enough to satisfy the PR teams and TV regulators who throw their arms up in horror when the likes of Joe Kinnear let rip with what is euphemistically known as a 'rollicking'.

So it is great to hear managers with the shackles off, mostly because they are in like-minded company but also because they are out of the spotlight and able to speak like the grown-up intelligent human beings they are, which is how it was at Wembley last night.

Richard Bevan, the LMA's Chief Executive, should be highly commended for the way he has dragged the organisation into the frontline of stakeholders in a game that has moved on at a frightening pace in the past decade. The LMA, which represents the men who are the singularly most important figures at any football club, is back in the front line, raising their heads above the parapets and leading debate in a way they could never do within the confines of their clubs and their day-to-day duties.

Long may it continue.

Gerry Cox is one of England's leading football writers and former Chairman of the Football Writers' Association. He has covered well over 1000 matches including four World Cups and four European Championships. He currently runs the Hayters Sports reporting agency and writes for the Daily and Sunday Telegraph.

 KEIR RADNEDGE: CASH CRASH NOT ALL BAD NEWS DOWN SOUTH AMERICA WAY

Weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth greeted the reality of a collapse in Europe's transfer window business during January. The sharp downturn reflected the global recession. But a significant knock-on effect was felt down in South America.

Clubs in Argentina and Brazil rely heavily on a steady income stream from European clubs for their young talent. January is the traditional inter-season break in the Libertadores continent and a perfect moment for clubs - from Boca Juniors to Botafogo - to count the transfer income, pay off some debts and flip some of the cash into buying up the next would-be Ronaldinho or Riquelme.

To this extent a majority of South American professional clubs live a much more hand-to-mouth existence than their European equivalents. Player strikes over unpaid wages are commonplace, long-term TV deals are virtually unknown and the match schedules long ago reached saturation point.

Presidents and coaches, particularly in Spain and Italy, have consistently used the January transfer opening to freshen up their squads with some exotic new Latin American import to keep the crowds ticking along and demonstrate their financial commitment.

But all that has changed this year. Argentinian clubs registered only one significant sale to Europe, of Eduardo Salvio from Lanus to Spain's Atletico de Madrid for £7.5m. Last summer the total international transfer income was £12m which was little more than a quarter of the income recorded in both 2007 and 2008.

Some European observers were misled about the financial health of the South American game after seeing world-class players such as Adriano and Ronaldo fly back to Brazil to rebuild their careers after controversies over off-field activities and injuries had run them out of the European game.

But these deals - like the loan of Robinho back to Santos from Manchester City - owe almost everything financially to sponsorship and little or nothing to the clubs' own wage structures or capabilities.

Of course, South American dependence on European transfer cash is no new phenomenon. In the late-1950s Argentinean giants River Plate were able to complete the original construction of their iconic Nunez stadium in Buenos Aires after selling Enrique Omar Sivori to Juventus for £95,000.

Those were the days when the European market was nothing like as vast as it is today, the Bosman ruling blew the roof off the transfer market by forcing an end to discriminatory, nationality-based restrictive regulation.

In the time since, South American football has lost not only a wealth of talent - including many teenagers whose potential careers were wrecked by moving to Europe far too early - but also self-respect.

In 1958 and 1962 Brazil won the World Cup with a marvellous team drawn only from Brazilian clubs. In 1978 Argentina were crowned world champions with just one emigrant in Mario Kempes. Now national coaches Carlos Dunga and Diego Maradona look to Europe for the vast majority of their squads.

It's an ill wind which blows no-one any good. Maybe it's not such bad news, after all, if the recession keeps the finest young South Americans at home for an extra year or three.

Keir Radnedge is one of the foremost observers of international soccer. He has reported at every World Cup since 1966 and is a regular contributor to TV, radio, newspapers and magazines worldwide. He is London-based Editor of SportsFeatures.com and is chairman of the Football Commission of the International Sports Press Association (AIPS).

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