Sonstrust speak out on Scottish league changes

This is a letter that I drafted on behalf of the Board of the Sonstrust, the Dumbarton FC supporters trust provident society, which is being circulated to other trusts and fan organisations in the run-up to next week's official discussions about reform of Scottish football.

It has been published in full on the Sonstrust website, news released on All Media Scotland, and endorsements are starting to come in.  

Next week SPL clubs, initially, vote on key changes in the way Scottish football is run and structured. Fans at all clubs have made their views overwhelmingly and repeatedly clear – they want larger divisions (not the 12-12-18 proposal presently on the table), fairer and more transparent finance, good governance and proper supporter representation and involvement in the running of the game at all levels. 

Yet, once more, there is a danger that the views of those whose passion and money is indispensable to the flourishing of Scottish football will be ignored or sidelined. No other business could hope to survive in a good shape if it so systematically dismissed the wishes of its customer base by elevating short-term interests, narrow financial projections and political posturing above the need for genuine renovation and renewal. Unless this lesson is finally learned, the future looks dim. 

At present there is obvious and deep division among both SPL and SFL clubs over league reconstruction. If 12-12-18 is pushed through, it will only be through arm-twisting and backroom deals, because in reality there is no agreement. The desirable outcome next week would be for Scottish clubs to resolve together to seek a better formula for season 2014/15, rather than risking further conflict and divisiveness by railroading through a flawed plan that will only need to be unravelled and recast a few years hence. 

SFL clubs had earlier put forward a constructive 16-10-16 proposal, which largely chimed with the carefully argued 16-16-10 proposition in the alternative fans’ plan first put out through Supporters Direct Scotland and then developed and published by FansFirst Scotland. There is a sound football and business case for this, which seems to have been dismissed far too readily as a result of fixation on smaller divisions, assumptions based on existing approaches which have not worked, and consequent lack of innovative thinking. 

We understand the frustration that has built up, throughout the game and in the media, over the time it has taken to get reform proposals to table. But taking a bad decision in the name of avoiding more delay, while effectively ignoring key findings of the McLeish Report and the manifest outcomes of the National Football Survey, would be to squander a historic opportunity for deeper change while further imperilling the future of the Scottish game. 

Taking a further season to discuss a workable league structure for all (which should also include greater detail of a viable pyramid system) will enable supporters’ organisations to be properly engaged in the process. It will also help put current disagreements between clubs in the context of a larger vision for Scottish football as a whole – not just the largest and most vocal interests. 

Meanwhile, we hope that plans to unify the game’s governing bodies, together with proposals to ensure a better distribution of resources, financial transparency and good governance might move forward more quickly. This must be done, however, on the basis of proper financial disclosure to all parties for decision-making purposes, and with voting systems and a constitution that does not put power in the hands of the few and too readily act as a brake on future change.

Another Wembley let-down

I'm not talking about bombastic Chelsea sneaking it over cultured Arsenal, either. I'm thinking of the lumpy pitch and the empty corporate seats. As Arsene Wenger observed, the turf was in a gruesome state even before the FA Cup semi-final began. Why semis should be played at the national stadium anyway (other than to grub some more money), I've no idea. But the fact that this overrated, over-hyped, overpriced, over-budget gleaming barn of a structure can't even provide a decent playing surface tells you all you need to know about post-Thatcher England's inability to do anything more competent than line the pockets of private interest groups when it comes to undertaking major projects. I can't imagine the FA World Cup bid will be aided by today's show, either.

When I first went to the 'New Wembley' two years ago, it was the first competitive professional game there - Exeter City versus Morcambe in the Conference play-off final. The Grecians got the opening goal, lost 2-1 and then came back in May 2008 to win promotion to Football League Two by beating Cambridge United. Its conceivable that they might be back in '09, but the hope is for one of the three automatic spots to go into League One this time.

Anyway, first time round the pitch was poor, but that was put down to insufficient time for the grass to 'bed in' and to successive waves of re-planting. Since then there have been repeated problems and multiple relayings. It turns out that the micro-climate created by the stadium's design, its lack of sun and its permanent shadows are the enduring problems. The BBC tried to interview the head ground keeper about the situation this morning, but he had been instructed not to speak to the media. Another fine mess.

As if that wasn't enough, when the second half of today's high-profile match got under way, the corporate area which sits smack in the main camera's eye-line was a sea of red plastic, being two-thirds empty. Twenty minutes later there were still massive gaps. Presumably the fat cats were too busy quaffing champagne, sorting out their next bonuses and celebrity networking to actually watch the football that others would have given their right arm to grab a seat for. The argument is that the big bucks hospitality keeps prices down for the ordinary punters. But the tickets are hardly cheap and the catering is of the usual rip-off variety.

The actual stadium is a splendid edifice, it has to be said. But the atmosphere is anodyne compared to some of the other big grounds. Give me Hampden Park any day.
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Time to protest

Such is the corporate dominance of big league football now, it should come as little surprise that a rich, arrogant, human rights abuser should dismiss a clearly "fit and proper person" from his job. Nonetheless, there is outrage that manager Sven Goran Eriksson is being paid off (i.e. sacked) by owner and ex-Thai PM Thaksin Shinawatra at Manchester City. And rightly so. I hope the petition sky rockets, and the protests are loud and long at Liverpool on Saturday. Why even the BBC's Phil McNulty admits he was wrong - and he still is about England under Sven, by the way.

Nor has support for the Swede ended with fans (including Noel Gallagher), ex-City boss Peter Reid and players. The League Managers' Association, appalled by the kind of precedent this situation sets, has spoken out, something they do not do lightly in such circumstances. Aside from his good record with the team, with minimal time for preparation and signings, Eriksson represents three things still in short supply in the game: dignity, intelligence and professional decency. Unlike his shabby nemesis.

The roots of the problem, of course, go back to the fact that the FA chose to deem Shinawatra a suitable person to own a controlling interest in a major football club, because money and power speaks louder than other factors - like the corruption allegations that have dogged the man, or the evidence put forward by Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and others in July 2007. Many supporters choose to ignore such things in their partisan footie enthusiasm, though not all. A fine source of ongoing thoughtful comment and linkage is Bitter and Blue, by the way.
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Black and white but no Grays

What is the Football Association on? First, they decide to arrange the FA Cup semi-finals for Wembley, to pretty well universal derision, given the fact that "getting to Wembley" for the Final is historically and practically a big part of what the whole lure of the competition is about. This simply devalues it, especially as teams outside the Premier League have done stunningly well this year, and at the very least one of them will go all the way.

Then, even more bizarrely, they rule that non-league Grays Athletic FC must pay £14,000 to their former player Ashley Sestanovich, who has been convicted with conspiracy to rob and imprisoned for eight years after a heist in which someone was murdered. Grays terminated Sestanovich's contract prior to his conviction but the FA's judgment means that unless they pay the player's wages for the preceding five months they could face suspension from all competitions. Bonkers.

Stellar son-of-Grays Russell Brand (pictured), whose Guardian footie columns I love, has it well taped here. He writes: "Whilst I acknowledge that the FA has no power to override employment law I think they have an obligation to be supportive to Grays Athletic at this time of crisis, [and] giving them 14 days to pay this fine or risk suspension seems draconian. It is a malevolent gardener who so unthinkingly condemns his lawn. Instead of administering the Baby Bio they're out there blundering about in stilettos."

Now try 'If Keegan's a messiah I want the cockney Moses.' Mind you, if Elijah turned up at NUFC the Toon Army would complain, and think Shearer's cat had more prophetic nous.
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Football's moral bubble?

It's not every day that you get the chance to hold forth about fair play to the head of world football, still enmeshed in ongoing FIFA controversy (see the post below). But my mate Giles Fraser did recently - and tells the tale in The Church Times, of all unlikely places.

“It wasn’t a sermon,” said Sepp Blatter with a rather grizzly gravitas: “it was a message.” ... I guessed it was a compliment because of the accompanying air of bonhomie. He explained: “You and I think the same.” This came from a man dogged by accusations of financial mismanagement and corruption. I smiled, weakly. My sermon to mark the 150th anniversary of the world’s oldest football club hardly broke new ground in the realm of moral theory. I had suggested that football was in danger of losing its soul to money and celebrity, and went on to aver that the very first football club — Sheffield FC [pictured] — could teach most other professional teams a thing or two about the real heart of the beautiful game. ... The gathered glitterati of world football looked uncomfortable in church, and sang as enthusiastically as Fulham on a wet February afternoon. I spoke about the way football has the ability to break down barriers of class, colour, religion, and language. The congregation half-listened, with bullet-proof indifference... I had found no route past their defences.

Read the whole piece here. But be warned, Giles is a Chelsea fan. At least he knows what existential peril that puts him in, though.

Goodness, Mourinho has gone...

The sudden departure of "the special one" from his position as Chelsea manager will no doubt be interpreted by some as a 'jump before you're pushed' response to the poor Champions League performance against Rosenborg. But it almost certainly has rather more to do with deep machinations in the boardroom revolving around the wishes of the club's owner - and their incompatibility with the kind of managerial freedom Jose Mourinho desires. Ironically, this saga reaches its most dramatic twist at the same time as British PM Gordon Brown apparently rebuffed EUFA president Michel Platini's plea for curbs on the domination of the game by big money interests. Though he sometimes went way over the top, I for one will greatly miss Mourinho's colourful presence in the Premier League. His interviews were witty, acerbic and often laugh-out-loud funny. My favourite was probably his response to defeat by Barcelona a couple of seasons ago: "They never beat us over 90 minutes with 11 men" he suggested, archly capitalising on a Chelsea sending-off to steal the glee from his opponents.

Expect some incendiary fall-out from this one. "Mutual consent"? My foot!

Overpaid and over here?

Most people think top footballers should be given a substantial pay cut, a survey for the Fabian Society says. While the UK's (read England's) best-paid soccer players earn millions a year, the poll found people think that, on average, they should be paid just £62,000. The think tank spoke to a representative sample 3,000 people. At the other end of the pay scale, respondents said that experienced hospital nurses should get a pay rise, from the current typical salary of £21,985 to £33,000. The survey follows on from the excellent work done by Noreena Hertz with her May Day For Nurses campaign, which persuaded half of all English Premier League players and managers to give up a day's pay to assist hospital workers' quest for a just wage through a hardship fund. Donations are still welcome. [Pic: Noreena with players from Reading last season]

United by grief

Legendary Liverpool manager Bill Shankly once famously commented: "Football isn't a matter of life and death. It's much more important than that." He was talking friendly bollocks, of course. And no doubt, if he was alive today, Shanks would have been among the first to honour the memory of 11-years young Everton fan Rhys Jones, who was (appallingly and incomprehensibly) shot dead in Croxteth the other evening. It's gratifying to see that even the deepest sporting rivalries can be put into perspective by a tragedy like this. The sight of red and blue scarves entwined is a heartening in the midst of loss. It would be wonderful if it could happen more often - but without the spur of pointless violence to get us to see how trivial our differences really are. [Pic: courtesy of the BBC]

Drinks and blue faces all round

I have no idea whether Alex Ferguson eventually shared a glass of wine with Sven Goran Eriksson after Manchester City triumphed 1-0 over United to take an unlikely lead in the English Premier League on Sunday. But if so, it must have tasted of remorse. The Swede had graciously ignored Fergie's routine taunts and invited him to a customary post-match imbibing. The two had famously fallen out over Sven's decision to play Wayne Rooney for England in the world cup. Now the boy wonder is injured again. And Ferguson's response at the pre-game press conference was terse. "If he wants to give me the bottle, I'll take it. But I won't be drinking it with him." His team then dominated the game, but lost. And Micah Richards played a blinder. The re-match at Old Trafford is going to be electric. But right now the table looks just fine to those of us bored by the Big Four (get the t-shirt of the moment from those fine Philosophy Football people, if you will.)

Grow up, England

Good luck to Manchester City against Man U tomorrow. Though it's going to be tough, to say the least. As one City fan delightfully put it on the BBC this morning: "We do tend to struggle against teams in the bottom half of the Premiership!" In particular, I hope that Sven Goran Eriksson rapidly re-gains the respect he deserves as a manager following the pasting he took from press and fans alike at the end of his England tenure. It says a good deal about the sheer childishness of much football newsmongering that a coach who achieved the highest point percentage of all time in major tournament matches for an England manager could be called "a disaster" by a series of senior columnists. Grow up, England.

Trimming the grass...

Just a quick 'admin' note to say that it's my intention to keep my articles for Sons View and The Grecian at or near the top of the blogging pile. So newer comments may, in fact, appear below them. If you have link or story suggestions do drop me a line. And comment away, of course.

Hate-filled nonsense

A judge in Brazil thinks that gay people shouldn't be playing soccer. Apparently, they aren't "manly" enough. Hat-tip to Sarah Hill for this link. The prize quotation is this: “What is not reasonable is the acceptance of homosexuals in Brazilian soccer because they would harm the uniformity of thinking of the team, the togetherness, the balance, and the ideal. Not even to mention the uncomfortable feeling of the fan, who wants to go to the stadium, sometimes with his son, and see his beloved team succeeding in the competition, instead of losing oneself in analysis of the behavior of this or that athlete with an obvious personality or existential problem, making it uncomfortable also for the teammates, the coach , the technical commission and the managers of the club.”

Talk about trying to rationalise mindless prejudice. Football is now at least in the process (imperfectly) of giving racism a hefty boot out of the game. But blatant sexism is rife, and homophobia is still an unmentionable in many less enlightened corners of the sport. This needs to change. And things change when we have the courage to talk about them. Meanwhile, I loved the T-Shirt.

In off the post...

Yet another football blog. Just what the world needs... Well, in this case, it's just what I need, anyway, as a space to curate my occasional forays into sports journalism. Which makes a pleasant change from all that religion and politics, some would say. Plus it's a less cerebral headspace than my scribings on music.

The very particular purpose of Only Just Offside [Who do you think you're kidding Barrow? Ref.] is to gather in one archive spot the regular columns I am writing in the 2007-8 season for the match day magazines of Dumbarton FC (Sons View) and Exeter City FC (The Grecian). These are musings on the weird and wonderful world of The Beautiful Game, the patiently stressful life of the lower-league fan, soccernomics, mascot wars, football on telly... you name it.

In the case of Dumbarton, I've been a supporter-at-a-distance for 37 years, during which time I've never been geographically closer to the Vale of Leven than London. Well, in terms of living, at any rate. Of course I have made my pilgrimages to the old Boghead Park - and now the glorious new Strathclyde Homes Stadium. But these visits have been far fewer than I have wanted. And in the pre-internet universe, even keeping up with regular DFC news was tough. So the column I am contributing to Sons View is unsurprisingly called 'The Far Post'.

By way of compensation, and because not seeing football in-the-flesh comes to be a minor form of torture for some of us, I have usually (with a couple of hiatuses brought on by that great interrupter of things known as 'life') formed an attachment with whoever my local team happens to be. First off, Brentford - my grandfather's team. Then in the 1980s that was Southall, whose fall from an already lowly state of grace has been sadly very great indeed. They now languish in a junior league, with a question mark over their very existence. It should strictly speaking have been Charlton, Dulwich Hamlet and Brighton & Hove Albion, too - but I skipped a beat on those. I must have been shifting furniture too much to concentrate properly.

However, since moving to Exeter in 2003 I have gone to see the Grecians on a regular basis. This year I've even succumbed to a season ticket - and, as you can see, writing for the programme. I was as gutted as the next fan (the cliches flow like water in football!) when ECFC lost out on promotion back to the English Football League proper last year. But not as much, I'm bound to confess, as when Dumbarton were relegated back to the Third in Scotland.

The way I'd summarise it is this. In England, and in my locale, I support Exeter - and there's none I'd wish to see take a point or goal off them. But in the world as a whole (and not just Scotland) I am first and foremost a Sons fan. How and why my lot fell in with Dumbarton is the subject of the first piece I wrote for Sons View. What on earth constitutes fan loyalty in football - especially in one so instinctively anti-tribal and non-chauvanistic as me - might be the subject of another column. Who knows. The mandate is to entertain, which doesn't always sit easily with the philosophising that comes as second nature to someone like me.

Meanwhile, you'll have to excuse me. I've got a match to go to.