Andy’s Sting In The Tale (25/10/24) “Two Stings for the Price of One”

(Photo:@Homesoffootball)

Sorry for the non appearance last week at such short notice.
I’d been doing some pre-season boot-camp for a bone marrow visit to the Beatson planned for early in 2025.
One of the side effects of the two phases of intensity is high temperatures and I had a cracker last week for a few days.
Normality has now returned and all is well and when you really need the NHS it is there and full of good people.So here is stuff that would have got more space 7 days ago but I think it is worth a quick reboot.

The story is the nice man from Ineos, Mr James Ratcliffe esq, told Sir Alex that after all the cuts he was making across the club that his nice wee earner of £2M per annum and his table in a nice lounge with class A tickets for his guests would be stopping.There had been a cynical press briefing about it all and this could all have been done a hell of a lot more discretely.
Reading the almost lurid headlines, at first I couldn’t believe the size of his package, but in the scheme of things I now can.Have a wee think about why ‘the new club owners’, aka the Glazers to be more precise sanctioned the deal.They did it because it was amazing value for them.They needed Sir Alex.
This requirement was caused by the ‘unwanted incursion’, and some would say the then cynical acquisition by the Glazers, a Tampa Bay Sports Ownershp Family that somehow ‘bought’ the debt-free Manchester club and then got the club to pay back for their purchase immediately by putting it all into debt it hadn’t had.
They effectively cleaned up and got a huge asset for what you might think is just a sleight of hand.
It was free.

That is exactly what happened and the club was put into debt to fund this particular leveraged deal.
There is leverage and leverage but this is all gold class.
Fans were amazed and disturbed by the sheer cheek of it all.
I was too.
I well remember FC United of Manchester being created in the original colours, green and yellow, and the growing anger and outcry at the time.
I liked that idea.
There could have been a revolt.
Maybe there should have been one.
But The Glazers, or more likely one of their new employees like the CEO they inherited at the time could see that Mr Ferguson could minimise the fall out and hold the club together.
And he did.

He bloody well did because he was the beating heart of the club.

Clever or cynical by the Glazer Family?I’d say both.

And then football broke out, as it does, and transfer talks, the next big games, and who is making the starting line up on Saturday soon became the story for most United fans

That’s football.

I haven’t bought a print copy newspaper for a long time.
But I went out specially two Saturdays ago to get the ‘Game Changer’ supplement to the sports pages at The Herald.
It’s a very good attempt by the paper to look dispassionately at where football in Post-Euros Scotland is and the things that are wrong and need attention.
I’ve been told its the first of few.
Yes there is the usual pandering with specific copy about the two biggest clubs in the papers hinterland (to keep both sides of the circulation happy) but the supplement works because it takes both a helicopter view and enough detail on the ground to get everyone who cares, thinking.
I hope it stays as ‘seminal’ going forward and with the same broad thinking as it started because that is good for us all.Things like‘Scottish Youth Football Faces Crises and the Only Way to Fix it is Together.’‘If there is one issue we have to address together it is the fact that our youth game is not in good shape’.I’ve been banging on for a long time that our youth and grass roots including schools should be hugely elevated in importance in our game to the point of becoming an obsession.
And I just hadn’t been aware how much interest there had been from ‘Post Brexit’ English clubs blithely filling their academy allocations with young Scots before dumping them like the judges on ‘The Voice.
Lots of wastage and heartbreak but they have pinched some of our best kids like Billy Gilmour.

I like the recent SFA document about elite kids even if I think there is too much emphasis too soon on ‘elite’.
It needs to stay alive and current and talks about: (and my comments are in brackets)
A lack of strategy. (Agreed)
The need for early exposure to senior football. (That is what the reserve leagues used to be so valuable)
Making kids a core and profitable element of all clubs rather than a pesky cost as shown by the clubs who do it right. (Totally agree but it won’t happen in a week).

Some initial conclusions/ recommendations :
Get elite kids into smaller clubs to get real game time.
Stop England pinching what they think is best

Acknowledge that there are late developers
Start with a Top Down and bottom up review
(They even use my words, so must read Sting)

And an acknowledgement that we need a change of working practices top to bottom.
How about’Different factions within Scottish Football working together’, for common good and I’d say we also need to look outside football.

Maybe it’s just a fanciful notion but makes sense to me.

If All Else Doesn’t Work, Sack the Manager.

Finally, ahead of our team’s draw at home with Portugal I was listening to GMS and Archie Macpherson was the expert.
He basically articulated that if we didn’t start winning and soon that Steve and his position should be reviewed.I like Archie a lot and he’s been a panelist on our conferences and also in fact finding attitudinal research so that is why I can say.
I expected more Archie.
We have to be realists.
Ask yourself.
How many of our starting 11 would have been in the Portuguese team?
Maybe 2 maybe 1, maybe less.What maybe Archie should have said was “Steve has done an amazing job with the players he has but the game has to help the managers of the future by starting to create a deep conveyor belt of talent”.As it HappenedWe were superb against the men from the Western Iberian Peninsula.
Steve and his team has us fighting for each other in the same way he took Killie from one end of the league to another.

 

We should be collectively agreeing that we are a long term work in progress and we need to back rather than sack our head coaches.
Working together and all that.

A very good away result for Celtic on Wednesday against last year’s Europa League winners who saw off Leverkusen 3-0 last May.The early game last night saw Hearts score 2 crackers and send Omonia home to get warm again.

And yes, the Steaua Bucharest team have been described as their B side but you can only beat what’s in front of you.
A great 4 goal tanking at Ibrox.

Pre-pack administrations might be less toxic in ‘beancounter terms’ than liquidations but they are still nasty.

People get hurt and creditors and shareholders get burnt.

At least ICT have a good guy, Alan Savage, as current guarantor and gatekeeper.
He keeps saying he is of a mind to find a new ‘Owner’ and the receiver said the same and that as of now there are 3 interested parties.
I’m so wary.
These and any other ‘carpetbagger’ interests  can disappear like snow off a dyke once their real motivations become apparent.

And ICT have a prime site with a long lease and exceptional communications in a newly established Freeport site.

So fair enough, Alan, I hope you find a genuine buyer who wants the club and the community and will commit, otherwise I’d prefer local fan and business ownership because there are different ways to fillet a trout and different things to do with the fillets too.

I’d mandate fan and local involvement in both shares and funding.
Stuff like the way I magicked up £1m with the ‘Hearts 500 Club’ for Mr Mercer and Hearts to meet the Football Trust targets and get the grants rebuilding Tynie needed, back in the day.
Fans want to help their clubs if they can and ICT  needs more unity too. Just look at ‘Friends of Hearts’.

I’m sad and a little angry, no very angry how the club has been run so badly.
So many good people have now been officially ‘burned’ their shares now confetti  and the money they put in has disappeared as the club seems to have constantly gambled to be bigger than it should be.

The fans and the staff deserve more, instead of hoping like Mr McCawber that ‘Something will turn up’.

Well previous CEO and a big part of the mess, – it did.
A pre-pack Administration.

Caused by gambling, incompetence, and arrogance.
I keep saying in any medium to long term and ideally all the time you can only build a plan around your known income streams.
That immutable law of business doesn’t seem to have made it through the Slochd snow gates.And there is nothing wrong with down or right-sizing and rebuilding on firm foundations.

3.CAF Stuff, An insight to World Football

Confederation of Africa boss, Patrice Motsepe has come out strongly defending Veron Mosengo-Omba who is under the shining light of a Swiss prosecutor, even with his close links to the top of Fifa. (he has been described as a ‘foot soldier to Mr Infantino whose power base relies on CAF).
(This is almost funny and you can imagine the shock and horror that the Fifa magic money tree is threatened. What no Palace?)

Patrice came out and said , “I have total confidence as CAF president in the integrity and ethics of our secretariat run by Veron and I believe in ethics and transparecy”.
(He didn’t tell us that in the summer CAF launched an investigation into Mosengo-Omba for serious misconducts including ‘impeding’ members of the governance, risk and compliance from doing their jobs).

The Tracey Crouch cross party movement is progressing with plans south of the wall for an Independent Football Regulator.
Why?
Because the game at the top has forgotten its roots, communities and all the roots and communities in the clubs below the top level.
The big boys don’t want the Regulator and the wee guys are saying, “at last”.Do we need one in Scotland too?Mibbes Aye Mibbes No.
And that’s a good starting point.Everyone knows deep down that our game has to reset and that is always best from within.

With outside vision too.`

Stull like the balance has to shift from the top 12 clubs to the whole game and the very important communities that football has and mutually supports because it is both ways.

There has been a very positive meeting at the Scottish Government Offices a few months back and I think the scale of our problems and where we’ve let it all slide to are becoming apparent.
Round tables do that.
There will be action points a plenty and it will be public domain.

Let me share my simple point of view on action points.
If it’s just to tick a box for the next meeting then what is the point.
I can smell stuff like that at 12 paces.

And I’m glad The Herald have jumped in with their size 12s and hope there is a groundswell for a positive reset to avoid external regulation.
We will all watch south, over the wall and there will be good and bad and lots of free learnings.

Standing with a points total of minus 3 it will take a lot to keep ICT in SPFL2.
If they tumble they are heading into a tough league with very little between the top and bottom sides.
What I do know is that several chairmen in SPFL 2 don’t have budgets for anything other than survival and that means seasoned ‘been theres’ playing on the park, not local kids.

What would I do?
The leagues are too small and the only planning available is survival.
And the pyramid trap door has caught 5 SPFL clubs so far and is hungry for more.It’s easy enough to fall down but it is really tough going the other way and that means once outside the SPFL the system doesn’t want you anymore and it’s tough to get back.

How about a joyous 2^nd album blending soul, country, folk and old fashioned swing.
It makes me smile.