Do Foreign Owners Make Leeds United?

My dad has been a Leeds United fan from an early age, and has probably been against foreign ownership of football clubs since then. It would therefore be of great irritation to him to see his favourite club in its current predicament. After years under the ownership of the 'poisoned dwarf' (my dad's words, not mine) Ken Bates, the entrance of Massimo Cellino, though eccentric, was surely a step in the right direction, right? Well, just 12 months after his acquisition of the club, it seems that is wrong. A year of pandemonium and chaos has followed, seemingly reinforcing my dad's argument regarding foreign owners.

It's worth noting that this is not the only case of foreign owners causing a stir. This has been to varying levels, but some of the country's largest clubs have fallen foul of owners that prioritise the business over the football. Most high profile of these are the two most successful clubs in this country's history: Liverpool and Manchester United.

Chronologically, it was the reds from (not quite) Manchester that were the subject of the first takeover bid. Having been listed on the New York Stock Exchange since 1990, Malcolm Glazer had built up his share of the company between 2003 and 2005, before announcing a formal takeover in the May of the latter year. In total, the acquisition cost around £800m, though this only tells half of the story.

Before the ink had dried on the deal, and before the supporters could get excited about potential financial investment, we worked out how the deal had been financed, and more worryingly, who was carrying the burden. All loans had been secured against the assets of the club, meaning that the financial stability of the club was put in serious danger. In addition, interest payments of up to £60m annually would be owed, piling more and more on top of the club. Like Cellino, Glazer seemed only interested in protecting his own investment, rather than the fortunes of the team and the fans.

Similarly, Liverpool struggled with new American owners. Tom Hicks and George Gillette, who both had histories with sports clubs in the States, decided to take a controlling stake in Liverpool at the beginning of 2007, valuing the business at £218.9m. In a turbulent three years, the pair fell so heavily out of favour due to a lack of incoming transfer activity and a failure to deliver the new stadium that they were called "asset strippers" in Parliament and we eventually willing to take a £144m loss on the club on its 2010 sale. Court cases and legal disputes have rumbled on since, so it seems unlikely that we have heard the end of this story yet.

However, while the heritage of these two clubs has enabled them to manage their losses and survive, there are some clubs that do not have the resources. The most obvious example of this is Portsmouth. A Premier League side, the club won the 2008 FA Cup to secure the unlikeliest of places in Europe for the following season. With new investment from Sulaiman al Fahim, it seemed as though Portsmouth would be in good hands to push on up the table. However, just five years later, the side would have a series of foreign owners, all of whom would receive similar "asset-stripper" descriptions as Hicks and Gillette, leaving the club in the lowest tier of league football and feeling lucky just to be in existence.

However, before I get accused of being xenophobic, there are foreign owners that have progressed their clubs. In recent years, new footballing superpowers have been created by overseas wealth, with Chelsea and Manchester City the most high profile instances.

Chelsea, following years of being the nearly men in terms of achieving Champions League football, were acquired in June 2003 by a relatively unknown oil tycoon, Roman Abramovich. The Russian shelled out hundreds of millions of pounds on players in the early years, bringing titles in successive years in 2005 and 2006 - the club's first in 50 years. Over the next eight years, the club has gone from strength to strength, winning a further one Premier League crown, while adding four FA Cups, three League Cups, a Europa League and the one Abramovich was after, the Champions League.

More recently, my club, Manchester City were thrust into the financial limelight. Following the turbulent reign of Thaksin Shinawatra, the Abu Dhabi United group was found to take the club forward, headed by Sheikh Mansoor. The enormous wealth of the group enabled the Blues to make the seismic transfer of Robinho on the final day of the 2009 summer transfer window, before letting the cash flow freely to acquire some of the most high profile players in the world. To date, this has resulted in two Premier League titles in three years, as well as an FA Cup and a League Cup, but European success has eluded them. As a result, it seems likely that their investors are in it for the long haul.

As well as this, English people can make just as appalling owners of football clubs. Take Mike Ashley for example. If ruining the ambitions of historic club wasn't enough, he's managed two! Having spent three years at university in Newcastle, I'm well aware of how important the club is to the city and how deep the desire for success is from the fans. Never before have I seen the mood of an entire city affected by the result on Saturday, and it is a shame to see the lifeless shell that this side has become under Mike Ashley's leadership. Making a profit is one thing, and with the FFP regulations in full swing, I understand the need to balance the books, but this business sense has to be married to a progress mentality. Sadly, this is something that the Geordies can quite rightly level at Ashley, and he seems unlikely to change this in the near future.

So it appears that the old locally owned football club system has well and truly gone. It's incredible to think that there was a time when Liverpool and Everton were both owned by the same family, who ran the clubs completely independently (and successfully I might add) during the 70s and 80s. Could you imagine those two clubs operating that way in the current system? Or any two clubs - not even those so closely linked? No. As football has become increasingly commercialised, particularly in the UK (for more details of this, check out my blog on the TV rights and English clubs' struggles in Europe), club owners are focusing their energies on making money from their ventures, and as a result, the day to day business is ever-more time consuming. Attempting to take on one club is difficult enough, so two would be near impossible.

So how do we ensure that the right people take over our historic clubs, meaning that assets are not stripped, or worse, the soul of the club is damaged?

Let's have a look at our current system - the 'Fit and Proper Person' test. Introduced in 2004 to prevent corrupt or unsuitable directors of football clubs, the test is performed on any individual that acquires in excess of 30 per cent of a club. In short, the following are considered 'disqualifying events' for owning a Premier League club:

• They have power or influence over another Football League club
• They become prohibited by law from becoming a director (and believe me, there are a lot of offences)
• They are filing for bankruptcy
• They have been a director of a club while it has suffered two or more unconnected events of insolvency
• They have been a director of two or more clubs of which, while they have been a director, has suffered an event of insolvency

However, after eleven years, and numerous examples of (in mine and my dad's opinions) 'unfit directors', we can certainly say that it has not been a rousing success. What is even more worrying is that unlike other legislation, it doesn't learn from its mistakes. I accept that nothing will be perfect the first time around, but I would expect much more than watching the same situations unfold time after time. Surely, the only way of preventing unfit owners is by tightening the regulations, placing them and their intentions for the club under scrutiny.

So, possible additions to the regulations? Setting out a five year plan for the club, which must be adhered to (as much as is humanly possible), a fan vote that, though it does not have the mandate to remove any owner directly, could cause the FA to place the owner on report. Any owner placed on this report is unable to purchase any further clubs in the future - in simple terms, one strike and you're out! Though these measures may seem excessive, it is perhaps the only way to prevent the likes of Glazer, Hicks, Gillette, Ashley and Cellino getting their way, and sucking the life from some of our most historic sporting institutions.

Diving: A Red Card Offence?

                             Last weekend's events, most notably David Moyes's comments after Manchester United's home victory against Crystal Palace, has brought the topic of diving back into the public eye. So many players are accused of it, and there there are discussions in pubs up and down the land assessing what the appropriate penalty for divers is. The current system of a yellow card for 'simulation' is widely considered to be too lenient. However, is the answer really, as Crystal Palace chairman Steve Parish has suggested, a straight red card for diving offences? This post will look at the offence as it is currently defined, before examining the possible new punishments for the crime.

                               In order to fully understand the topic in question, it is worth consulting the FA definition of diving (or 'simulation'). Diving constitutes: 'an attempt by a player to gain an unfair advantage by diving to the ground and possibly feigning an injury, to appear as if a foul has been committed'. This seems relatively clear, and you would expect to see fairly regular punishments based on this definition. However, it proceeds to state that: 'a referee should be 100% certain that a player has simulated (feigned) an unfair challenge before cautioning the offender for unsporting behaviour. The referee must be convinced that there has been no physical contact whatsoever by the player challenging for the ball.' This is the cause of the controversy, as this clause means that referees tend to be overly lenient on simulation, not wanting to call a player a cheat, and this sometimes leads to miscarriages of justice when the referee gets it wrong. We will examine this in more detail later.

                                 Looking purely at the definition as it stands, we should perhaps compare it with other offences. By examining both those considered to be worthy of yellow and red cards, we will be able to see which category this offence more resembles. If we look at the options in both categories, I would say that 'unsporting conduct' would most easily be comparable from the yellow card section. The red card section does not appear to have an easily comparable alternative, with neither serious foul play, nor violent conduct accurately describing the act. If we run with the unsporting conduct offence, there are clear parallels between the pair. This indicates that perhaps the initial classification of diving as a yellow card carries weight.

                                 However, two alternatives have been suggested by prominent men in English football. We will begin by the suggestion made by Crystal Palace chairman Steve Parish, that diving should constitute a straight-red card offence. Despite my above paragraph, there is evidence to suggest that this may be a possible alternative. Diving is a scourge in world football, and needs to be stamped out. If we look at another offence that has been 'stamped down upon', we find that racism has been much more heavily punished in recent years, in an attempt to eradicate it from the game. Now, I am not for one moment saying that diving is as bad as racism, however, I am merely making the point that if you want rid of an aspect from a game, you must penalise every instance heavily. Therefore, a case could certainly be made for the introduction of a heavy-handed penalty for diving, at least until the act is not so prominent. However, there are a couple of problems with this. Firstly, there will be the inevitable comparison between diving and the other red card offences, which illustrates the gap in severity. Simulation does not seem on the same page as intentionally breaking someone's leg, but, under this rule change, they would be considered equally severe. Secondly, there is a more pressing issue with the rules. As the current idea of diving is so open to interpretation, there are already many instances of referees making the wrong call. Under these new rules, a referee making the wrong call could irreparably change the outcome of the game, potentially ruining a team's season. Until we solidify what is considered a dive, I feel that a red card could not be awarded for the offence.

                                     The second alternative is one that appears far more reasonable. David Moyes, having stated that he wanted to stamp out diving from his own club, with Ashley Young coming in for further criticism, then suggested that video technology should be used to retrospectively ban players who have been proven to have dived. As much as that will be a dagger to the heart of Michel Platini, I think that this is an excellent idea. It lowers the fear of referee's getting a decision woefully wrong and costing a team a game in an instant, whilst ensuring that those guilty of diving are rightfully punished. I would introduce an initial ban of 4 games for a diving offence, meaning that there is that aspect of over the top punishment with a more accurate justice system, which I believe forms a nice middle ground. Once simulation has begun to die out of the game, a reduction in the ban could then be enacted. However, I suspect that none of these will be considered, players will be allowed to con referees and dive all over the place. This will continue to cause a horrible Catch 22 situation for referees, who will be blamed as much if they fail to penalise a dive, than if they wrongfully penalise one. And it will continue to be the topic of pub gossip for years to come.