Bitesize Rants #3: Rival Relegation

I felt it was strange that the cheers on Wearside were louder for Newcastle’s demise than the fact that they had managed to secure survival.

As a Manchester City fan for as long as I can remember, I can certainly admit to a bit of schaedenfreude when it comes to the team from Salford – I have certainly enjoyed them being knocked off their pedestal over the last five years or so as the blues have made their meteoric rise.

This feeling of satisfaction comes from a generation of oppression and domination by the red half of the city. My memories of the competition between the two growing up was interspersed between regular relegations for my side, and when they did take to the pitch together, all too often there was only going to be one outcome. Needless to say, it made my school days at times difficult as I tried to defend myself from the merciless mickey-taking!

However, as City have embarked on a revolutionary journey in recent years, the balance has shifted, and until recently, had been on an eight match winning streak against United. In the most recent games between the pair, they have established an extremely healthy competition, with both trading victories and creating interesting and balanced matches. As a result, while I’d never actively wish success on them, I think I’d miss the competition and local intrigue created if they were relegated.

That’s why I don’t understand it in the rivalry between Newcastle and Sunderland. Having lived in the North East for three years, I experienced the strength of feeling between the two cities, and the rivalry on the pitch. However, unlike the city of Manchester derby, there has been no one side that has historically dominated in their rivalry, never mind English football, and therefore fans cannot point to years of humiliation and oppression for their reason behind wishing the other was relegated.

In my eyes, no derby means less excitement for the rest of the season, so while Sunderland fans can celebrate the relegation of the Magpies for the moment, I’m sure even the most hardcore of fans will find next year more boring as a result.

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.

Premier League 2013/2014: So Did The Fixtures Mean Anything? (Relegation)

Those of you who have been following my blog (and I thank you for it - I know it's been irregular), will possibly recall some posts I did about nine months ago about the newly announced fixtures for the 2013/2014 Premier League season, and how they may affect the three main races: the title, 4th place and relegation. I did a post on each, and I will now review this as the season draws to a close, and give an indication of who is now the favourite based on the final four fixtures.

This third and final post in the series focuses on the battle to avoid the dreaded drop to the Championship. As I am looking at 7 different teams, this post will be a little less in depth than the other two, but hopefully just as informative and interesting. To find the other posts, click on the links below:

Title race
Champions League battle

First 5:

In my post nine months ago, I said that the relegation battle will involve the most teams, with a range of 7 potentially involved. Having looked at the opening fixtures of the teams involved, I picked my bottom part of the table to be: Newcastle, Sunderland, Hull, Stoke, Crystal Palace, Cardiff and Aston Villa. After surprise results like Aston Villa's victory over Arsenal and Cardiff's win at home to Manchester City, this is how the bottom of the table lined up after five fixtures:

West Brom - 5pts (14th), West Ham - 5pts (15th), Cardiff - 5pts (16th), Norwich - 4pts (17th), Fulham - 4pts (18th), Crystal Palace - 3pts (19th) and Sunderland - 1pt (20th)

So basically, I was way off. I didn't even factor in West Brom, West Ham, Norwich or Fulham on the fixtures, meaning that  Stoke (10th), Hull (11th) Newcastle (12th) and most surprisingly Aston Villa (13th) were not even in the list. Despite this, five games can help someone's season, but it cannot decide whether they stay up and go down (until you get to the final five of course!). As a result, I was not too concerned with my lack of accuracy, but the second check would perhaps give us a better indication of how wrong I was!

Middle 5:

The middle 5 (taken between the dates of 14th December and 1st January - the most congested period of the season) would hopefully provide me with an opportunity to reclaim some lost pride. Taken purely on these 5 fixtures, I came up with a mini table to show which teams will take the most points from this period. This would contribute to the table, but would not necessarily indicate who is destined for the drop. Based on the fixtures, I predicted that the mini table of 7 would look like this: Sunderland, Stoke, Newcastle, Aston Villa, Cardiff, Hull and Crystal Palace. In reality, it looked like this:

Newcastle (7pts), Sunderland (6pts), Hull (5pts), Stoke (5pts), Aston Villa (4pts), Cardiff (4pts), Crystal Palace (4pts)

Again, I was wrong. Though in my defence, not quite as badly wrong as I had initially been. Of the bottom three, I accurately predicted two, and managed to suggest that the two North East clubs would be well away from danger when the time came. Nevertheless, if we look at the table as a whole by the time we get to New Year's Day, we see a wholly different complexion: West Brom - 21pts (14th), Norwich - 20pts (15th), Fulham - 19pts (16th), Cardiff - 18pts (17th), Crystal Palace - 17pts (18th), West Ham - 15pts (19th), Sunderland - 14pts (20th). Whether this means my test is not as accurate as those for the Champions League or the title race (although read those to see the issues I have had!), I am not sure, but certainly it is some way from my initial expectations at the beginning of the season.

So what happened since?

Well, a lot. Two of the bottom three at that time ended completely safe and free of danger, with Crystal Palace pulling off a master stroke in hiring Tony Pulis (whose appointment I actually disagreed with at the time but shhhhh!) and West Ham relying on Big Sam Allardyce to get them out of it, which he duly did. Sunderland pulled off the greatest of great escapes, with the 2-2 draw at the Etihad, sparking the most incredible of results. Away wins at Chelsea and Manchester United, along with a home success against West Brom ensured that the Black Cats steered themselves out of what seemed an impossible situation with one match to spare. With Fulham and Cardiff unable to drag themselves from their hole (meaning that Felix Magath suffered his first relegation as a manager), it was Norwich that bore the brunt of the Sunderland escape. Their incredibly tough end to the season ultimately condemned them to the Championship, but it was the lack of fight in games involving sides around them that cost the Canaries their place in the top tier.

In the final five fixtures, I expected this to be the mini league table: Stoke, Aston Villa, Cardiff, Crystal Palace, Hull, Sunderland and Newcastle. However, incredible runs for Sunderland and Crystal Palace meant it ended like this:

Sunderland (12pts), Crystal Palace (8pts), Stoke City (7pts), Aston Villa (4pts), Cardiff (4pts), Newcastle (3pts), Hull (1pt)

And my prediction?

Overall, I predicted that all three of the promoted sides would return to the Championship based on the fixtures. However, it is almost never that this actually occurs, and this is another example. Crystal Palace's inspired managerial alteration kept them clear of danger, whilst Hull's consistency ensured that they would have a cup final day, along with a Premier League place to treasure. Other than Cardiff, I didn't even include the two sides that ended up going down, as I believed them to be relatively safe!

Final table: Newcastle - 49pts (10th), Crystal Palace - 45pts (11th), Sunderland - 38pts (14th), Aston Villa - 38pts (15th), Hull - 37pts (16th), Cardiff - 30pts (20th)

So in the end, an interesting, but inconsistent test. Fixtures are a good indicator of form, which is a good indicator of performance, but it doesn't always work out like that. With external affairs able to alter that in the flip of a switch (the ownership debacle at Leeds is the perfect example of this), there is only so much that looking at the fixtures can do. Nevertheless, it does go to show that whilst the fixture organisers attempt to be objective and unbiased, they inevitably disadvantage some teams more than others.

Newcastle United: Will Too Many Cooks Spoil Their Season?

2012/2013: 16th

Transfer(s) In: Loic Remy (QPR, Loan)

Transfer(s) Out: James Perch (QPR, Undisc), Steve Harper (Hull, Free), Shane Ferguson (Birmingham, Loan), Danny Simpson (Released)

Transfers Review:

                                             Not much activity at St James Park this season. Despite the well publicised return of Joe Kinnear, with the promise of incomings, only Loic Remy to show for his efforts. All his return has seemed to do is create tensions and cracks between the management and the boadroom. With Alan Pardew having 6 years of an 8 year contract left to run, he isn't going anywhere. Therefore, bringing an ex-manager that criticises most of what the current man does into the club seems a poor idea. Remy looks a fantastic signing for Newcastle though, as his pace and skill put QPR back in with a shout of staving off relegation, and he will do similar things with Newcastle, just firther up the table.

                                               The one benefit of this transfer window for Newcastle is the fact that they have managed to keep all of their star players from the previous seasons. For them to have kept players like Yohan Cabaye, Moussa Sissoko and Papiss Cisse is impressive, and they stand a good chance of a top 10 finish this season.

Pre-Season:

                                                  Newcastle's pre-season has been similarly anonymous, with only two pre-season matches of note. As we came into August, Newcastle took part in two games, against Rangers and Braga. Both games finished 1-1, giving us no real insight into the form or ability of this Newcastle side. Mostly, pre-season has been dominated by the inter-management squabbles, preventing Pardew from doing his job properly. This, along with the problem about Papiss Cisse, who refused to wear the club's sponsor, Wonga.com on their shirts, means that Newcastle's season has been rather turbulent, even before the actual league has begun.

Key Players:

                                                   If Newcastle are to have a successful season, then the midfield duo of Moussa Sissoko and Yohan Cabaye will have to contribute significantly. Sissoko, after he burst onto the Geordie scene with those two goals to win the home game against Chelsea in February, has looked an inspired signing for Alan Pardew. His pace, creativity and goalscoring ability means that he is the perfect person to push forward and support Cisse and Remy up front.

                                                    Cabaye, on the other hand, will provide the defensive work that Sissoko lacks, breaking up attacks and setting Newcastle away on forward bursts. His free-kicks are often exceptional, creating goals from corners as well, and his range and accuracy of passing means that he can often be as deadly from the half way line as Sissoko will be on the edge of the 18 year area. That partnership in the middle of the park could make or break Newcastle's season.

Key Fixture Dates:

24/08/2013: Newcastle vs West Ham United
31/08/2013: Newcastle vs Fulham
14/09/2013: Aston Villa vs Newcastle
27/10/2013: Sunderland vs Newcastle
14/12/2013: Newcastle vs Southampton
18/01/2014: West Ham United vs Newcastle
01/02/2014: Newcastle vs Sunderland
22/02/2014: Newcastle vs Aston Villa
15/03/2014: Fulham vs Newcastle
29/03/2014: Southampton vs Newcastle

Top Goalscorer:

                                                     Whilst Loic Remy is a good signing, and will score goals for his new club, I'm going to go with Papiss Cisse. If the Senegalese striker can reclaim some of the form that saw him score an average of nearly a goal a game in the 2011/2012 season, since joining from Freiburg in the January, I think that the Geordie contingent will be on for another memorable season.

Prediction:

                                                       Unfortunately for Newcastle, the 5th place finish a year ago has meant that expectations were unfairly raised for the next campaign, meaning that the relegation battle that they fell into was a much bigger shock than it needed to be. For me, with all the off-field distractions, I think that Newcastle will return to the position that their squad suggests: mid-table. They should be comfortable this year, without being spectacular, and I do believe that a solid season this time around could lay the foundations for a push up the table next time around.

Newcastle United 2013/2014: 10th

Newcastle United: Europe a Voyage Too Far?

2012/2013 Season Review:

                After a highly successful previous season, in which Newcastle narrowly missed out on Champions League football on the final day, settling instead for the Europa League, the Magpies made only a couple of pre-season signings, with French right-back Mathieu Debuchy and Ajax’s Vurnon Anita joining the ranks. More of the same success were expected by the Geordie fans, with the clinical Senegalese strike force of Demba Ba and Papiss Cisse looking particularly dangerous. The season began encouragingly, with a 2-1 home victory over a Champions League rival from last year, Tottenham. Whilst a 2-0 defeat at Stamford Bridge followed, Newcastle managed to make it into the Group Stages of the Europa League, a competition that would eventually take its toll on the calendar and fatigue.

                4 draws out of 6 games in September followed, leaving the Magpies a long way off the pace of the league leaders, and dumping them out of the Capital One Cup at Old Trafford. After Europa League victories against Bordeaux and Club Bruges, Newcastle were becoming favourites to progress from their group. However, as has so often been the case, the European success was beginning to take its toll on their league form. A disappointing 0-3 home defeat to Manchester United began to illustrate the cracks in the team, before a heartbreaking late Demba Ba own goal denied Newcastle a morale-boosing victory in the Tyne-Wear derby at the Stadium of Light. After a late October victory at home to West Brom, Newcastle’s over exertion really began to show, going the entire month of November without a win, picking up only one point in the league. Relegation form for any side, and a sign of what was to come.

                Newcastle’s ‘hit and miss’ form was most evident during December. Starting with a strong 3-0 victory, and progression in the Europa League looked like Newcastle had turned a corner. However, subsequent poor performances in their next two outings, before a narrow win over QPR, left Newcastle with two difficult trips in December. Firstly, at Old Trafford, Newcastle performed admirably, leading firstly 2-1, and then 3-2, before being pegged back by the champions elect to lose the game 4-3. A game at the Emirates followed, and after a rather drab first 50 minutes, Newcastle’s fatigue finally got the better of them, eventually being thumped 7-3. These results put Newcastle firmly into the relegation battle, leading Alan Pardew to ask for reinforcements in the January transfer window.

                The month started in a very negative manner, with a disappointing exit from the FA Cup at the hands of Brighton, and then the loss of talismanic striker Demba Ba to Chelsea. Newcastle reacted sharply, making 3 French signings: Mapu Yanga-M’Biwa to sure up the defence, Moussa Sissoko, to give more drive in the midfield, and Yoann Gouffran to replace the outgoing Ba. It was the midfielder Sissoko who made the immediate impact, inspiring Newcastle firstly to an away win against Aston Villa, before spearheading Newcastle’s last minute victory over Chelsea. The game against Chelsea also saw the return of Ba, who lasted only 30 minutes until being forced off with a broken nose from a very nasty looking challenge from Newcastle’s Fabrizio Coloccini. These two successive victories led pundits to assume that Newcastle had begun to stabilise and had too much quality to stay up.

                The Magpies showed no such inconsistency in their Europa League form, dispatching firstly Metalist Kharkiv, before seeing off oil-rich Anzhi Makhachkala to reach the Quarter Finals. Unfortunately, their performances on the continent continued to be their only shining light of an otherwise poor season, as they continued to leak points, especially to those sides around them. By the end of March, Newcastle remained in the middle of a relegation dogfight, and desperately needed to pick up points to drag themselves away.

                The Europa League fairytale came to a premature end at the hands of Portuguese champions Benfica in mid-April, after which Newcastle capitulated, being thoroughly outplayed in the return Tyne-Wear derby at St. James’s Park. The game will best be remembered for the ugly scenes outside the grounds, where violence broke out between opposing fans, and eventually a police horse ended up bearing the brunt of a Newcastle fan’s rage. It will also be remembered for Paolo di Canio’s celebratory antics on the touchline in his first Sunderland game as manager. A 0-6 aberration against Liverpool swiftly followed, leaving Newcastle in deep trouble by the last three games. Fortunately for Newcastle, the sides around them failed to adequately take advantage of their errors, allowing the Magpies to avoid the drop with a 2-1 victory over QPR on the penultimate weekend.

                Overall, although Newcastle reached the Quarter Finals of a continental competition, a 16^th place finish in the Premier League is simply not good enough for a club of their stature. Pundits have blamed the complacency of a manager recently having been handed an 8 year contract, but I believe their exertions in the Europa League left the Magpies, a side who have only recently reclaimed their position in the Premier League, irretrievable short on players and energy. Without the distraction next season, I firmly believe we will see a better performance.

 

Player of the Season: Yohan Cabaye – Before the departure of Demba Ba, the Senegalese striker would have been my pick. Despite missing sections of the season through injury, Newcastle’s Euro 2012 representative in the French squad deserves a mention. When without his presence in the centre of midfield, Newcastle’s performance suffered. He was also at the heart of much of their positive aspects throughout the season and will be a major contributor to any future success.

 

Game of the Season: Newcastle 3-2 Chelsea – The game in which Newcastle’s new French signings, and in particular, Moussa Sissoko, endeared themselves to the Geordie fans. Having fallen behind after an hour, it looked as if Newcastle would throw away another three points in their bid for survival. Two goals from Moussa Sissoko, including an injury time winner, sent St. James’s into delirium, and decided what had been, at times, a rather bad-tempered contest.

 

Summer Transfer Targets (What I Think They Need): The simple answer: to bed their new French contingent into the squad better.  Rumours of squad unrest and problems with the language barrier were commonly reported from the Newcastle camp towards the back-end of the season. Another striker may well be the only position I would recommend, with Loic Remy being a good choice.

 

Transfer Gossip Links:

In:

James McCarthy (Wigan Athletic, CM)

Out:

Papiss Cisse (Borussia Dortmund, ST)