THE 2009/2010 SEASON - A NEW BOARD
In the summer the owners shook up the board, deleting Munby and Doncaster and
adding Bowkett, Phillips and McNally. In doing so, significantly, a quasi-executive chairman (in Bowkett)
replaced a non-executive chairman (in Munby, who had a full-time job outside football). This
enabled Bowkett to make a boast not available to his predecessor:
“Paul [Lambert] David and I are running the football club with the complete
support of the substantial shareholders.”
The obvious (early) effect of these changes was the sacking of Gunn and the
hiring of Lambert (dealt with on the previous page). But how has the board
performed since then? There are two categories that need examining – day-to-day
and short- and medium-term decisions, and longer-term questions of policy. To start with the former:
An
instructive tale of the cyberspace era. In short, Malaysian airline chief and
Lotus Formula One boss Tony Fernandes tries to buy the love of his life – West
Ham. Fails. Ah, says someone, West Ham = football, Lotus = Norfolk. Buy Norwich
City instead! Obvious! Fans with access to him, such as his technical director, Mike
Gascoyne, and F1 broadcaster Jake Humphrey, whisper sweet yellow and green
nothings in his ear.
In their wake comes a Twitter/email/message
board campaign to try to persuade this man, who’s got his hands full with
expensive fast-moving machines, and who’s barely heard of the club and has
never, ever been to Carrow Road, to dip into his back pocket.
Fernandes, diplomatically, says never say never. Makes time in his schedule to
go to a game (Southend). Has informal talks with the Carrow Road hierarchy.
But diplomacy can last only so long. Eventually he rules out investment. We are
left to be consoled by the possible prospect of unspecified corporate
synergies.
On the face of it, a cyber soufflé. But two questions remain. Firstly, how privately hopeful of investment from Fernandes was the club? Secondly, has the courtship only failed for a while? Has the Malaysian's long-term interest been piqued?
2.. KOSICHGATE
A subject reopened at one’s peril, given the amount of heat (as opposed to light) generated last time, especially once Joe Kosich made the mistake of getting into a slanging match with fans, which greatly confused the issue. It added to the impression already put about by the club that Kosich was not to be taken seriously. Which might or might not be true but was actually entirely irrelevant. The only question here was not Kosich's credibility, but the credibility of any investment interest he might have sparked through writing about Norwich City. And the latter was not governed by the former. This very much needs to be understood.
Briefly, Kosich is an agent or middleman, who works to bring football clubs
and investors together, and is best-known over here for the stunt of putting Tranmere Rovers up for sale on eBay. It should be realised that although the Tranmere owner was angered by the stunt he kept Kosich on.
Back in February Kosich wrote a blog for the US website BigSoccer in which he analysed
Norwich City and strongly backed it as an investment. Out of all the clubs in
the world he picked the Canaries. On the back of that “buy” recommendation he
said he got some tentative initial inquiries from possible investors.
This prompted a story in the EDP.
All that
follows is on the assumption there were such indeed expressions of interest;
given the secretive nature of this kind of business it is simply impossible to check that.
However it would be very surprising if the blog had not stirred some interest among
the many wealthy American sports fans, and there was no suggestion from
David McNally, when he gave a Radio Norfolk interview in the wake of the story, that Kosich had invented the interest, only that he had exaggerated it. Actually Kosich had downplayed it,
and here we come to one of the problems associated with Kosichgate, which was that many fans relied on that
interview for an accurate view of the situation. Unfortunately McNally’s
comments bore very little relation to the story that was published and were
mainly either wrong or illogical, whether he was criticising the story or
Kosich.
It would be long-winded to itemise the mistakes. Simplest to quote a Pink ‘Un
message board contributor: “I put my hands up to committing the cardinal sin of
not reading the article first! Having now done so, I would agree that the
article is fine and that Mr. Kosich doesn't appear to be quite the pantomime
villain McNally made him out to be.”
And yet McNally said flat out the EDP
should have suppressed this plainly newsworthy story. A call for
censorship from the chief executive of a football club where the appointment to
the board of a director of the EDP's parent company caused fans to worry about –
yes, indeed - the suppression of unwelcome stories.
And to complete an unhappy few minutes on the airwaves, when McNally moved on
to Fernandes and Lotus, about whom he was by contrast positively sunny, he was so
ill-prepared he floundered over the job title of Mike Gascoyne, the Lotus
executive and Norwich fan he said he knew and with whom he had talked about possible investment
or synergies. Not McNally’s finest hour as NCFC chief executive.
I also understand, and this is an
important point, that Kosich would have been looking for his fee from the buy
side, ie the investors, and not from NCFC or Deloitte’s. It
would have cost the club nothing. Perhaps, though, that was not clear at the
time. The other point to remember is that by blogging about the attractiveness of Norwich as an investment, Kosich was, as suggested above, potentially cutting himself out of the action straight away. There would be no reason - apart from a moral one - for any investor who'd read the article then to hire Kosich; they could have used their own people or gone straight to the club. Indeed, that may even have happened.
A story with a moral - don't give a financial story to a sports journalist. Certainly not when the story is based on a "fact" (the appointment of named administrators) that
not only either is or isn’t true but if not true then can easily be proved not
to be true.
Now defamation is an odd and subtle and highly specialised branch of
jurisprudence, like maritime law or the manumission of slaves. It is generally best dealt
with by the few specialist firms. London-based, and expensive. Lawyers who know
what you’re talking about when you mention the effect of the Galloway judgment
on the Reynolds defence. The club, though, decided to use its normal firm of
solicitors, Leathes Prior, in Norwich. And that worked out fine – Leathes Prior must have done a competent job because the
result in Norwich City FC v. News International was a win for the
underdogs. An apology, undisclosed damages and the club’s
costs paid. The three requirements for victory all met.
As to the amount of damages, one cyberspace rumour put it at £20,000. The club later said the windfall had paid for Stephen
Elliott’s loan move, so at least his agent knows what the amount was.
So, a clearcut result, but there are two aspects worth looking at. Firstly this is the club’s post-settlement statement:
"Norwich City Football Club are pleased to announce the successful conclusion of the libel action against News Group Newspapers Limited (the publishers of the "News of the World"), following their publication of an article on Sunday, January 24, 2010. A settlement has been reached which involves the publication of an apology to the Club and its Chairman Alan Bowkett, together with a payment of a five-figure sum of damages. In addition, the Club's legal costs have been paid in full."
This is the News of the World’s cyberspace apology, which presumably was worded the same way as the printed version:
"On 24 January we said that Norwich City was on the brink of financial meltdown
and could go into administration that week without major new investment. That
was wrong because the club was not on the brink and they do not need new
investment to stave off administrators nor had they called in administrators.
We apologise to the club and to its chairman, Alan Bowkett, for any distress
caused by our error."
There is plainly something missing from that apology – apart from good English, that is. And that is any mention of
having to pay damages and our costs. Now there are no hard and fast rules on this, but it is common practice for such facts to be included in the apology. That is partly because papers that have caved in as comprehensively and quickly as the NotW did are not really in a position to refuse. It's like the end of a war - the winners get to write the peace treaty. And arguably this is the most significant bit of any such apology. It signals to readers that the paper has made a complete climbdown. Words – ie the “sorry”
bit – are one thing but coughing up money (and having to admit to millions of people that’s what
you’ve been forced to do) is what really matters.
The other intriguing aspect was that the paper printed the apology at the top of the
page rather than somewhere less conspicuous, which is normal. The defamation expert from whom I took a second opinion made the point that "the NotW doesn't offer top of the page unless they have very little option", indicating that the paper had been worried about
the seriousness of the libel. It suggested, my second opinion went on, there may have been more money to
be had from the paper. “It might mean they paid substantially less damages than
they might have expected to."
4. JONESTHEVOICEGATE
A much-trumpeted concert cancelled. Because of the sudden realisation that it couldn't be fitted in with plans announced months before for extra seats. The public reason, anyway.
The club's official statement was this:
The review undertaken on behalf of the Club has identified additional areas for extra seats, which has extended the work beyond what was originally planned. This work will therefore cause more disruption to the stadium over the summer than was originally anticipated.
Unfortunately it is not possible to install the extra seating and host a concert and with sincere regret the Club has had to take the decision to postpone Tom Jones' appearance.
On October 26th, 2009, the club, following a
review of its consultative process, made this announcement:
“Although as part of the changes the main meetings of
the Supporters Consultative Group will no longer take place, streamlined and
target-focussed [sic] supporter working groups will continue to meet with Club
officials to consult on a wide range of key areas, including:
- Ticketing
- Supporter Experience (Home and Away)
- Disabled Supporters
- Long-Distance Supporters
- Young Supporters
Further announcements about the composition of these
groups, their meeting dates and their targets will be made in the near future.
Each group will meet four times a year.”
Now "the near future” is an imprecise term, but as it happens nine months
have now passed and the club has not made any announcement to fans about the
composition of these groups, their meeting dates, or their targets. Nine months
equals three meetings of these groups. And one area covered, significantly, is
ticketing. An issue – assuming that ticketing covers ticket pricing – that is
beginning to give fans pause for thought. Is the lack of a promised
announcement on how fans should make their voice heard down to the club not
actually caring about consultation? Which is how it looks. Or is it just good
old-fashioned incompetence? In one sense it hardly matters, because the effect
is the same.