Stoaty Ferret
Active member
Trevor just didn't have the whoooar factor
Simon Jordan
Sunday September 4, 2005
The Guardian
In April 2003 I sacked Trevor Francis: we'd missed promotion and the playoffs again, were going nowhere and he'd spent £2.2million of my money on Ade Akinbiyi. Was I right? No, said the papers: I'd employed 'seven managers in three years'; I was the 'fastest axe-man' in football. Dario Gradi told the press he'd never leave Crewe for Palace and no one with any self-respect should consider working for a man like me. 'It'll be interesting to see who Jordan gets next,' he said. 'Whoever goes for the Palace job has to be desperate.'
Article continues
There were so many things wrong with the reaction. Gradi? Fair enough that someone who has spent 22 years at a feeder club might find ambition frightening, but I'd never even met him. Desperate? I had so many applicants that we had to compile a dossier of the best before choosing who to interview. Laughably, six months before Daniel Levy at Spurs was hailing the great coup of signing Jacques Santini, Santini was applying to me. And as for being an 'axe-man' with 'seven managers in three years'? Three of those were caretakers and two of those three were the same person: Steve Kember.
It is true - finding managers, hiring managers, trying to keep good ones and shake off the bad ones is one of the hardest parts of chairmanship, but it's never as black and white as it's portrayed. Five games into the season, there's already speculation on who will be the first to be sacked - and as clubs everywhere know, there is no end of ways the chairman-manager relationship can go wrong.
Of the four managers I employed in that three-year period, two left and two were sacked. Steve Coppell and I just didn't get on: I'd watched us concede 15 goals in three pre-season friendlies, so I asked what the hell was going on. Steve had a funny turn and left. Alan Smith I should have taken out months before I did - and Trevor Francis, despite me still regarding him as a capable manager, made bad choices and just didn't fit the vibe of the club. Every club has its own identity: I always thought Palace were a bit flighty, bit flash, lacking in substance - a legacy of Terry Venables and Malcolm Allison. In human form we were the Fast Show character - a little bit tasty, a little bit 'whoooar', a little bit 'wayyy'. That's not Trevor.
THE FOURTH WAS Steve Bruce. What happened between us - his decision to walk out on a two-year contract after three months, and my decision to injunct him - is well-documented, up to a point. Since it happened, Steve has made references in the press to the 'real reasons' he left, implying something went on at Palace that justified his decision to walk and that some sort of gagging order is keeping him quiet.
There were no 'reasons'. There was no 'something'. People assume he's talking about interference, about me going into the dressing room. I've done that once in five years, long before Bruce's time. I'm blamed for not supporting his transfers, but only ever blocked two: a player called Arkadiusz Bak who we'd had bad reports about (Bruce subsequently signed Bak for Birmingham, then got rid of him after two months for being awful) and Steve Vickers, who wanted to sign for us, but live in Middlesbrough, train with Middlesbrough and only pop down to London on Thursdays.
How did it all go so wrong? Initially, when I told Karren Brady - someone who it's fair to say I don't hold in the highest regard - to forget about making an official approach, Steve reacted well. His family and wife Janet, a lovely woman, were settled and happy and I offered to extend his contract. He told me: 'Chairman, I'll speak to Janet, but what I can tell you is that my heart and my head is with you.' That lasted 24 hours.
Once his mind was set on Birmingham, things became increasingly bitter. He tried everything to needle me into releasing him. He was telling me things I knew weren't true: that the players didn't like me and didn't trust me. When that didn't work, he stopped turning up for work, so I put Steve Kember in charge. Then Bruce told me he'd resign. I said fine, resign, but you have a nine-month notice period in your contract and you're going to do as you're told. That's when I changed from appeasement to aggression. And that's when we went to court.
It wasn't a great situation to have a well-paid manager on 'gardening leave' but it was a damn sight better than having a manager go to a competitor for nothing, then run riot through the club he'd been at for three months, picking up backroom staff and players. It set a precedent, showing other clubs they can fight this sort of behaviour, and it marked Bruce's card. I suspect that his previous experiences provided him with a real dilemma when the Newcastle job came up last year.
How's our relationship now? I saw him two years ago for the first time and cleared the air. His wife Janet gave me a kiss and said sorry about what happened. If he'd stayed we would have been promoted and I think he'd have enjoyed a much better working relationship with me than he has with those guys at Birmingham. But in the end it all worked out: he got them promoted, kept them up and we eventually found our ideal manager. Everything happens for a reason.
THE SEARCH FOR Iain Dowie - the dossier, the applications, the interviews - sharpened my sense of how to choose a good manager. There are two key questions: what is his character and why is he sitting in front of me? He'll either be out of work as a result of a failure elsewhere, or at a club beneath yours in stature. You're guided by gut instinct more than you would be with a commercial appointment - and in Iain I knew I'd found someone like me with drive, ambition and strength. If he hadn't signed, I would have tried for Neil Warnock for the same reasons.
What have I learned from all this? Mainly that the image of managers as victims of 'axe-men' is mad. They have the power and they're absurdly protected: it has to be one of the only jobs in the world where you're paid if you fail. People sympathise with Bobby Robson that it took Newcastle eight months to pay his £2.1m compensation - but with respect, what was it for? And as for the FA incentivising Sven by putting him on a deal where he'll get £4.5m if he's sacked - that's the FA at their finest, it really is.
So what's the answer? Perhaps managers' contracts need to have three things. An initial short term: Iain's first deal was 18 months. A compensation clause to protect clubs: if a manager who has spent millions of my money on players, hundreds of thousands on backroom staff and more on my academy and training ground walks out and all his changes aren't wanted by the new manager, I'm millions out of pocket. And they need to have a set of agreed, defined performance targets, to resemble real-world contracts. Here's your written warning manager because you haven't got us in the top 10. Here's your second written warning for not having us in the top 10 the next season. And here's your dismissal notice because you've done it again. No one club can introduce that - it'd need to be a game-wide, top-down imposition.
THE REAL TARGET, of course, is to avoid getting into the situation in the first place. Iain's now on an extended contract and it's been well-earned. Bruce has shown you can never stop a good manager leaving, but if someone comes in for Iain, I'm confident he'll stay. I think he believes in me, he values the strength of our bond, he fits the club and knows he can shape it as he wants to.
Ultimately success in this manager-chairman relationship is about respect, vision and a fiercely shared ambition. It's something Gradi wouldn't understand.
Seems Dario has got under his skin.
In his defence I'd say he has brought through a stack of English talent during his tenure and shown the way for the likes of Brighton to follow in terms of working with youth to prosper.
As for Jordans comments about Palace being a bit flighty and lacking in substance, at least he admits they aren't a proper club.
Simon Jordan
Sunday September 4, 2005
The Guardian
In April 2003 I sacked Trevor Francis: we'd missed promotion and the playoffs again, were going nowhere and he'd spent £2.2million of my money on Ade Akinbiyi. Was I right? No, said the papers: I'd employed 'seven managers in three years'; I was the 'fastest axe-man' in football. Dario Gradi told the press he'd never leave Crewe for Palace and no one with any self-respect should consider working for a man like me. 'It'll be interesting to see who Jordan gets next,' he said. 'Whoever goes for the Palace job has to be desperate.'
Article continues
There were so many things wrong with the reaction. Gradi? Fair enough that someone who has spent 22 years at a feeder club might find ambition frightening, but I'd never even met him. Desperate? I had so many applicants that we had to compile a dossier of the best before choosing who to interview. Laughably, six months before Daniel Levy at Spurs was hailing the great coup of signing Jacques Santini, Santini was applying to me. And as for being an 'axe-man' with 'seven managers in three years'? Three of those were caretakers and two of those three were the same person: Steve Kember.
It is true - finding managers, hiring managers, trying to keep good ones and shake off the bad ones is one of the hardest parts of chairmanship, but it's never as black and white as it's portrayed. Five games into the season, there's already speculation on who will be the first to be sacked - and as clubs everywhere know, there is no end of ways the chairman-manager relationship can go wrong.
Of the four managers I employed in that three-year period, two left and two were sacked. Steve Coppell and I just didn't get on: I'd watched us concede 15 goals in three pre-season friendlies, so I asked what the hell was going on. Steve had a funny turn and left. Alan Smith I should have taken out months before I did - and Trevor Francis, despite me still regarding him as a capable manager, made bad choices and just didn't fit the vibe of the club. Every club has its own identity: I always thought Palace were a bit flighty, bit flash, lacking in substance - a legacy of Terry Venables and Malcolm Allison. In human form we were the Fast Show character - a little bit tasty, a little bit 'whoooar', a little bit 'wayyy'. That's not Trevor.
THE FOURTH WAS Steve Bruce. What happened between us - his decision to walk out on a two-year contract after three months, and my decision to injunct him - is well-documented, up to a point. Since it happened, Steve has made references in the press to the 'real reasons' he left, implying something went on at Palace that justified his decision to walk and that some sort of gagging order is keeping him quiet.
There were no 'reasons'. There was no 'something'. People assume he's talking about interference, about me going into the dressing room. I've done that once in five years, long before Bruce's time. I'm blamed for not supporting his transfers, but only ever blocked two: a player called Arkadiusz Bak who we'd had bad reports about (Bruce subsequently signed Bak for Birmingham, then got rid of him after two months for being awful) and Steve Vickers, who wanted to sign for us, but live in Middlesbrough, train with Middlesbrough and only pop down to London on Thursdays.
How did it all go so wrong? Initially, when I told Karren Brady - someone who it's fair to say I don't hold in the highest regard - to forget about making an official approach, Steve reacted well. His family and wife Janet, a lovely woman, were settled and happy and I offered to extend his contract. He told me: 'Chairman, I'll speak to Janet, but what I can tell you is that my heart and my head is with you.' That lasted 24 hours.
Once his mind was set on Birmingham, things became increasingly bitter. He tried everything to needle me into releasing him. He was telling me things I knew weren't true: that the players didn't like me and didn't trust me. When that didn't work, he stopped turning up for work, so I put Steve Kember in charge. Then Bruce told me he'd resign. I said fine, resign, but you have a nine-month notice period in your contract and you're going to do as you're told. That's when I changed from appeasement to aggression. And that's when we went to court.
It wasn't a great situation to have a well-paid manager on 'gardening leave' but it was a damn sight better than having a manager go to a competitor for nothing, then run riot through the club he'd been at for three months, picking up backroom staff and players. It set a precedent, showing other clubs they can fight this sort of behaviour, and it marked Bruce's card. I suspect that his previous experiences provided him with a real dilemma when the Newcastle job came up last year.
How's our relationship now? I saw him two years ago for the first time and cleared the air. His wife Janet gave me a kiss and said sorry about what happened. If he'd stayed we would have been promoted and I think he'd have enjoyed a much better working relationship with me than he has with those guys at Birmingham. But in the end it all worked out: he got them promoted, kept them up and we eventually found our ideal manager. Everything happens for a reason.
THE SEARCH FOR Iain Dowie - the dossier, the applications, the interviews - sharpened my sense of how to choose a good manager. There are two key questions: what is his character and why is he sitting in front of me? He'll either be out of work as a result of a failure elsewhere, or at a club beneath yours in stature. You're guided by gut instinct more than you would be with a commercial appointment - and in Iain I knew I'd found someone like me with drive, ambition and strength. If he hadn't signed, I would have tried for Neil Warnock for the same reasons.
What have I learned from all this? Mainly that the image of managers as victims of 'axe-men' is mad. They have the power and they're absurdly protected: it has to be one of the only jobs in the world where you're paid if you fail. People sympathise with Bobby Robson that it took Newcastle eight months to pay his £2.1m compensation - but with respect, what was it for? And as for the FA incentivising Sven by putting him on a deal where he'll get £4.5m if he's sacked - that's the FA at their finest, it really is.
So what's the answer? Perhaps managers' contracts need to have three things. An initial short term: Iain's first deal was 18 months. A compensation clause to protect clubs: if a manager who has spent millions of my money on players, hundreds of thousands on backroom staff and more on my academy and training ground walks out and all his changes aren't wanted by the new manager, I'm millions out of pocket. And they need to have a set of agreed, defined performance targets, to resemble real-world contracts. Here's your written warning manager because you haven't got us in the top 10. Here's your second written warning for not having us in the top 10 the next season. And here's your dismissal notice because you've done it again. No one club can introduce that - it'd need to be a game-wide, top-down imposition.
THE REAL TARGET, of course, is to avoid getting into the situation in the first place. Iain's now on an extended contract and it's been well-earned. Bruce has shown you can never stop a good manager leaving, but if someone comes in for Iain, I'm confident he'll stay. I think he believes in me, he values the strength of our bond, he fits the club and knows he can shape it as he wants to.
Ultimately success in this manager-chairman relationship is about respect, vision and a fiercely shared ambition. It's something Gradi wouldn't understand.
Seems Dario has got under his skin.
In his defence I'd say he has brought through a stack of English talent during his tenure and shown the way for the likes of Brighton to follow in terms of working with youth to prosper.
As for Jordans comments about Palace being a bit flighty and lacking in substance, at least he admits they aren't a proper club.
It's funny, but when you read one of his articles, you're quite impressed by his plain-speaking, but then when you read more than one, suddenly his "me against the world" style becomes a bit tiresome and grating. When he's discussing his small little battles in football, he has the self-importance missionary zeal of a Geldof eliminating world poverty. Too mock heroic for my tastes.
