Government Plans re Supporters/Club Ownership

[QPR Report]

All sorts of questions arise - including which fans, how fans decided, money, etc

Guardian/Owen Gibson

Government's plan to fix football: give clubs back to fans
Exclusive: Radical proposals designed to overhaul the way the game is governed

The government is to unveil radical proposals that would give football fans first option to buy their clubs when they were put up for sale and require clubs to hand over a stake of up to 25% to supporters' groups.

The ideas, due to be included in the Labour manifesto with a promise of action in the first year of a new government, are designed to give fans a far greater say in how their football clubs are run and overhaul the way the game is governed.

It is believed that No 10, which has been working secretly on the plans for weeks, has resolved to deliver concrete proposals to tackle growing public disquiet at the level of debt carried by some clubs, the ownership model of others and the dysfunctional structure of the Football Association.

The plans include:

• Requiring clubs to hand a stake of up to 25% to fans in recognition of their links with their local community.

• Implementing a change-of-control clause that would allow fans a window to put together a takeover of their club if it was up for sale or went into administration.

• Giving the football authorities a deadline to reform the FA and remove "vested interests" from the board, and streamline decision making.

• Introducing a unified system of governance that co-ordinates issues such as club ownership and youth development.

• Allowing professional leagues and the FA additional oversight of club takeovers.

The plans are likely to put Gordon Brown on a collision course with the Premier League, which has vigorously defended its free-market model in recent years, but he will claim that the proposals are for the good of the game.

Two policy ideas have emerged as frontrunners to improve supporter representation around the boardroom table, both of which would see fans taking a meaningful ownership stake in clubs.

Portsmouth's financial collapse, the outpouring of anger in response to the leveraged buyouts at Manchester United and Liverpool that loaded the clubs with combined debts of more than £1bn, and last week's shock resignation of the FA chief executive, Ian Watmore, in protest at the "vested interests" on the board are all understood to have persuaded the prime minister to act.

Reflecting the view that they will succeed in democratising ownership only if there is stronger leadership from the top, it will also set football a deadline of up to a year to overhaul its governance system.

Under the scheme to give fans a stake, supporters' trusts with elected representatives, audited accounts and Financial Services Authority recognition would be responsible for maintaining the link between clubs and their community and ensuring fans are not priced out of the game.

The government could, however, face legal challenges from existing owners over the dilution of their shares. It has echoes of the model proposed by the so-called Red Knights attempting to buy Manchester United. Wealthy fans will contribute 74.9% of the overall purchase price, but supporters will hold a "golden share" of just over 25%, giving them a blocking stake on any change of ownership and an influential boardroom voice.

Legal advice is being sought on the idea of a change of ownership at a club triggering a mandatory window for fans to take the opportunity to shape the ownership structure and buy the club at a price set by an external, independent auditor.

Under the proposals, fans would be free to set up their co-operative style model, shareholding trust or other structure that enabled them to have a say in the club.

While the government will reiterate that it has no desire to regulate football directly, the prime minister believes the democratisation of football club ownership taps into wider themes about the "mutualisation" of public services and the need for regulatory reform.

www.guardian.co.uk/football/2010/mar/28/government-plan-football-clubs-fans

[QPR Report]

Guardian/Owen Gibson

Football reforms: fans' transfer window to buy clubsGordon Brown's blueprint to give game back to fans comes amid clamour to act on debt

Gordon Brown frequently cites his Raith Rovers share certificates as among his most treasured possessions. That fact is likely to be wheeled out again in the coming weeks to highlight his personal interest in proposals designed to enable fans to own a share of the clubs they support in the hope that it can become a touchstone election issue.

Over recent years, the government has frequently paid lip service to the supporter-led movement to increase fan representation on boards. But it is only in the last 12 months, as fan fury at Liverpool and Manchester United at the size of the debt loaded on to their clubs by overseas owners has been accompanied by financial meltdown at Portsmouth, that it has started to dominate the thoughts of a broader constituency of fans.

The issue has also entered the political mainstream as the Red Knights looking to buy Manchester United from the Glazer family mobilised, Uefa proposed new rules to force clubs to live "within their means" and Portsmouth became the first Premier League club to go into administration.

Last month Brown said at his monthly press conference that debts at some clubs were "too high" and warned them to "look very seriously to their responsibilities to supporters". A keen Raith fan who contributed to a fan buyout, he is understood to have played a key role in formulating the new proposals.

Organisations such as Supporters Direct have long looked with envy at the German Bundesliga, where 51% of the club must be owned by supporters, and Barcelona, where democratic elections are held every four years.

There are two policies on the table, from several under consideration, that appear to have gained most favour with Brown and are now being subject to legal scrutiny by aides.

The first would, in effect, force clubs to hand a proportion of their shares – perhaps up to 25% – to fans. These supporters' trusts, comprising democratically elected representatives, would be recognised in law and maintain the clubs' links with their communities in a variety of ways. The mechanism for doing so would be left to the football authorities to work out.

The second proposal would give fans the opportunity to put together a takeover bid for their club in the event of it being put up for sale or going into administration.

In a pre-defined window, they would be able to seek financial backing for a new ownership model that might lead to a community-owned model, a shareholders' trust or a single owner who pledges to be democratically accountable to fans. The club's price could be set by an independent, external auditor.

It is felt that Uefa's plans for a new Financial Fair Play regime, which it hopes to introduce in time for the 2012-13 season and would essentially prevent clubs spending more than they earn except on building infrastructure and youth development, would make it easier for an outside agency to place a value on clubs.

While there is an understanding that there is much detail to be worked through to make the schemes practical, Brown is believed to be serious about seeing the idea through if Labour were to win the election.

For all its current issues off the pitch, the Premier League, with no little justification, has been able to point to its rise to pre-eminence as the most exciting, most popular and most profitable in the world. Despite the travails of some of its clubs, it remains a British success story and the government has therefore stepped warily, occasionally challenging and cajoling the game to reform its dysfunctional structures but stopping well short of ordering change.

The new proposals mark a distinct shift in tone. The football authorities will be told to implement the ideas on club ownership and simultaneously issued with a "final warning" over the need to overhaul their governance structures.

They will call for the proposals suggested by Lord Burns to reform the FA five years ago – to introduce independent non-executives to the board, reduce the numbers of representatives from the professional and amateur games and overhaul the FA Council – to be implemented in full.

The government will order the removal of the "vested interests" on the FA board that are said to have blocked reform and led to the frustrated resignation of chief executive Ian Watmore after just 10 months.

It will also call for a unified fit and proper persons test, additional scrutiny of club takeovers and a coherent policy on youth development, with the FA taking the lead.

Some will criticise the government for jumping on the bandwagon in response to a flurry of recent calls for change in the way the game is run. But No 10 will say that it has been considering the proposals for months and point to a dialogue with football that stretches back years.

Most recently, the culture secretary at the time, Andy Burnham, wrote to the Football League, Football Association and Premier League posing seven searching questions and challenging the game to "reassess its relationship with money".

Brown is, however, also understood to be keen that the government's intervention is not interpreted as it siding with Uefa president Michel Platini over the Premier League in the debate about how the game should be regulated.

It will point to its previous support for the Premier League's position when European regulators attempted to reform the way it sells its TV rights.

The Premier League is expected to mount a robust defence of its model.

Executives recently banked £1.2bn for a series of overseas TV deals that will take the total earned from its next set of TV contracts to more than £3.2bn. On the pitch, the product is as successful as ever.

Its chief executive, Richard Scudamore, told the Guardian last week that he supported reform of the FA but said any move to restrict the freedom of club owners to speculate would seriously damage the attractiveness of the league.

www.guardian.co.uk/football/2010/mar/28/football-reforms-fans-buy-clubs

[QPR Report]

And a slightly different topic.

Patrick Barclay/The Times - Super-rich owners should feel in debt to Uefa over new plans
Uefa’s draft regulations on “financial fair play”, far from being an attempt to drive wealthy benefactors out of the game, are a sugar daddies’ charter.

So don’t worry about the rich: they, like the poor, will always be with us. And they will be delighted with the outcome of Uefa’s deliberations, which limit the amount they can invest in the façade of a club, thus protecting them from impatient and ungrateful fans (imagine the whoops in the Glazer and Hicks households) without imposing any of the restrictions on ownership to which German football remains philosophically wedded.

Overall, the proposals are sensible. Their central message is that clubs should spend no more on wages and transfer fees than they earn though gate receipts, television rights and merchandising — but that they can spend unlimited amounts on “infrastructure” (stadiums, training facilities) and youth development.

Although it is extraordinary that clubs have taken so long to acknowledge the bleedin’ obvious, Michel Platini and his sidekicks deserve a round of applause.

My concern, from the Barclays Premier League point of view, is that to ignore the ownership model is to give carte blanche to the sort of Americans who have taken hold of Manchester United and Liverpool: semi-naked profiteers. Why, after all, have the Glazer family and Tom Hicks and George Gillett Jr bought English sporting brands through saddling them with debt? Because they couldn’t do it back home.

The game is still woefully underregulated in England — by any standard, let alone that which pertains in the land of the free. Americans have long since accepted that sport is a radically different business to any other, calling for governance closer to communism than capitalism while benefiting from the apposite elements of both.

It is difficult, however, to imagine English football affording itself the protection enjoyed by the German game, let alone American sport. With half the Premier League foreign-owned, there would seem no point in even putting it to the vote. The family silver is sold.

What this is likely to mean is that, when the Uefa proposals take effect, when wage and transfer-fee inflation subside and the limit on squad size to 25 senior professionals cuts costs farther, the profits will tend to go abroad. Nobody — and least of all the perennially pallid FA — seems to mind, or even think about it.

One point that does require the clubs’ attention — and they will be aware of it, because equitable sharing of television revenue remains among the Premier League’s most admirable achievements — is that the likes of United and Chelsea will come under pressure to match Real Madrid and Barcelona by taking the lion’s share through individual deals. The more I think about it, the more deeply I hope they will continue to resist any temptation to weaken domestic rivals.

Among those celebrating nonetheless will be Roman Abramovich, who always insisted that Chelsea were going to have to run on an even keel and can now prepare for it without having to worry about new rich kids on the block, and Sheikh Mansour; he has just enough time to build Manchester City into a position where they can challenge United.

Then football should become a matter of slow, sustainable growth in which the big money goes to the projects that matter, such as coaching youngsters and providing comfort for the fans. There will still be miracles, but they will take a little longer and be the better for it. Naive? How it turns out remains to be seen. But at least — at last — there is a framework.

Torres should hedge his bets over windfall

Say what you like about Liverpool, no one is doing more to put the smile back on the face of football than our friends from Anfield.

No sooner have we digested the news that Fernando Torres expects the club to make five world-class signings this summer — doubtless the lure of a rest from Champions League football will prove irresistible to them — than it is authoritatively reported that a military-style operation is to be launched to bring José Mourinho from Italy as manager.

The combined skills of the SAS and Mossad would be needed to bring this one off, for Mourinho prefers the thought of Manchester United to Liverpool and, in the likely event of a vacancy doggedly refusing to arise at Old Trafford, might be tempted more by the huge budget and boundless horizons of Manchester City than the undoubted challenge of Anfield, with its unpopular and indebted American owners.

Things, however, may be about to change at Liverpool (OK, you have heard it often, but that doesn’t mean it won’t one day prove true). An American hedge fund called the Rhône Group is thinking of coming to the club’s rescue with an investment of £100 million.

This could be used to pay off Rafael Benítez and his assistant (say, £15 million) and engage Mourinho and his entourage on a five-year contract (the Special One is understood to be on £9 million a year tax paid with Inter Milan, so let’s set aside £75 million).

With the remaining £10 million, the club could pay architects to make another plastic model of the state-of-the-art stadium they will need to sustain Champions League football. It could even be unveiled on the day the Rhône Group arrives, as proof that these people are just as ambitious as Tom Hicks and George Gillett Jr promised to be when they arrived and unveiled their model.

As for Torres’s quintet of stars, it shouldn’t be difficult to find that many top talents available on free transfers and willing to play for nothing.

Now, is it just me or do you, too, long for the day when American hedge funds go back to funding American hedges?

Brooking the FA’s knight in shining armour

I should be more eager to buy into the notion of Ian Watmore’s resignation as a tragedy for football if, at any time since he left the FA, he had popped his friendly face over the parapet and told us why.

Hints are no use. Nor are reports that he was constantly frustrated by the power of the Premier League.

The latest indication is that Watmore came to the conclusion that football’s administration could only be improved with Government intervention and, as one who long ago concluded that the only effective force for decency would indeed be a jackboot’s descent from a great height, I’d love to have heard that from the man himself.

Many aspects of the game — not least the way agents are used by clubs in transfers — are scandalous. The FA is nowhere near tough enough on this and as for its disciplinary system, it has fallen so far into disrepute that when Sir Alex Ferguson criticises it, reasonable people are tempted to agree.

Gary Lineker has suggested that Sir Trevor Brooking be given Watmore’s job and, to the extent that it is time football wisdom prevailed over the grey jargon of business that hamstrings it, I agree. But he would need a more powerful chairman than Lord Triesman has proved to be.


www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/columnists/patrick_barclay/article7079512.ece

[QPR Report]

Supported by Platini

Guardian/Owen Gibson
Michel Platini weighs in behind Labour plans for fan power• Michel Platini hails fan buyout schemes as 'a great idea'
• Tories attack 'gimmick' but draft their own proposals
Monday 29 March 2010

The Uefa president Michel Platini today gave his backing to planned government proposals that would give supporters a stake in their clubs, as the Conservatives revealed they were working on their own proposals to reform the game and give fans more of a voice.

As revealed in the Guardian today, Labour is formulating concrete plans to allow supporters' trusts to own up to 25% of their clubs and to introduce a "change of control" clause that would give fans a window in which to buy them out.

Platini, who last week confirmed that he plans to stay on as Uefa president for four more years to see through the Financial Fair Play reforms he has been instrumental in drafting, welcomed Labour's plans. "Personally, I think it is a great idea ... that the supporters invest in a club because they at the end of the day defend the club's identity," Platini said. "They are always there. They are always watching the games."

Platini said the decision over who can buy a club and how should be made by national governments, adding that he liked the Spanish system where, for example, Barcelona and Real Madrid are owned by fan groups known as socios.

"There are clubs now where the president is not a national of the country, the coach is not a national of the country and the players are not nationals of the country. The only ones to have any kind of identity are the supporters," he said.

The Premier League refused to comment but is understood to be relaxed about the proposals, despite the private anger of some clubs, believing that the more radical ideas will founder on the practicalities of company and insolvency law.

Additionally, No 10 is believed to be keen to stress that its proposals do not amount to it siding with Platini in the debate over the game's future regulatory and financial structure.

No 10 is taking legal advice on whether the proposals would be workable and is also understood to believe that an alternative route would be to simply encourage a beefed-up Football Association to amend its articles of constitution to mandate the changes.

The topic looks set to become an election issue as the Tories revealed that they have been working on proposals to give fans a greater voice within football. Hugh Robertson, the shadow sports minister, said that while the subject was legitimate for debate, he thought the timing of the plans a "pre-election gimmick".

"I believe there is widespread consensus that action needs to be taken, but it is important to understand the full implications for insolvency law and target this precisely," he said.

Labour is expected to make specific commitments to fan ownership in its election manifesto. That will be accompanied by a direct challenge to the FA and the professional leagues to overhaul what it sees as the game's dysfunctional governance structure in the wake of the resignation of the FA chief executive Ian Watmore.

Specifically, they will be told to implement the reforms suggested by Lord Burns in his 2005 review of the FA, introduce a streamlined system of governance that allows for a unified fit and proper ownership test and a co-ordinated policy on youth development. Robertson today said his party had been working for more than a month on proposals to force clubs and governing bodies to have more independent voices on their boards.

"One concern is that giving supporters a 'right to buy' some or all of the club may not always be the best solution, because it can screen out better funded local businessmen with community backing," Robertson said. "You could logically forgo the first stage by actually giving fans direct involvement in the first place."

Supporters Direct, responsible for overseeing a network of supporters' trusts across the country, welcomed the plans. "The two parties – one of which will form the basis of the next government – both agree fans should have a stake in the clubs they support and are pledged to work to make it happen," said Dave Boyle, the chief executive. "That's great news for the trust movement and long-overdue recognition that clubs aren't businesses like any other."

FA insiders raised the spectre of government calls for intervention potentially damaging the World Cup bid due to Fifa's longstanding antipathy to political interference. However, N0 10 is believed to have already sought reassurance that its plans will not damage the bid.

www.guardian.co.uk/football/2010/mar/29/michel-platini-uefa-fan-power

[QPR Report]

Guardian/Owen Gibson
Interested parties give their reaction to Labour's plans to give fans more influence in the way football clubs are governed

Dave Boyle Chief executive Supporters Direct

"If you have got both parties – one of whom will be the government next time round – saying we want to put fans in a much more entrenched position within the clubs, then that's brilliant. It's great news for the trust movement and long-overdue recognition that clubs aren't businesses like any other. We look forward to the next government – whoever it is – putting fans at the heart of the game and we will work with them to make it happen. If it's a line in the manifesto, then that's great. This feels like a change in tone and pitch. I'd like to think it's both parties realising the power of football supporters but it's also a recognition that on the back of what has happened at Manchester United and what has happened at Portsmouth there's a need to act. It's not a minority issue any more. It's great to see it rising up the political agenda but it will come down to how good the proposal is and how strong the will is. We can help with the former but the latter is very much down to the government"

Michel Platini Uefa president

"Personally, I think it is a great idea ... that the supporters invest in a club because they, at the end of the day, defend the club's identity. They are always there. They are always watching the games. There are clubs now where the president is not a national of the country, the coach is not a national of the country and the players are not nationals of the country. The only ones to have any kind of identity are the supporters"

Hugh Robertson Conservative shadow sports minister

"I believe there is widespread consensus that action needs to be taken but it is important to understand the full implications for insolvency law and target this precisely. One concern is that giving supporters a 'right to buy' some or all of the club may not always be the best solution, because it can screen out better-funded local businessmen with community backing. You could logically forgo the first stage by giving fans direct involvement in the first place"

Don Foster Liberal Democrat culture, media and sport spokesman

"Supporter ownership is a nice idea but will be nothing more than a pipe dream for most fans. We urgently need a radical overhaul of the FA to better represent supporters and act in the interests of the game. Ministers need to promise to look at other issues of desperate importance to fans, like ticket prices, safe standing and facilities for disabled supporters"

Andy Walsh General manager FC United of Manchester

"I know they have been in discussions over it for the last few months. We welcome this debate going mainstream. We have been campaigning on these issues for a number of years. Last month we had a rally in which we said that, if the FA don't feel they can move on legislating on ownership, the government should intervene. People can be cynical about the motives and, looking back to what was said at the end of the Football Task Force, you can see why some people are cynical. But something needs to be done. You can't impose the German model on England but there are strong lessons to be learned from it. We would support a regulatory requirement of ownership to be held in trust for the good of the football club"

Lord Ouseley Chairman Kick It Out

"I'm not sure the government's interference has been helpful [in terms of reforming the Football Association]. My worry is that government interference has not helped this process, although clearly it tried to help for all the right reasons. The Burns report [Lord Burns's 2005 proposal of how to restructure the FA] was very important in detailing how a modern body like that should be constructed. It should go ahead and implement Burns fully. But I just get the feeling that people in the FA will stick two fingers up at the government and say 'what the hell are you playing at?' The Premier League will say they are running a very successful competition and why should government stick their noses in? I do agree with what is being suggested, that fans should have a greater role and be better represented, and clearly I believe the FA board should have greater inclusivity. But my main concern is that government pressure is counterproductive"

The Premier League, the Football Association and the Football League declined to comment on the government's proposals

www.guardian.co.uk/football/2010/mar/29/fans-being-heart-game

[QPR Report]

David Conn/The Guardian

The view that football was just a business wilted in the heat of commercial overkillThe government now believes it is a vote-winner to introduce supporter representation in football club

The hardening of the government's stance on big business football, the decision finally to demand reforms and supporter representation in clubs, has not been prompted solely by the mass protests at Manchester United, and Portsmouth's meltdown, which have dominated the first three months of 2010.

The Glazer-imposed £716m debts revealed at Manchester United, with £340m having gone out of the club in interest and fees since 2005, and Portsmouth's jaw-dropping insolvency, have certainly widened concern about the way football is run from a hardy corps of the well-informed to the mainstream. Ian Watmore's sudden resignation last week as the chief executive of the Football Association, the game's governing body, could be seen as a public demonstration that football as currently constituted cannot progressively run itself.


However, the ideas that will form this policy pledge in Labour's election manifesto are not a response just to the last three months, but to 13 years. When first elected in 1997, Labour believed that all was not well in a game generally being celebrated for its renaissance, for "coming home".

The new government set up the Football Task Force to address issues including high ticket prices, how to encourage supporter involvement in clubs, and how the wider purpose of football clubs can be preserved when they are, in reality, companies being bought and sold or, as was the boardroom fad then, floated on the stock market.

The taskforce did produce some enlightened progress, including the formation of the Football Foundation, to channel a proportion of the new satellite TV riches into the wretchedly dilapidated grassroots, and the establishment of Supporters Direct, to encourage democratic fans' trusts to be involved in the running of their clubs.

So the principle that clubs should be more like true clubs, there to serve their members, the supporters, not the commercial interests of whoever bought the holding company, took serious root in the government more than a decade ago. But on the grit of regulation, of whether football should be forced to reform itself, the government always drew back, arguing it could not step in.

A majority on the taskforce proposed a range of measures to apply when clubs are taken over, including scrutinising any new owner's plans and requiring 10% of the shares to be owned by fans, but the FA and Premier and Football Leagues presented united proposals to do nothing. The authorities' phrase was that progress would be made with "a more inclusionary approach to key stakeholders," a confection of jargon which, if it meant anything at all, reflected their prevailing view that football was now just a business, and the clubs were just commercial companies, which should be run like any other.

That argument, which held sway then, has now definitively wilted in the heat of commercial overkill since, the United and Pompey outrages, and wider general disillusionment with banks and clenched-fist capitalism. The government perceives a mood among football supporters and the population at large that there has to be a better, more human way to organise society and its institutions. That has increased the confidence of Gordon Brown to propose this: significant supporter ownership in clubs – the details of which have yet to be fully fleshed out – and beefed-up reform of the FA.

The prime minister's mind has, of course, also been concentrated by an imminent election, and that it is the first since 1997 that Labour is at serious risk of not winning. This firming-up of proposals demonstrates that the government now believes it is a vote-winner to introduce supporter representation in football clubs, and more robust governing principles to protect a game in search of its soul. This will be raucously cheered by the long-term campaigners, but with a twist of regret that the government had not done all this already during 13 years in power.

www.guardian.co.uk/football/2010/mar/29/football-reforms-labour-fans

[ingham]

Yes, having done nothing in all those 13 years, and with so many things which are pressing now that an election is imminent, it is difficult to believe that they've troubled themselves with this for any reason other than the election.

And if they win, it will be like the 'full pint' that Blair promised beer drinkers. Rather than make it compulsory - introducing lined glasses, for example - they relaxed the rules in favour of the big brewers so that landlords are permitted to serve even shorter measure than was usual.

Together with the English football authorities, I suspect the government's enthusiasm for supporter-run Clubs will be of the proverbial chocolate teapot kind, like Lord Chesterfield's patronage of Samuel Johnson's Dictionary.

"Is not a patron, my Lord, one who looks with unconcern on a man struggling for life in the water, and, when he has reached ground, encumbers him with help?"

If the finances are beyond repair, the League collapses, and the Clubs get themselves to their feet again by their own efforts and those of their supporters, the government, like the FA, won't hesitate to put their oar in.

Until then, they'll bow to the billionaires and kneel to every superlative - except the real ones of losses, debt and runaway inflation - whispering sweet nothings to themselves about 'the marketplace' and how they're powerless to act.

We know.

[klr]

What a desperate, transparent & thoroughly pathetic gimmick / Government this is, roll on May 6th FFS.

[desorchid]

Capitalist governments of either colour, are no friend of football supporters, they are friends of the OWNERS. in the same way as governments are no friend of the grocery shopper, they are friends with Terry Leahy.

As The Who said, 'Meet the new boss, same as the old boss'.

BTW - who remembers Charltons 'Voice of The Valley' Party that fought loads of seats in Greenwich local elections? Absolutely superb and had the 'main' parties sh1tting themselves. Brilliant grassroots football fans action.

[finney]

Mar 30, 2010 19:59:52 GMT desorchid said:

Capitalist governments of either colour, are no friend of football supporters, they are friends of the OWNERS. in the same way as governments are no friend of the grocery shopper, they are friends with Terry Leahy.

As The Who said, 'Meet the new boss, same as the old boss'.

BTW - who remembers Charltons 'Voice of The Valley' Party that fought loads of seats in Greenwich local elections? Absolutely superb and had the 'main' parties sh1tting themselves. Brilliant grassroots football fans action.

Outstanding post

[desorchid]

Mar 30, 2010 21:57:48 GMT finney said:

Mar 30, 2010 19:59:52 GMT desorchid said:

Capitalist governments of either colour, are no friend of football supporters, they are friends of the OWNERS. in the same way as governments are no friend of the grocery shopper, they are friends with Terry Leahy.

As The Who said, 'Meet the new boss, same as the old boss'.

BTW - who remembers Charltons 'Voice of The Valley' Party that fought loads of seats in Greenwich local elections? Absolutely superb and had the 'main' parties sh1tting themselves. Brilliant grassroots football fans action.

Outstanding post

Cheers Mr Finney. i just registered for Indy Rs as they seem to have a very sensible outlook like this board, and who do i find posting on there? Yep, someone who's had more bans than Mark Dennis. Unbelieveable.

[finney]

Mar 30, 2010 22:08:35 GMT desorchid said:

Mar 30, 2010 21:57:48 GMT finney said:

Outstanding post

Cheers Mr Finney. i just registered for Indy Rs as they seem to have a very sensible outlook like this board, and who do i find posting on there? Yep, someone who's had more bans than Mark Dennis. Unbelieveable.

Cheers glad you joined be good to see people from here and indyrs cross boards.

The thing is does anyone recall when they gave us a football task force and they put David Mellor in charge?
That said it all for me.

[cpr]

Mar 30, 2010 22:08:35 GMT desorchid said:

Mar 30, 2010 21:57:48 GMT finney said:

Outstanding post

Cheers Mr Finney. i just registered for Indy Rs as they seem to have a very sensible outlook like this board, and who do i find posting on there? Yep, someone who's had more bans than Mark Dennis. Unbelieveable.

There is a difference though, Mark Dennis had half a brain.

Edit: Also when Dennis threatened you he wasn't hiding on the interweb.

[desorchid]

Yes, i remember the Mellor thing. Kissanger, Nobel prize etc.

The FA brought out their 'Blueprint for Football' around the same time. I think it's most notable objective was success for the England team after the formation of the Premier League.

So that worked then.

(For the record i am English, but I have no love for the England football team. They're like Manchester United in the 1980's, bigger than they deserve, not won the league for ages and supported by loads and PR'd to the max.)

[desorchid]

Mar 30, 2010 22:14:53 GMT cpr said:

Mar 30, 2010 22:08:35 GMT desorchid said:

Cheers Mr Finney. i just registered for Indy Rs as they seem to have a very sensible outlook like this board, and who do i find posting on there? Yep, someone who's had more bans than Mark Dennis. Unbelieveable.

There is a difference though, Mark Dennis had half a brain.

Edit: Also when Dennis threatened you he wasn't hiding on the interweb.

On a serious note, and i am being serious here, is he ok?

As a Rangers fan, if he is unwell, well we should suggest some support.

Maybe he needs some help? He keeps coming back for more, (whichever site that is) and that isn't rationale, which could be a definition of insanity.