Post by QPR Report on Oct 30, 2008 11:57:00 GMT
Marina Hyde - Guardian Blog
No literary prizes for Levy's polemic
The open letter has become the resort of chairmen who slip up on the 'director of football' banana skin
"Human nature often dictates the need to find someone or something to blame." Thus spake Daniel Levy in his letter to the Corinthians ... I do beg your pardon, in his letter to Spurs fans at the weekend. Whether or not you nurse minuscule differences of opinion with Mr Levy over his many stratagems and sermons, you must agree that this missive was a classic of the open letter genre.
For too long this much underrated literary device has been the preserve of self-effacing journalists whose weakness for filling space in newspapers with portentous missives beginning "Dear George Bush" or "An open letter to Ben Bernanke" is a cause for mirth for the rest of us. What a pleasure, then, to find the open letter device increasingly resorted to by football club chairmen who have made monumental arses of themselves, usually via the old "director of football" banana skin.
October is not yet out and already we have seen open letters deployed by the Newcastle chairman, Mike Ashley, whose director of football is the much-loved Dennis Wise and whose manager is the heavily charm-schooled Joe Kinnear. For all that he has a talent for pulling in the big hitters, Mr Ashley was last month moved to announce that he loved the club so much that he was going to sell it, at least at such time as he could be sure of making a profit, a date we might - in light of recent events in the global financial markets - place around 2019. And on Saturday it was Mr Levy's turn to unleash his open letter, as the Spurs chairman attempted to draw a line under recent and indeed not so recent disappointments for the club, by appealing to fans direct.
We have yet to hear from West Ham's chairman, Bjorgolfur Gudmundsson, who would complete our trifecta of chairmen whose employment of a director of football locks them into the inevitability of having to pen an "open letter" down the line, typically after the departure of a manager. Like his club's most newshounded supporter, my Guardian colleague Russell Brand, Mr Gudmundsson seems content to remain tight-lipped at present, despite Alan Curbishley having left Upton Park last month. Understandable, perhaps, given that Mr Gudmundsson has been deposed as chairman of an Icelandic bank and threatened with anti-terror legislation by Gordon Brown. (Mr Brown has moved on to branding Mr Brand a terror, but we mustn't digress.)
What the open letter effectively does is allow the writers to nurse the illusion of communicating directly with an audience they have either lost or whose secretary's secretary never even took their calls. Yet just as there is a certain absurdity to journalists filling their spaces with open letters to the United States president, or the chairman of the Federal Reserve, so it is to be hoped that, the minute football chairmen have to resort to penning open letters to fans, they realise it is they themselves who have terminally lost the audience. There may be better results around the corner, there may even be a little light silverware in the future, but they will never fully recover and the minute things go even slightly wrong again they will once again be the target of their fans' ire.
In his open letter, Mr Levy did make rather weaselly reference to his postbag. "I do appreciate the time people take to write to me," he claimed, "and when the emails or letters are constructive and not abusive, I can assure you that I read as many as I can. And I do take notice of your views."
Well, you don't, old chap. At least not inside of several years. But what's the point in getting worked up, when Mr Levy has ushered in a new era where everything you thought you knew was right, and directors of football will have to retrain in other profoundly destabilising cultural roles - as investment bankers, possibly, or as judgment-challenged radio producers?
All of which brings us back to Russell, whose suspension yesterday by the BBC leaves his column - in this very space on Saturday - his only outlet. It is very much to be hoped that he might fall back upon the open letter format, perhaps beginning his column "Dear Andrew Sachs" or "Dear Andrews Sachs's granddaughter" or indeed "Dear Paul Dacre".
Come to that, as a sublimely gifted ironist, Russell may instead see the comedic potential in addressing an open letter to Bjorgolfur Gudmundsson, advising him that he has lost a significant part of his audience and must stop acting like such an arrogant arse at once.