The Delusions of Ken Bates

March 4, 2012 Spoughts Leave a comment

Ken Bates is completely sure that what he does at Elland Road is correct. As much as the various outlets that criticize the running of the club disagree with what occurs, that one fact can stand above all others as an undeniable truth. The man in charge is completely, entirely, devoutly convinced that the Ken Bates method for running Leeds United is right. Not only this, it is the only way. The only way that Leeds United can have a future, Ken Bates feels, is through him.

A dictator is defined as “a ruler with total power over a country, typically one who has obtained power by force”. Many people would suggest that equating the chairman of a football team with those who cause strife around the globe as ridiculous. I would probably have agreed a mere seventy-two hours ago. This week, however, was the week in which the extensive nature of Ken Bates’s delusions came to the fore. He, dictating down to one of the various lackeys who crop up in statements that come out of the club, decided to ban the board of the Leeds United Supporter’s Trust (LUST). Clearly, judging by Ken Bates’ weekly interview that occurred a few days ago, this is in response to a group he knows little and cares little about. It must, therefore, have been as part of a giant cull of fans, because otherwise the event would not have occurred.

In doing this, Ken Bates has managed to galvanize the support base. Ideally, he would have hoped it had brought about a fan base united behind himself. He’d finally proven to the world that these were merely ‘morons’ and ‘sickpots’. Even if he hadn’t, at least these people who opposed him would no longer be an intolerable nuisance in the ground he does not own.

There are several fundamental flaws with this concept however. The first stems from the facts the majority of Leeds fans have become well acquainted with. Ken Bates, in his budgeting of Leeds United, spends at most 42% on the playing side of the team. We’ve covered this thoroughly already, but the fact is worth repeating. Football is primarily a game of dreams, a game in which fans should enter a season with hope and dreams about what may have unfolded by the end of the year. Yet Leeds have a set of fans well-adjusted to the notions of a summer of discontent. Last summer alone, Leeds lost several key first team players. It was clear the season was not going to be a positive one. This runs opposed to the very nature of football. Simon Kuper wrote about the almost permanently solvent nature of football clubs in The Blizzard, arguing that football clubs will always exist in one form or another, given the significant demand for them. Leeds fans do not ask for ridiculous debts to be run up, but they do ask for at least some risk, as without this, reward cannot come.

Secondly, as much as Ken Bates seems unwilling to accept this fact, there are laws governing the island on which his football team resides. Aside from the potentially repeated violations of the Data Protection Act in his weekly address, Ken seems convinced that denying LUST an outlet in the stadium is to deny them any outlet at all. Sadly for Kenneth, the ‘wishy-washy BBC watching liberals’ in charge incorporated the European Convention into UK law in 1998. This guarantees freedom of speech under the Human Rights Act. So, where Ken publishes only the positive through his various outlets, the various publications that people turn to for Leeds United news will continue to report the realities of the situation at Elland Road. This one incident alone has swelled the ranks of the Supporter’s Trust by a ‘mere’ thousand members. This is not Noel Lloyd. Ken is not the dictator of a secluded paradise. The outcry can, and may well lay siege to Bates’ regime at Elland Road.

Finally, Ken doesn’t seem to understand the movements football governance is taking. The Supporter’s Trust movement is backed by no less than the current Con-Dem Coalition, ideologically most likely to support anything that leaves business alone. For them to show this sort of opposition to the politics of football shows how far in the wrong direction it has travelled. English football is finally making moves towards the German model of ownership. Should Ken not rectify his relationship with the Supporter’s Trust, he may soon find himself permanently attached to a very hostile 51% co-owner.

Ken should therefore genuinely rethink his actions at Elland Road. Whether it is merely the output of his media outlets, or the actions he takes with regards to the fans, or if he does a proper rethink of the club’s policies, now is the time, ahead of next season, with mild positivity in the air, to really take advantage. Football is, by its very nature, for the fans. The fans are beginning to seriously demand change at Leeds United, and as LUST say, Ken Bates can easily be part of that. Alternatively, he can become an eternally decried figure in the annals of the club.

Amitai Winehouse is followable on Twitter @awinehouse1. Read his article, ‘The Gwynterview’ in the latest issue of The Square Ball, available now.

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Why Lee Clark’s Sacking Is Justifiable

February 19, 2012 jthornton26 5 Comments

The sacking of Lee Clark at Huddersfield Town has sent shockwaves across the world of football, with observers from Henry Winter to Wayne Rooney expressing their shock and dismay at the decision. To the uninformed spectator the decision may seem bizarre, however Huddersfield fans have been far from disappointed at the decision, and some have actively welcomed it. How did a man with only 3 defeats in 55 games come to be sacked? And why have so few fans been unhappy with the news?

At the start of Lee Clark’s tenure there was a positive vibe among the fans, after an encouraging end to the 2008-09 season. The feeling of positivity was matched by the performances on the pitch over the following year. Clark assembled a talented young squad which played a genuine brand of free-flowing attacking football and would eventually finish 6^th in the table, racking up 82 goals in the process. Nevertheless, Huddersfield’s soft underbelly and lack of experience would be cruelly exposed by a resilient Milwall side in the play-offs.

The defeat against Milwall would have a terminal effect on the style of play Lee Clark would adopt for the rest of his tenure. Huddersfield clearly needed experience and graft to accompany the undoubtedly talented youngsters at the club. This was reflected by Clark’s signings before the 2010-11 season, with the arrivals of Ian Bennett, Gary Naysmith, Damien Johnson, Joey Gudjonsson and Alan Lee all examples of the experience Clark felt necessary. On paper these signings looked to be exactly what the club needed. However as the season progressed it was clear that some of Clark’s signings were over the hill and simply happy to collect one final pay-packet. This left Town with a squad of youngsters and has-beens with very few players at the peak of their footballing ability.

Despite a promising start to the new campaign Town’s football would become increasingly negative as the season went on. The final blow to Clark’s attacking football would come after a 4-1 mauling at promotion rivals Southampton in late December. This result led Clark to implement a 4-5-1 system for the remainder of the season. Town would subsequently go unbeaten for the rest of the season, and were admittedly unlucky that they were competing against as talented a side as Southampton for the second automatic promotion place. The problem with 4-5-1 was the negativity that accompanied it. Between January 1^st and the end of the season, Town won only five games by more than 1 goal and became the divisions draw specialists. Four games at the end of February where Town picked up just 4 points from a possible 12 seriously dented their promotion chances and meant that Town lost too much ground on Southampton to recover.

The play-off final against Peterborough was arguably the crippling blow from which Lee Clark would never really recover. His decision to play 4-5-1 with the 18 year old Benik Afobe as the lone striker ahead of Jordan Rhodes perplexed many fans, even if Rhodes’s form had not been as mercurial at this point. Clark’s tactical shortcomings in this game were not the only thing that annoyed Town fans though. The Peterborough squad had been assembled on a fraction of the budget that Lee Clark had to spend and highlighted just how much money Lee Clark had squandered on players. Clark’s transfer record was a real mixed bag with the signings of Jordan Rhodes, Anthony Pilkington and Lee Peltier seemingly showing he had an eye for a player. However, Clark would sign enough players to have four separate teams in his time at Huddersfield but never one good enough to secure promotion. Signings like Dominik Werling, Alan Lee and Robbie Simpson have been monumental flops in their time at Huddersfield. In addition Clark has never been able to address Huddersfield’s problem area of central midfield, despite a host of signings aimed at addressing the issue.

Clark was rarely able to re-create the feel good factor around the club in the 2011-12 season as fans struggled to recover from the play-off final defeat. There was a growing sense of apathy around the club due to the prospect of another season in League One, with empty stadiums and long ball football. Again, Huddersfield were victim to drawing too many games and sacrificing winning positions and there was a growing feeling that this was down to Clark’s tactical shortcomings. Despite Town still riding high in the table fans were disillusioned with the brand of football they were being made to watch. At the end of the day, football is a form of entertainment and in a time where fans are, more than ever, struggling to justify the high prices of going to watch football, Huddersfield have simply not played an attractive enough brand of football to warrant extortionately high ticket prices.

Furthermore Clark’s man-management skills have come under scrutiny and generally been found wanting. Donal McDermott and Anton Robinson had both impressed for Bournemouth, but were never able to show their ability under Clark. Indeed, as the season wore on, it appeared that some players were scared of playing for Lee Clark. This was in part due to Clark’s increasingly strange team selections, which prevented players from gaining confidence. From one week to the next it was as if the selection was random. Players would go from not even being in the squad for months on end to suddenly being plunged into the starting eleven, Danny Cadamarteri for instance. This scattergun policy to selection prevented Huddersfield from gaining any real consistency and confidence, and this is reflected in the quality of football and entertainment towards the end of Clark’s regime.

Despite all this Clark would probably have kept his job until the end of the season if he had handled his public relations and the media better. At the beginning of his stint as manager Clark talked a good game and his handling of the media helped to raise the club’s profile. However, the 2011-12 season in particular, has seen a markedly different media handling style adopted by Clark. His post-match interviews have been increasingly bullish and have alienated the media and supporters. His refusal to rule himself out of the running for the Leicester job left a sour taste in the mouth for all concerned, and potentially soured the relationship with the board. Poor performances after Christmas combined with him again refusing to rule himself out of vacant managerial positions led to growing disillusionment among the fans. This alienation of supporters led to a lack of confidence in Lee Clark’s ability, and it is this deterioration of trust, more than the results on the pitch, which led to Clark’s position becoming untenable.

Lee Clark should be praised for his 100% commitment and enthusiasm to the cause. Nevertheless Clark has been heavily backed by an ambitious owner and has ultimately failed in his remit of getting Huddersfield to the Championship. The major gripe among Town fans was how much the quality of football has decreased since the beginning of his reign. Though the sacking came as a surprise to many pundits, those who have followed Clark and Huddersfield this season understand the sacking was justified. His comments to the media have made him seem, at times, deluded and desperate – especially in the wake of the defeat to Sheffield United. Dour football combined with a deteriorating media relationship have meant that, bizarrely, despite a 43 game unbeaten run, Clark’s sacking is understandable. Despite the claims of footballing contemporaries Lee Clark’s sacking is not an example of ‘football gone mad’ and the actions of an egotistical chairman, but instead the actions of a man well within his rights to call time on a failing regime.

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Crafting a future: Wilkinson’s Greenhouse

February 15, 2012 Spoughts Leave a comment

“It was my dream”. Howard Wilkinson would, on arrival to Elland Road, set out a ten-year plan that would ultimately lead to a significant proportion of the club’s early success in the end of the last and early part of this millennia. Yet how did Wilkinson’s innovation and creation at Thorp Arch almost lead to the crafting of an english academy akin to Barcelona’s famed La Masia? Furthermore, read on to understand how Wilkinson’s sacking would play a significant role in Leeds’ fall from grace.

In 1999/00, David O’Leary, having taken the Leeds job the year preceding, could call upon a series of academy talents as he stormed European Competition with his ‘babies’. Players such as Ian Harte, Jonathan Woodgate and Harry Kewell had all come through the ranks of the Leeds United youth setup. The team was playing the best football many had seen at the club for years, and with minimal investment to the first team, Leeds were regularly outplaying Europe’s elite. Kewell, in particular, was clearly an incredible talent, and his form throughout the next few years would lead to concrete interest from the biggest sides in the world, with Barcelona in particular being rebuffed several times. However, the foundation for this would be laid in Wilkinson’s first season at the club, when Leeds United were a struggling second division side with minimal financial capacity.

In an interview last year with Leeds United fanzine The Square Ball, Howard Wilkinson revealed that from as early as his initial meetings, he had laid out plans with Leslie Silver and Bill Fotherby, chairman and director respectively, that would lead to the creation of the Leeds youth system. Silver, underwriting the team at the time, pledged his support to the plan with the understanding that within time, this would come to fruition and the club could capitalize heavily. Therefore, plans began to be laid that would allow the innovatory establishment of the Leeds Youth Academy, based at Thorp Arch, on the outskirts of the city.

Where today the media still focusses on the idea of an English La Masia, and there is constant bureaucratic struggle within the Football Association when attempting to establish academies that can compete with Spain’s best, this struggling second division side would create a “football greenhouse”, in the words of Wilkinson. Under the command of Paul Hart (erstwhile Nottingham Forest, QPR, Crystal Palace and Swindon Town manager), and Dick Bate, the academy would begin to implement the process Wilkinson had conceived of whilst managing Notts County.

Believing there was a four-step plan to the training of youth, Wilkinson would have his men find the players, and then have talented coaches teach them the game. Most imperatively, in his view, was the manner in which Leeds United created provision for the players to live on-site, essentially allowing them to train before school, after school, during the weekends and school holidays. Furthermore, it would allow the coaching staff to experiment with players – Ian Harte, an integral part of the Leeds side that would reach the semi-finals of the Champions League, began his career as a striker, before experimenting at left-back and eventually making a career from playing there. This all took place before he had even appeared in the youth team. Finally, Wilkinson believed that these players needed to be provided with an opportunity to actually play in the side, as a key facet of their development. This led to the integration of Kewell, Harte, Alan Smith, etc., into the Leeds team at an early age.

Whilst Leeds fans will immediately point to the success of the team under O’Leary as evidence of Wilkinson’s plan, many do not realise there were signs that Leeds would become a force to be reckoned with even before this. The players who grew up in Wilkinson’s greenhouse would win the youth cup in 96/97, and then the reserves league the following year. By 98/99, the first team would become littered with academy prospects, exactly ten years after Wilkinson had initially met with Silver and Fotherby, and his ten-year plan had been put into practice.

The talent pool would slowly dry up, and it is clear that Simon Johnson and Harpal Singh cannot be mentioned in the same breath as the results of Thorp Arch’s initial ten years. This failing is evidence of the flaws with creating this sort of establishment in a country ruled by financial results. Caspian Group would take over Leeds United in 1996, and with them bring a replacement to Wilkinson in the form of George Graham. Graham would fall out with Paul Hart over the promise of Jonathan Woodgate, with suggestions that Graham said he would rather purchase a new player than give the untested youngster a place in the starting eleven. This flew completely contrary to the methods Wilkinson had established at the club. This lack of interest in the academy from the new regime would destabilise the production line and lead to the aforementioned lack of results, ripping much of the innovation out of Thorp Arch even as it led to so much success on the pitch. Financial mismanagement would occur as great outlays on players occurred to make up for the sudden drop in youngsters entering the first team set-up.

Wilkinson, therefore, can be seen as immensely responsible for the success of Leeds United over a decade ago. Had the academy, in that form, remained in place, Leeds would most certainly not have found themselves in the various difficult positions they have in the years since. From this, it reveals truths that all clubs should take heed from, that no matter the size, the correct innovation can craft an impeccable future. The only true shame of the entire period is that Wilkinson was removed before he could manage the team he was so incredibly responsible for.

Follow Amitai Winehouse on Twitter (@awinehouse1) for news, views and information on future articles.