Believe in the football tooth fairy?

With possible redundancies to follow, Business Editor Owen McAteer looks at why anyone would take a job reliant on a kick of a ball.

BILL SHANKLY once said football was not a matter of life and death, it was much more important.

Obviously, the legendary football manager had his tongue planted firmly in his cheek, but the consequences of failure on the pitch can be devastating for the financial futures of a club’s employees off it.

Millionaire footballers in the top flight may not be playing for their own mortgages, but they are undoubtedly playing for those of a club’s behind-thescenes staff who, although often well paid, are not fabulously wealthy.

Newcastle United owner Mike Ashley has apparently warned there will be redundancies if the club is relegated from the Premier League.

It is unclear whether Middlesbrough would have to cut staff, but an estimated drop in income of £40m would be tough for any business to take.

When the club was relegated six years ago, Sunderland did make a number of redundancies.

Grant Leadbitter, the Sunderland midfielder, remembers it well.

He said: “When we went down in 2003 there were cuts at the club – the cleaners, the chefs. I remember Al, the bus driver, who lost his job.

“I remember those things.

It wasn’t a good feeling.”

The truth is if you take the leading four Premier League clubs away – Manchester United, Chelsea, Liverpool and Arsenal – the rest have a one in five chance of being relegated. The established clubs such as Newcastle are not immune and in fact a commentator bestowing the mantel of “too big to go down” on a team usually means it is set for the drop.

Earlier this season Tottenham Hotspur and Manchester City, allegedly the world’s richest club, were languishing towards the bottom of the Premier League.

It is not so many years ago that Aston Villa and Everton were fighting to avoid relegation.

Leeds United, Nottingham Forest and Sheffield Wednesday didn’t avoid the drop and in fact plunged further down the leagues.

So why don’t clubs plan better for a situation that, if not inevitable, is entirely possible.

A former member of Durham Business School, Professor Tom Cannon, an expert on football finances, who gave specialist advice to the All Party Parliamentary Review of Football Finance, believes that a certain amount of self-delusion comes into play.

He says Newcastle would not have planned for relegation because: “My guess is they didn’t believe it was possible. Newcastle United aren’t as well prepared because there would be no belief the need would occur.”

Prof Cannon, former director of export studies at the business school, says this was part of an endemic problem throughout football.

“There is always an assumption in football that there will be a tooth fairy, that someone will come in.

“Whether it is Mike Ashley or someone else, there is always the belief the tooth fairy is there.

“It is deeply instilled, it is not just the fans phoning a radio station, it is the managers and the players.”

However, a tougher financial climate now means clubs are having to face up to the fact that tooth fairies willing to bail them out of trouble are few and far between.

Mr Ashley took Newcastle off the market last December having been unable to find a buyer.

And one of the other reasons he may have struggled to sell, Prof Cannon believes, is because of something he experienced himself.

Mr Ashley paid just under £134m for Newcastle in 2007, before having to fork out a further £100m on clearing the club’s debts.

Prof Cannon said: “People on the outside are increasingly unwilling to pay the price of acquisition.

“It seems Mike Ashley has been very public in saying having bought the club he was taken back by the ancillary debt and later found £80m or £100m of other costs. That has become quite a common situation at other clubs.

“There are fewer potential buyers about and those that are about are an awful lot more wary.”

Mike Ashley is unquestionably a successful businessman, but that begs the question even more as to why he didn’t carry out due diligence on Newcastle United when he bought it.

Prof Cannon said: “In football, if you announce you are buying or selling a club, the pressure to complete the deal very quickly is incredible, whereas in the real world due dilligence can take weeks or even months.”

Former Darlington manager David Hodgson tasted life in the top flight playing for Liverpool and being part of the European Cup winning squad in 1984.

Now director of sport at BHP Law in Darlington, which runs an in-house sports management and representation division, he agrees that fantasy sometimes overtakes common sense.

Mr Hodgson said: “A football club is a completely different industry, there is nothing like it. I have seen businessmen, quality guys, come in and lose fortunes because they don’t know how to control it. They get caught up in the hype.”

However, Prof Cannon did believe there has been a change in some clubs’ attitudes, with contingencies put in place to deal with relegation.

Earlier this month, Sunderland chairman Niall Quinn said: “If we did go down, there will be no redundancies like before or anything stupid like that. We have a good safety net, a good business plan and good ownership.”

Prof Cannon said: “There has been a bit of a shift in recent years, particularly among the clubs that have been promoted.

Prof Cannon believed clubs who had experienced relegation would have learnt from bitter experience and included break clauses in players contracts.

He said: “If you can break the contract of a £100,000 a week player, you can save an awful lot of the wages of people on £25,000 a year.”

Prof Cannon also believed that clubs which had experienced relegation would look at outsourcing jobs.

Prof Cannon said: “My guess is that if you look at the profile of clubs like Newcastle, they do a lot themselves, whereas a club like Sunderland would outsource things such as catering, ground services, all of those sorts of things.”

He also thinks many clubs, which face the danger of relegation, would look at offering season ticket deals covering more than one year to ensure they retained fans.

This sensible approach seems about due, particularly, as Mr Hodgson pointed out, it could sometimes be tiny margins that decided a club, and its employees’ futures.

He said: “A simple mistake on a Saturday, or hitting a crossbar, can have a massive impact. The financial side of a club can be ruined because of that.”

So would you have to be mad to take a job at a football club? Both Prof Cannon and Mr Hodgson do not think so.

Mr Hodgson said: “When you are involved in the dayto- day aspect of a football club you get to meet the people behind the scenes, the catering aspect, the PR side.

“These types of people, the vast majority of them, are people who have no history within football. They are people who have come in from other walks of life and take on the challenge.

“I think they get attracted because of what being involved in a football club is about.

“Is any job secure? There is inevitably always a large increase in wages, the glamour of being involved in the sports world, whether it is rugby or football.”

And he thinks that most of those who lost their job with a football club would invariably do it all again.

“If any football club was to come along and offer them a job, 90 per cent would take it because of what it brings.

“It brings something special being part of a football club. Any successful club is special, that is why managers and millionaires love to be in the game. It gives you something no other job can give you.”

Prof Cannon agrees. He said: “I would still say working for a football club is very attractive, the range of experiences is immense and it would look good on your CV. These are prestigious blue-chip companies with a high profile.

“If you had Newcastle United on your CV, most employers would recognise Newcastle United and would think you had interesting and exciting experiences.

They might not recognise other successful companies as easily.

“It is still an exciting area to work in.”