Spurs’ cowardly hierarchy should have to answer questions – just like managers
Brian Clough was typically acerbic on the subject of off-field decision-makers in football clubs and a chain of command that allows most to avoid scrutiny: “If a chairman sacks a manager then he should go too”.
Clough was from an age without middle managers. You had one bloke (and it was always a bloke) managing the budget and another – with their assistant – managing the team. The manager would tell the chairman who he wanted to buy and, in the case of Clough, it was probably best to listen. Then the manager was the club’s personality and the mouthpiece; few more spectacularly than Clough.
The layers of middle management and delegated responsibilities have increased to match football clubs’ growing size, capitalism and complexity: sporting director, technical director, director of football, head of football, chief executive etc. But the mouthpiece has not. All those above typically stay out of sight and certainly out of earshot. Managers do their pre and post-match duties, questioned about issues beyond their remit. That is the same; everything else has changed.
These people are not untouchable; that is not the argument. At most clubs they become appropriate, eventual fall guys for failure, lack of cohesive relationships or change in structure. Edu Gaspar may well lose his job at Nottingham Forest soon. Newcastle United have cycled through a few sporting directors. Sebastian Kehl left Borussia Dortmund this month; James Ellis left Arsenal last month.
At Tottenham Hotspur, Johan Lange and Vinai Venkatesham are in the firing line from supporters and their club is the most spectacular example of chronic leadership failings in the Premier League. Maybe the Spurs duo will fall upon their sword soon (and could have few complaints). They have at least taken the pressure off Paul Winstanley and Laurence Stewart at Chelsea, two architects of the great West London wastage.
But we are talking about a culture shift. These people are the kingmakers within football clubs. They guide its direction and have the closest relationship with the owners.
They make the hiring and firing calls and have strong sway in recruitment. They are the reason for nudging against financial limits. They are the reason that we are forever paying more for tickets because everybody must help out to generate revenue, apparently, and yet it always seems like supporters have to do the most.
And yet the only time we infrequently hear from them is through pre-planned – and often deeply predictable – words on the official website or manicured interviews. Even then, it is usually when things have gone south quickly and the masses must be pandered to, thus making it a face-saving protocol and entirely counterproductive because those masses are already angry. Go get the club statement.
Football supporters are not stupid. They care enough to learn about the issues facing their clubs and they care enough to seek explanations and answers. They have been told in welcoming statements the responsibilities that these people hold and they are sick of that being roughly the end of their meaningful interaction.
We are not asking for trade secrets here, nor a view deep within the mainframe and the inner sanctum. Nobody is expecting a sporting director to field questions on specific transfer targets and this need not be a witch hunt. We are not asking to wheel out the sporting director or chief executive after every match.
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But supporters do have a right to detail about the processes, logic and relationships within the club, because they pay plenty enough money for them and because the club repeatedly insists, with little evidence to support it, that those fans are not merely customers. And if some of the processes or relationships are in a state that makes those questions unpleasant, they are not working anyway. Accountability thrives where communication meets transparency.
The one way you lose patience most quickly is when the people you are aiming to please or serve are met with a faceless response because it makes it seem like you do not care what they think. Even worse is forcing a rotating cast of managers – that change at least once a year – to field questions on matters that they are subjugated to and will ultimately play a role in their own downfall.
How can Igor Tudor, in the Spurs job 30-odd days at the time, be questioned about the vague culture of the club and the mood behind the scenes? It is the people who appointed him, his predecessor, signed the players and handed out the contracts who should front up. Anything else is cowardice, anti-leadership.
More than anything, it is just dim PR. You create a vacuum into which frustration is only ever going to rush. In the absence of other information, supporters will hypothesise and castigate those who they believe are most responsible and least visible. If those hypotheses are incorrect, it damages relations. If they are correct, only accountability can force change.
Football clubs are too complex, and there is now too much money at stake, to hide behind a wall of silence. Otherwise the risk is too great: a “Trust us, bro” culture while everybody can increasingly see how obvious it is that we should not.
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