“Today is extremely difficult,” Andrew Andronikou said. He sat in front of a waiting media that were desperate to ask investigative questions about just how bad Portsmouth’s crisis was – broken or completely broken? Andronikou wore a suit, tie and the weary face of a man who has become a specialist in delivering bad news.
“There’s always a day in the administration when you have to question whether you like the job you are doing, but it is a necessary job,” Andronikou said. He has experienced too many of those days for football’s liking. Andronikou had just delivered the news to 85 members of Portsmouth’s staff that their jobs no longer existed because the money wasn’t there to sustain them.
After Portsmouth, Port Vale. After Port Vale, Coventry City. After Coventry City, Aldershot Town, Bolton Wanderers, Wigan Athletic, Macclesfield Town, Bury and now Derby County. Before them all, too many other clubs to name. The last season during which a Championship club was not docked points for financial mismanagement or breaking FFP regulations was 2017-18. Around EFL clubs the same question is being asked: Which club is next?
Football’s greatest trick is presenting the impression that the team, the end product, is the whole. This is partly a question of deliberate perception; players and managers are comparative celebrities and so demand the media focus. Football is escapism, so goals and wins are far sexier than travel arrangements and kit sleeve sponsors.
The vast network of behind-the-scenes staff, all of them paid significantly less than those who you have heard of, are just as important. More pertinently, most of the staff at a football club need to have little interest in, or experience of, football. They are secretaries and receptionists and administrators and sales executives and marketing assistants and website designers and a dozen other roles that rely far more on expertise of the role than the nature of the company. Obviously, but crucially, they do not make the financial decisions upon which a club soars and dives.
During administration, it is too easy, too simplistic, to focus on the football. On Friday evening, Derby County and all related holding companies issued the statement nobody associated with the club wanted to hear. On Saturday afternoon, Derby beat Stoke City 2-1, a result that was widely viewed as a great victory amid adversity. It’s a nice spin, but fails to grasp the point. There are no victories that can scratch the surface of the colossal mess this club has submerged itself in.
Some of those involved in the wretched over-spending and desperation to reach the Premier League will pay the cost of administration. Owner Mel Morris claims to have ploughed £200m of his personal fortune into the club and may get little of it back. But then Morris was worth £515m at the last count and it is he who led Derby into this calamity by chasing the Premier League dream.
The players and management will also feel uneasy. Although their wages should be protected through the PFA (and they sit at the top of the list of creditors), administrators will look to raise quick revenue from sales. Historically, offers have been accepted for way below market value and they may have little say over their next destination.
But below them sit a workforce who will spend this week worrying about whether they will still have a job in one week, one month or one year. Unlike players, there is less obvious scope to find another job quickly in a grim Covid-19 financial climate and employment market. While Morris counts the cost of lost investment, these staff members worry about mortgage payments, rising energy prices, putting food on the table and the financial security of their families with Christmas around the corner.
A word here for Wayne Rooney, whose continued commitment to creating a team that can compete on the pitch was overshadowed by his post-match humility on Saturday. Rooney refused to focus on the specifics of the match until he had issued his public sympathy for the plight of Derby’s non-playing employees. “The staff usually gets forgotten about,” Rooney said; he’s right. He has vowed to protect their jobs as best he can. Although that power is likely to remain out of his reach, Rooney should be commended for his compassion.
For now (and perhaps forever on social media), tribalism reigns supreme. Some of that is forgivable, if no less depressing. Morris gave off the impression – deliberately or inadvertently – that he believed he could circumnavigate the iceberg of the approaching financial abyss and many Derby supporters delighted in that attempt. One regular Twitter meme pictures Morris with several EFL rivals and the organisation itself on strings. For that, there is little sympathy.
But you will find few staff at any EFL clubs taking pleasure in Derby’s demise. At a time when financial comfort is scarce and the threat of budget reductions leaves a shadow over their desks, they know that job security is a pipe dream. At Derby, staff simply wait for the man in the suit to deliver their worst news. Reports suggest Andronikou will be appointed as one of Derby’s administrators. Just another day on which football didn’t want to see him.
from Football – inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/2XHyHSQ
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