Why rebuilding shouldnt always be done the Green Way

“Do you wish to rise? Begin by descending. You plan a tower that will pierce the clouds? Lay first the foundation of humility.” The words and thoughts there of St Augustine the Latin philosopher and theologian. A Wise choice of words I believe when looking at how to aspire to greater heights though I suspect they would be sadly lost on one man north of the border. If you’ve fallen from grace before you consider how to rise again wouldn’t you be better off to show some humility in doing so? It seems not so in the case of Rangers new owner Charles Green who some might say has gone on the record with some ill advised comments aimed at City rivals Celtic and the state of Scottish football financially.

When the old company went into administration it owed up to £134 million to unsecured creditors before it was eventually liquidated. Whilst the exact financial knock on affect is yet to be seen on Scottish football of the old clubs liquidation it’s widely predicted that it will have a massive detrimental effect and could potentially see some smaller clubs pay the ultimate price and go to the wall. Given this fact and claims from clubs like Stenhousemuir FC that they will have to scrap their youth system in order to be able to survive and you would think that Rangers new owner Charles Green would be somewhat careful in regards to what he has to say about building for the future.

Charles Green it would appear is akin to a bull in a China shop.

Yesterday saw Rangers win their Ramsden’s Cup first round tie away to Brechin City 2-1 in a tightly contested cup game which went into extra time after Rangers has taken the lead within the first five minutes. The good news for the Scottish game is that the travelling support is believed to have contributed around £30,000 to Brechin City’s coffers, the bad news is that it seems Green can’t resist having a dig at City rivals Celtic. Before the game Green went on record as stating he believes that his new company will be financially stronger than current Scottish Champions Celtic in a year.

Rangers are aiming to follow in the footsteps of Scottish league teams Gretna and Livingston who have both successfully climbed their way through the leagues and into the Scottish Premier League. Despite no longer receiving income from European matches after their subsequent relegation and punishment for liquidation for at least three years Green is confident about the new club’s short term financial prospects.

Green went on record stating; "If you look at the balance sheets at the end of next season you should see the strength of the two companies.

"We are in the third division and Celtic are in the SPL and what I'd like you to do is promise me at the end of the season, when all the games are played, examine the balance sheets of the clubs and tell me which one is strongest.

"Let's see who has got the strongest balance sheet. We've not got the debt that any of these clubs have.

"On the last day of the season I would really enjoy some clever financial analyst looking at the balance sheets and debt-to-equality ratio of every club in Scotland."

Yes – these are the words of a man who’s just set up a new company after the demise of the old one which went into liquidation owing £134 million to unsecured creditors. Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, members of the jury do you think it is wise to start trumpeting the fact that you haven’t any debts whilst the old Rangers went into liquidation owing so much money? Do you think it’s wise to bring such matters up when clubs in the Scottish Premier League like their English counterparts have spent beyond their means in an attempt to keep their position in the league which in the case of the SPL and like La Liga has been dominated for so long by just two teams? Celtics debts if any will have been contributed to by trying to compete with the old Rangers Company in the first place. You’ve been allowed to continue to use Ibrox; an all seater stadium with a capacity of 51,802 so for every home game if you only charged a tenner and sold out every seat your match day income would be over half a million alone before programme sales, food and drink sales etc where included into that tally. Given that many of the team’s highest earners have been removed from the wage bill will be another testimony to the chances of ending the season in the black and not in the red for once.

So whilst you might be correct in your claims Mr Green wouldn’t it be wise to just think them rather than say them as if you are some sort of moral hero. Whilst you may not have been the man that created so much debt in the first place there are many, many people who will have suffered as a consequence being amongst those who were owed part of the £134 million. Do you think they want to have to read the types of comments that you raised yesterday? Just one more kick in the balls as far as I’m concerned.

So Mr Green would surely stop there would he not making ill advised comments and rubbing the noses of others into the ground that have lost money after the old companies liquidation. No it appears Mr Greens levels of decorum are akin to a snow ball rolling down the side of a hill; by the time they stop they have created a full on avalanche.

So having been so disregardful of the old company Rangers part in the debts now acquired by fellow members of the Scottish league he then sets about a vitriolic questioning of the future financial viability of Scottish football.

Green as part of negotiations to acquire membership of the Scottish FA agreed a deal which will allow Ranger’s matches in the Third Division to be shown as part of the SPL’s broadcast offering. Something I’m sure wasn’t offered to the nine other teams competing in the Scottish leagues bottom tier. Watch how Mr Green distances his new company from the mistakes of the old one yet still retains Ibrox and all its potential benefits. On why they agreed to the deal;

"We signed up to the TV deal because we don't want to be held responsible for the downfall of Scottish football," Green told the Rangers website.

 “This is not the end of the problems for Scottish football”

"But someone is responsible for the demise.

"It's the end of the problems for Rangers but it will be the beginning for many other clubs. I think it will hugely difficult for Scottish clubs.

"There is no doubt Scottish football has been going downhill and if you look back in history, as I can as a non-conflicted outsider, to 14 years ago when the SPL was formed and since that time Scotland hasn't qualified for a major competition.

"Incomes have not grown and there really has to be a look at where Scotland as football business is going."

Yes Mr Green really did say the words "But someone is responsible for the demise.” Would that be the same way someone in the old company was responsible for such huge levels of debt which are set to have a knock on affect on the whole of Scottish football?

"If we had come to the table with a clean piece of paper then we wouldn't have signed up to the agreement but the realities are there have been historical misdemeanours and this is the price we have paid," Green said.

"We were on the outside trying to get membership of the SFA and they set the rules and the regulations.

"I'm interested to see how things will be applied in the future because this is not the end of the problems for Scottish football.

"We'll make a lot of friends along the way I'm sure and while our former friends have the difficulties they are going to face Rangers and the fans will have an enjoyable few years walking through the divisions."

Mr Green also indicated that there shouldn’t be any job losses as a result of Rangers having to start the new season in the bottom tier of Scottish football whilst clubs like Stenhousemuir are looking at having to scrap their youth system and community support workers in a bid to stay afloat.

So for Mr Green everything is bright for Rangers whilst piled somewhere in a back office in the Ibrox stadium are the past of misdemeanours of Rangers pilled under a carpet ignored and nothing to do with his new company. The new club has washed its hands of the problems of the past and distanced themselves as best they can from anything that went on previously yet are indebted to have transferred £5.5 million worth of assets into the new company including Ibrox which should see them finish this season in the red whilst other clubs are struggling to survive and having to cut costs.

With the starting line in sight for Pompey in the next few days let’s hope that Mr Chanrai has the common decency to keep his mouth firmly shut as we head into the future. We can’t and won’t shy away from the mistakes of the past as we look to rebuild for the future.

Spending Pennies In Hindsight - Part II

It’s hard to believe looking at the current nucleus of today’s squad made up of youngsters, triallists and players we’re desperately trying to offload from the wage bill that it wasn’t that many seasons ago we were bringing some real big names to Fratton Park who came with good pedigree and on paper should have been a real asset to the team. Yesterday we saw how John Utaka failed to live up to his transfer fee of £7,000,000 so today we look at another set of players who failed to produce during their time with the club. Redknapp as we know was labelled a wheeler dealer and so many players came into the club before exiting stage left. So who else failed to cut the mustard?

John Utaka’s transfer fee of £7 million gave me a lot of options when it came to suggesting where the money would have been more wisely spent so I’m going to have to combine the transfer fee’s of two players to help me get through the previous summer transfer window of 2006. Two players who literally couldn’t have come with a higher footballing pedigree and record if you’d tried.

Lauren (Arsenal to Portsmouth) £500,000

On paper this was a deal that couldn’t go wrong and matched the clubs ambition at the time to bring the best players to the club. No offence to 90s midfielder Chris Burns who had signed from Cheltenham over a decade earlier, but the signing of Lauren for me personally showed how the club had moved so far forward. Lauren had been an integral part of the Arsenal back like which had seen the club run out Double Winners in 2001-2002. He was part of the 2003-2004 side dubbed ‘The Invincibles’ having gone the entire campaign undefeated. He was a versatile player who could play in pretty much any role across the back four which he proved when Glen Johnson’s performances saw the ex-Chelsea player playing in his preferred role in the back four.

Arsene Wenger one of the most astute managers in the game worldwide let alone in England when it comes to transfers had paid £7.2 million and we’d managed to sign him for £6.7 million less than that? What could go wrong?

Fast forward to 2009 and Lauren’s Pompey career saw him make a grand total of just 30 appearances for the club in all competitions. I don’t know if it’s true or not but he was rumoured to be on £40,000 a week which would mean he managed to pocket a total of a staggering £4.16 million from his time with the club. Even if the figure is half that amount that’s not a bad amount to walk away with having only managed 25 appearances in all competitions.

Laurens Pompey career amounted to the following;

20 league starts in 5 as substitute

2 FA Cup starts plus 1 as substitute

1 Carling Cup and 1 further appearance in the FA Community Shield.

So if the rumoured salary is true each appearance and hold in mind six of those were as a substitute it would have cost the club £138,667 for each of them.  That’s not a bad days work if you can get it is it not?

As I mentioned the sum of £500,000 didn’t give me a lot to work with so I’ve coupled his transfer fee to another one of Redknapp’s summer signings, a player who came with one of the best goal scoring records of any striker in the history of the English Premier League, step forward Mr Andrew Cole.

Andy Cole (Manchester City to Portsmouth) £500,000

Signed on the transfer deadline day of 2006 in a deal that could have risen to £1 million depending on the amount of appearances the striker played (He didn’t get there so the figure is included at £500,000) Andy Cole had one of the most enviable strike rates in the English game. During his time with Newcastle United he scored 55 goals in 70 games for the Magpies giving him a strike rate of 1 goal in every 1.27 … yes 1.27 games. Having been snapped up unsurprisingly by Manchester United he found the net a further 93 times in 195 games which gives him a goal scoring ratio of 1 in 2.09 games and although not as prolific at his time during his spell at Newcastle, this time the team wasn’t built to play specifically around him and his strike partners were world class as well.

Despite a somewhat torrid time since he left United; Blackburn Rovers 27 goals in 83 games, Fulham 12 in 31 and Manchester City 9 in 22, this was the Andy Cole and he was joining Pompey. I for one was excited.

And what did we get for our half million quid? 3 goals in a total of 18 appearances having been sent out to Birmingham City on loan before being recalled and finally moved onto Sunderland where his career nose dived even more failing to score in seven appearances for the black cats.

A goal ratio of 1 in 6. Still the way I look at it, it still outshines that of Kanu and David Kitson and when the Premiership years are on we can lay claim to having had one of the greatest Premiership strikers of all time having pulled on the Royal Blue Pompey shirt.

So sadly for Pompey two gigantic flops costing the club £1million and if the figures are true probably a further £5 million in wages between the both of them; that just made me shudder.

So in the summer of 2006 trying to find players of quality of whom our money would have been better spent was quite hard. As I say I only had a million to work with combined so I’ve gone for these two choices who went to move on to Cardiff City and West Bromwich Albion instead of possibly coming to Pompey.

Kevin Phillips (Aston Villa to West Bromwich Albion) £700,000

Yes I know what you’re thinking he’s a  … but he’s also a natural born goal scorer and at the end of the day it’s goals that help win games and during his career Phillips has done that for whichever club he has played for and despite being 37 he is still continuing to do it to this very day and keep proving any doubters wrong. In all Phillips would go onto make a total of 71 appearances for the Baggies scoring 38 times in the process giving him a goal ratio of 1 in 1.86.

In March 2008 he was named Championship player of the year at the fourth annual Football League awards in London. Sponsored by Four Four Two they named him as the best player in the entire football league as well. The 2007 – 2008 season saw him named as the West Bromwich Albion club and fans Player of the Season and he was named in the PFA player of the season team for good measure. Phillips goals helped West Bromwich Albion to secure promotion to the English Premier League whilst Lauren and Cole helped plunge us ever closer into what would become a full financial meltdown.

Let’s state the obvious as well Phillips would have been £300,000 cheaper than Lauren and Cole to boot.

Choice two is another striker of which the chance or attempt to sign went begging who ended up having quite the season and Cardiff City where they nearly won promotion to the English Premier League before their form tailed off at the end of the season.

Michael Chopra (Newcastle to Cardiff City) £500,000

My second choice would have seen me save half a million for a rainy day which might have been bloody well handy given what eventually happened finance wise for us. Chopra was known as a raw talent but hadn’t quite made the grade during his time with Newcastle which is why he managed to sign for Cardiff City for the somewhat knockdown fee of £500,000. It turned out to be half a million pounds well spent as Chopra fired in 22 goals in 42 appearances for the Welsh side giving him a goal ratio of 1 in 1.91.

Chopra was voted Championship player of the month for both September and October and at the end of the season was named in the PFA Championship team of the year.

Remember though Harry we all make mistakes and we’re all human.

Spending Pennies in Hindsight - John Utaka

This series of blogs takes a look at the failed players who have failed to grace the Royal Blue shirts of Pompey in recent years and dips into that transfer window to see just who else we could have gotten for our money. Where else better to start than the miss firing  French man...

John Utaka

French striker Utaka was brought to Pompey in a deal rumoured to be in the region of £7 million from French top flight outfit Rennes where he had found the net 22 times in 63 games giving him a goal ratio of 1 in 2.86. In all Utaka made 90 appearances for Pompey between 2007 and his departure to Montpellier in 2011 finding the net just 10 times in total giving him a disastrous goal ratio of 1 in 9 at a cost of £700,000 per goal.

So in the summer of 2007 what else could Manager Harry Redknapp have got for the clubs money in the transfer market?

Gareth Bale (Southampton to Tottenham Hotspurs) £7 million

Despite a slow start to his Spurs career which saw him lose his place in the side to Benoît Assou-Ekotto, Bale has gone onto become one of the best players in the English Premier League and has performances in the Champions League have brought rumours of a potential move from Barcelona in a deal that could be worth as much as £32 million. The original fee was set to rise to £10 million depending on appearances and success but this was reduced to £7 million when Spurs paid Southampton a much needed early settlement fee of just £2 million. In total Bale has now played 113 appearances for the North London outfit and found the net on 21 occasions giving him a goal ratio of 1 in 5.38 games.

Ironically Bale would end up playing for Redknapp when he took charge of the North London club.

Scott Parker (Newcastle to West Ham) £7 million

Like Gareth Bale another signing that would have seen money better spent and also ended up playing under Redknapp is England international Scott Parker.

The tough tackling no nonsense midfielder was soon taken to the hearts of the Irons fans and was voted their player of the season two seasons on the trot.  In September 2010 Parker signed a new five deal which made him the highest paid player in the clubs history.

In February 2011 Parker was named Premier League player of the month and he also won a recall to the England national side. That season Parker was placed on the six strong shortlist for the PFA Player of the year award. Although he didn’t win that award he was named the Football Writers’ Association Footballer of the Year. In total Parker scored ten goals in 113 appearances for West Ham before his move to Tottenham.

Martin Petrov (Atletico Madrid to Manchester City) £4.7 million

The skilled Bulgarian soon found the hearts of the City fans with his trademark left foot which saw him find the net 9 times for the blue half of Manchester before being transferred to Bolton Wanderers having made a total of 59 appearances. Costing £2.3 million less than Utaka, Petrov’s nine goal tally came at a cost of £522,222 per goal and he averaged a goal in every 6.56 games.

And the bargain bucket…

Graham Alexander (Preston North End to Burnley) £250,000

Yes costing £6,750,000 less than John Utaka Graham Alexander helped his new Burnley side ultimately rise to win promotion to the English Premier League playing an integral part in his side’s success winning wide praise in the game from home fans and neutrals alike. Alexander became the oldest player to score in the English Premier League.

Alexander made 154 appearances in total for Burnley as either right back or defensive midfield cover but still managed to double Utaka’s goal tally before he was sold back to PNE in 2011 before retiring from the game for good at the end of last season.  Alexander’s goals came at a cost of just £12,500 per goal compared to Utaka’s £700,000, he scored double amount the French striker did, cost £6, 750,000 less and his goal ratio to rub salt into the wound was 1 in 7.7 games compared to 1 in 9.