Be Careful What You Wish For by Jordan Simon

Author:Jordan, Simon
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781448113132
Publisher: Random House Group Ltd

10

WELCOME TO THE BIG TIME

AFTER MY TEMPERED reaction to promotion to the Premier League I adjusted my attitude; after all, this was what I had set out to achieve. This was why I had bought a football club and now we were there, amongst the purported big boys. We had reached the promised land of football and I was now the youngest ever owner of a Premier League football club.

Unfortunately my jar of honey was topped up with vinegar. Literally less than a week after promotion 121 succeeded in claiming back in excess of £4.5 million off me. My lawyers heralded this as a victory as the original claim was for £6.5 million. They appeared to forget that I had paid them £1 million in fees to save a further million.

Following the conversation with Dowie after the play-off final win I made a conscious decision to improve our relationship. I formalised his brother Bob’s role with the club. I respected Bob’s football knowledge and as his background was in commerce, he knew about the business side of things.

I made him director of football, and he was to become a conduit between Iain and myself. His first task was to look at player recruitment for the ensuing Premier League season. This was much harder than first anticipated; our scouting network was not really geared up for acquiring players for top-flight football. On the whole players required for the Premier League were of a different calibre than some we had previously bought.

We needed a team capable of competing in the Premier League, which brought about its own set of challenges.

In order to assemble a squad we had to first overcome the fact that a newly promoted team were the bookies’ favourites for relegation. As players spent a large amount of time in their shops it was a task to convince them to join a ‘doomed’ enterprise, according to the ‘experts’.

If you managed to hook a Premier League player, the next challenge was to convince them that if they were in fact part of a relegated team their wages would then be reduced, which of course met with complete resistance.

And while we obviously weren’t competing with Chelsea, Manchester United and Arsenal for players we were competing with two other promoted sides and five or six established Premier League teams with bigger budgets, who were not only competing for players with us but ultimately for a place of safety in the league. Whilst gaining promotion through the play-offs was the ultimate high it gave all our rivals a four-week head start on us.

Invariably English players were overpriced, for no other reason than their nationality, as ludicrous as it sounds. And the eagerness, or perhaps desperation, of promoted teams to build a squad that met the expectations of the fans as well as your own ambitions frequently forced you into the European market, which is where we found ourselves. In my view, being forced into the European market because of price rather than ability to some extent reflects the current state of English football.

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