Expected Goals: The story of how data conquered football and changed the game forever by Rory Smith

Author:Rory Smith [Smith, Rory]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780008484033
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2022-08-31T23:00:00+00:00

6

HOW (NOT) TO BUY A FOOTBALL CLUB

For one fleeting moment, David Sally found himself wondering exactly what the suave, impeccably tailored financier sitting across the desk from him might look like with long hair, a leather singlet and flares. The chairman’s office at Seymour Pierce, one of London’s most venerable investment banks, was filled with ego-swelling memorabilia: keepsakes and trinkets, and pictures accrued from a career spent among the City’s great and good. The photo that took pride of place, though, was something of a non-sequitur: a signed image of Greg Lake, the vocalist and bassist with King Crimson and Emerson, Lake and Palmer. Keith Harris, it turned out, was not just a sharp, urbane banker. He was also a prog rock superfan.

It was not exactly what Sally and Chris Anderson had been expecting. Harris’ reputation went before him. Though he had relatively undistinguished origins in Stockport and Essex, he was every inch the City archetype: bespoke suits, cut-glass accent, comprehensive contacts list. He had been the youngest director in the history of Morgan Grenfell, one of Britain’s most illustrious financial institutions. He had worked at the New York trading firm Drexel Burnham when it was home to Michael Milken, the disgraced financier who would become known as the ‘King of Junk Bond’. He had held one of the most senior positions at HSBC, the global banking behemoth. He was, both by taste and inclination, a creature of the City. In 2002, he was described as a ‘ubiquitous fixer’ by the London Evening Standard.

Most importantly in their eyes, though, he understood the contours of the football business better than anybody. By the time he invited them to meet at Seymour Pierce, he had been the game’s foremost financier for more than a decade. A lifelong Manchester United fan, he had served for two years at the turn of the century as Chairman of the Football League, ending his tenure by declaring that he was ‘handing the asylum back to the lunatics’, but it was his role in Roman Abramovich’s takeover of Chelsea on which he had built much of his business. It had been Harris who had received a call from Ken Bates, the club’s former chairman, late one Thursday night in 2003, brusquely demanding that he appear at Stamford Bridge immediately. It had been Harris who had been introduced, a few hours later, to Abramovich, his associate Eugene Tenenbaum and his lawyer, Bruce Buck. And it had been Harris who helped usher the deal through so smoothly, and so quickly, that the most impactful takeover football had ever seen was ready to be announced barely four days after it had first been mooted.

That success – and that story – turned Harris, in the burgeoning world of football finance, into a star. In the years that followed, when almost every club in England seemed to be targeted by external investors, Seymour Pierce was invariably the first port of call. He advised Randy Lerner on the takeover of Aston Villa in 2006.

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