Football and the sacrifice of managers

Karren Brady is well-known as a TV personality via her appearances on "The Apprentice", but is also a renowned businesswoman in the world of football. In March 1993, at the tender age of 23 she became the managing director of Birmingham City Football Club. She managed the company flotation in 1997, and is often seen as being responsible in her off-field capacity for the club's promotion to the Premier League in 2002. In 2009, following the takeover of Birmingham City by Carson Leung, she left and was appointed vice-chairman at West Ham United, when it was taken over by the men who had brought her to Birmingham City: David Sullivan and David Gold. With one week remaining in the Premier League season it was Karren Brady who pointed her finger at manager, Avram Grant, and told him "you're fired!"


Karren Brady grew up immersed in the world of football, as her father, Terry, had been chairman of Swindon Town and a director at Portsmouth. Her success at Birmingham City is renowned. The current short-term failure of West Ham to remain in English top-flight football ranks alongside the failure of England's bid to host the 2018 World Cup. In August 2009 she had been appointed Chairman of the 2018 World Cup bid Advisory Board. However, no-one can be successful in every single one of their endeavours, and men and women who prove to be long-term successes will often point to their failures as a stimulus and a learning experience which helps them gain later success. It may well be that West Ham will prove to be a long-term success under Brady's leadership, but for the present her actions in sacking Avram Grant leave a bitter taste in the mouth.


Success in football, as in other areas of business and life, is a matter of performing at or above the level of expectations. If expectations are set too high then failure will undoubtedly ensue; if set too low then success will be achieved, but it will remain a pyrrhic victory. Avram Grant had been appointed at West Ham to manage the team and prevent relegation, a task in which he clearly failed (for whatever reasons). However, to sack a manager with one final game remaining, a game which would not prevent relegation, seems to be almost pointless. It is not ruthless management, but an exercise in passing the buck with a degree of spinelessness. Surely if Avram Grant had the qualities desired to achieve West Ham's goal ex ante, then those same qualities would be desirable in achieving promotion from the Championship to the Premier League in 2011–2012? If that is not the case then surely Brady got it wrong in appointing Grant in the first instance, and perhaps it is she who should resign? After all, he was appointed manager at West Ham having just managed Portsmouth to relegation from the Premier League!


But football is not like that. Supporters will always require a scapegoat for failure to achieve the expected. Sometimes they will accuse the Board of being responsible for failure, but more often than not it is the manager who will be sacrificed. Avram Grant had previously been sacrificed as manager of Chelsea, when his team there failed to achieve success in the Champions League (they lost the final),  the League Cup (they lost the final), and came second in the Premier League (on the last day of the season). Chelsea had the decency to terminate his contract at the end of the season. However, it should be remembered that he only became manager in September 2007 following the ignominious sacking of José Mourinho. Prior to that Grant had been Chelsea's Director of Football.


Grant's track record suggests that he is a knowledgable and talented football manager, but not necessarily a lucky manager. In their excellent book The 90-Minute Manager: Business Lessons from the Dugout (2002), David Bolchover and Chris Brady list several desirable qualities in a top-flight manager: integrity, passion, ability to relax, analytical skills, hunger to learn, attention to detail, ability to get things done, insatiable appetite for accomplishment and results, self-belief, enthusiasm, people skills, ruthlessness, presence, and luck. As they note, "Great managers need to be lucky." Grant is serially unlucky. Against this we may cite the example of Sir Alex Ferguson, a man who took several seasons in the hot-seat at Manchester United to achieve any form of success. Had the Board listened to the supporters in the early years of his tenancy, Ferguson would have been sacked and never had the opportunity to become the most successful manager in English football, achieving 19 top-flight League titles to-date. Ferguson was lucky to have had the confidence of the Board, who must have felt he would ultimately bring success despite the failures of the early years. Should Sir Alex ever retire his successor will be handed a poisoned chalice, weighed down by the weight of expectation of success of a Manchester United manager.


There are, of course, many, many other examples of how important it is to manage expectations, especially of the supporters, select a manager with the appropriate qualities (as listed above) and stick with him through thick and thin. Boards of Directors need to put in place and maintain a long-term strategic perspective that the team manager is not always in a position to do, with a focus on trying to win the next game! The problem with the sacrifice of managers is that Boards of Directors fail to heed the words of Shakespeare: "The fault, dear Brutus, lies not within our stars, but within ourselves." A lesson that surely extends beyond football to every line of business and individual life!

Football, antisemitism and the Baddiels

In recent weeks the Baddiel brothers have commenced a campaign which aims to rid antisemitism among supporters of football. The campaign has been designed to run parallel to the more general "Kick Racism Out of Football" campaign, which has run with some (albeit limited) success over the past few years. The main thrust of the Baddiel-sponsored campaign has been a short film focusing on the use of the term "Yids" by supporters of Tottenham Hotspur, which they regard as being antisemitic per se, and also as an encouragement of antisemitism. Both of these are arguments which I would refute in the strongest possible terms, my view being based on having been a Spurs' supporter for a little more than a half-century!


Quite naturally, the unveiling of the Baddiel campaign received significant coverage in the foremost Jewish newspaper in the United Kingdom, the Jewish Chronicle (www.theJC.com). Equally naturally points of view have been espoused in the Letters to the Editor section. Recently, the view espoused by the Baddiels was taken up by a supporter from Arsenal, although his awkward attempt at humour based on the age-old Spurs-Arsenal rivalry treated the subject with less gravitas than it deserved. It does not happen frequently, but on this occasion I was moved to respond, and sent my own perspective on the debate to the Jewish Chronicle, which they duly printed in Friday's edition. Unfortunately, the online edition does not include letters, so for those interested yet unable to obtain the Jewish Chronicle, I reproduce my letter below:

The rambling hyperbole of Stephen Ryde (JC, April 29), lack of intellectual rigour and its reactionary conclusion do little to treat the subject of antisemitism with the seriousness it deserves. His argument is all too similar to that which argues that women who wear short skirts are asking to be raped: wrong on every possible level. As for the outlawing of the use of particular words, this has no place in a modern, democratic society where freedom of speech is valued.

I would like to refer Mr Ryde to the learned article "When is a Yid not a Jew?", by John Efron, Koret Professor of Social History at Berkeley University (http://bit.ly/luikAu). The use of the term "Yids" and, more frequently, "Yiddos" began in the late 1970s as a reaction against the antisemitic chanting of other teams, most notably Chelsea, Arsenal and West Ham. It can be seen in exactly the same vein as the use of the term "nigger" by sections of the African-American community. It is a classic case of turning a term of derogation into s badge of honour. This has taken place for so many years, that the term "Yid" has now become commensurate with "Spurs supporter" in football grounds around the country, with many younger supporters having little or no idea of the original defamatory use of the word.

Any campaign to reduce antisemitism is laudable, although as with anything the battles need to be chosen with care. In selecting Spurs supporters and their chanting of "Yids", the Baddiels are on shaky ground. They need to begin their campaign by cleaning up the mess in their own back-yards first: Chelsea continue to sing "Spurs are on their way to Auschwitz" and make gas chamber noises. When Jewish support at Stamford Bridge deals with this issue (instead of joining in, as sometimes happens) then the campaign will be able to claim a degree of progress.

Stephen Ryde is wrong. As a Jewish supporter of Spurs for nigh on a half-century, I shall continue to join in with my fellow supporters chating of "Yids" and "Yiddos" in the full knowledge that this is a reaction against antisemitism, not an encouragement of it.

As a postscript, I support any attempt to diminish hatred of any description, be it racism, antisemitism, gender bias or ageism, but believe that football supporters are not necessarily the right focus, as they mirror the views of society in general. Ultimately, antisemitism is the oldest hatred in the world, a hatred which has been fostered by 2,000 years of propaganda by the Church and, more recently by elements of the Muslim world, often under the thinly-veiled guise of anti-Zionism or anti-Israel. But hatred is hatred, and we can only hope that those who perpetrate it will end up hoist by their own petards. The Baddiels may have the very best of intentions, but those are the paving stones on the road to hell.