Birmingham City owner Carson Yeung was found guilty of money-laundering in Hong Kong this week, casting the future of the drifting Championship club into further doubt.
I wonder if The Guardian’s terminally excellent, persistent football reporter David Conn — one of the few sports journalists left in the country willing to look beyond the result on the Saturday and the latest Tweet from some here-today-gone-tomorrow no-mark midfield players for a story — may have Birmingham City v Queens Park Rangers down on his agenda for this weekend?
One of the very few willing to shine a light on professional football at the top end and show it for the financially corrupt, detestable thing that it has become must surely find the urge to attend a match between two of the country’s worst run clubs, at a third-full stadium where tickets for the away fans cost £30 and the majority of the general public has long since deserted what should be a community asset hard to resist. For the remaining fans of Birmingham and QPR it’s only blind loyalty and habit that keeps them engaged at the end of a week like this.
These clubs have plenty in common. Both were well run until recently. QPR with Bill Power in the chairman’s seat and Mark Devlin as CEO with Ian Holloway as manager, cash strapped but with a clear sense of identity, purpose and ethos and therefore succeeding despite the lack of money in the coffers. Hell, Rangers even won promotion despite spending 18 months of the three-year squad build in administration. And however dislikeable you find David Gold, David Sullivan and Karen Brady, and the way they made their money, they took on Birmingham City when they played in the Second Division in a stadium that was crumbling at the edges and turned it into a Premier League regular in a developed ground.
Both have been cursed with foreign ownership since. QPR went first with Flavio Briatore who had an idea about turning a historic West London football club, and community asset, into an exclusive boutique clusterfuck where he could dance the night away in the "C Club” with Tamara Beckwith and her fellow pointless, vacuous, irrelevant drones and then later, when he’d stepped aside and allowed Amit Bhatia and Ishan Saksena to run the club properly for 18 months and get it promoted, as a way to make a quick profit to the detriment of excellent manager Neil Warnock’s aim to keep the club in the Premier League. He has been followed by Tony Fernandes whose PR has been entirely the opposite of Briatore’s "I don’t care what people who turn up once a week and pay £20 think” and so successful that he still has the bulk of the support base behind him despite sacking Warnock, appointing two wholly unsuccessful managers, and overseeing a transfer policy that has destroyed the team spirit, relegated the club, and lumbered QPR with not only a detestable, underworked, vastly overpaid mass of players and admin staff, but also a debt that now totals upwards of a ludicrous £170m. "But it’s all owed to Fernandes so it doesn’t count” cry some, completely missing the point.
Still, at least Fernandes is law abiding. This week Birmingham’s owner Carson Yeung was found guilty of laundering £55m of his fortune by a court in Hong Kong — the judge describing the man who passed the Premier League’s "fit and proper person” test for owners just five years ago with the investigation already launched as a "habitual liar”. He awaits sentencing, and faces seven years inside, but with members of his family on the board at St Andrews, and his right hand man Peter Pannu still in situ as CEO, Birmingham aren’t a great deal worse off than they were already. Yeung’s assets were already frozen, and the Football League seems quite happy that one of its clubs is effectively being run from a prison cell so there we go.
Pannu, incidentally, you may recall earlier in the season being exposed as one of football’s best paid CEOs, taking a salary of £687,611 and receiving a £405,000 "consultancy fee”. Pannu told the http://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/local-news/birmingham-city-peter-pannu-paid >Birmingham Mail that the latter amount was "pocket expenses” for staff in Hong Kong. A stock market expert told the paper the payments were "irregular” and "poorly explained”. The Guardian also says Pannu took a £300,000 lump sum out of the club into his own personal account, claiming he was owed the money as a portion of a legal settlement with former owners David Gold and David Sullivan — reported at £400,000 but nearer to £3.1m according to Pannu.
Pannu, now acting chairman, told Free Radio 80s Birmingham last month: "Not too much money has been taken away from the club. The fans have got to understand a few things. In Hong Kong, high-powered executives earn a lot of money. Now, when Carson Yeung gave me these contracts the board knew that unless they paid me this I was not going to come and work for him. It is a demand and supply thing. I am on executive terms. Had BIHL not given me these sort of fees, I wouldn’t be in England.
"So it’s simple. Now, when my contract expires, unless BIHL pays me the same, I won’t work for BIHL. If your boss suddenly says he is going to cut your fees by 50 per cent, I am probably sure you would be looking for a job. There’s a fee for everybody. Contracts are to be honoured. We have got Zigic who we are paying, what, around £70,000-a-week? He’s not even playing now.
"In England maybe the situation is slightly different, people are criticising senior executives in London, bankers who get crazy bonuses. They get criticised like that because we know there is recession in the world, recession in England, various other countries, apart from Asia perhaps, China and Hong Kong, where there is still recession, but not that level. When my contract is over I am happy to leave, unless I am paid what I am paid. I am an employee, just a worker."
All of which leaves rather a leadership vacuum at the top of Birmingham City — and you need only look at the chancers who have had their pounds of flesh from Portsmouth and Leeds to see what such uncertainty attracts to modern day football clubs. QPR and Birmingham may be about to get another unwanted element in common — Gianni Paladini has been circling St Andrews for some time looking for easy pickings.
Do you know, it’s a blessed relief that our next two games are against Brighton and Yeovil Town, because it’s becoming fairly soul destroying, after games with Reading, Bolton, Leeds and now Birmingham lately, writing one opposition preview after another about a decent, well established, famous old name of the English game being appallingly, and at times illegally, run into the ground by rich men who don’t give a shiny shit about them.
Birmingham fan Matt will be sick of the sight of LFW by the end of the year. Not only did we make him endure a joyful Crown and Sceptre after the victory over the Blues back in September, but we then tapped him up for some Brum input for the return fixture. Thanks to him for not telling us where to get off.
What is the current ownership/cash situation at Birmingham and how is it affected by Carson Yeung's conviction this week? How is the club being funded week to week?
The truth is, despite Yeungs conviction, not a lot has changed. The Football League don’t appear to be getting involved at this point in time and appear satisfied with the current running of the club. It’s my belief that the there is enough money in the club to see us through until the end of the season and that with (50-60k a week) Nikola Zigic off the wage bill in June, we’ll probably be slightly more comfortable financial position come the summer. Blues are lucky that they have some very, very good people working in the club that ensure we keep our heads above water on a daily basis. Their work goes unnoticed by so many fans, but they should be commended on the work they have done
The Blues board is now pretty much made up from Carson’s friends and family. However Yeung’s 29.9% of Blues could be investigated after the court was told half the money came from an alleged triad leader Cheung Chi Tai. If that’s the case, we could see those shares seized by the Hong Kong authorities and the club could be put up for sale.
Is there any sign of a takeover taking place? Is Gianni Paladini still sniffing around? How has he been received by Birmingham fans and what sort of half-baked nonsense has he been feeding you?
At the moment I personally don’t think that there is any sign of a takeover happening. The current regime is seeking investment for the club, whether that’ll happen or not is another question. Of course, the club is probably available for the right price, but the last numbers that were quote stated Yeung was looking for a number in excess of £30m. That just won’t happen despite interest from a few parties. Paladini is one of them, there was interest from an English party and from somebody in the Far East. Paladini had been very quiet for a long time, but inevitably popped up this week after Yeung’s conviction. Fans of the club just want Yeung and co. out, and they’re willing to accept Paladini as the alternative. In fact a poll in the Birmingham Mail voted 86% in favour of Yeung selling to your former chairman. On a personal note, I think there’s every chance he could be just as bad as for the club. I don’t trust him and I think there will be handful of fans that feel the same.
How would you assess the season so far on the pitch? Best as could be expected given the circumstances?
Financial circumstances dictate that we are never going to be competing at the top end of the table. So things are pretty much as expected to be honest, maybe a little worse off than I thought (mid-table). Our home form really has been our downfall, we’ve not won at home since October 1st and have the second worst home record in the league. Thankfully our away form is the eighth best in the league and is the only thing between us and relegation at the moment.
What do you make of Lee Clark as a manager, and what was behind the recent departure of his previously trusted coaching staff?
Clark really does divide fans opinions. Some people think he’s doing a great job under financial restrictions and boardroom unrest. He’s not afraid to bring through youngsters from the academy, which Blues fans have often cried out for a manager to do in the past. Others think he struggles tactically, makes poor substitutions, signs too many midfielders and changes his team too often. To be honest there is an element in truth in all of it. My feeling is that he is still a very young manager (41), he still has a lot to learn and I’m happy to see him given more of a chance, hopefully with money at some point in the future. I think he could go on to be a good manager, but he needs the right people around him.
With regards to Fazackerly and McDermott leaving, it certainly wasn’t financial. It’s just my view, but I think Clark made the decision himself. I’m not sure Faz and McDermott supported Clark in the dug-out as much as he would’ve liked, I think they lacked respect from the younger players maybe. Promoting Richard Beale and Steve Watson from within was a good move, Beale is highly though of throughout the club, the younger players respect him and I think both him and Watson will offer more to Clark than the previous two.
Who have been the stand out performers and weak links for Brum so far this season?
There have been so many players coming and going this season, that it’s hard to nail down more than a handful of players that have been stand out. I’ll mention a few from our current squad that, will probably feature on Saturday. Ever present in the league, goalkeeper Darren Randolph, has been excellent for the majority of the season so far and although he has made a couple of clangers, he’s certainly won us more points than he’s lost us. Earlier in the season centre midfielder Tom Adeyemi, was easily one of our best players. A powerful, energetic box to box midfielder, breaking up play and driving the team forward, he even chipped in with a few goals. Unfortunately he got injured over the Christmas period and has struggled to regain his earlier form. At the moment our outfield stand out performer is probably Emyr Huws, who is on loan from Manchester City. He’s a very calm, ball playing centre midfielder, who is similar to Michael Carrick in possession. He also has a very sweet left foot for set pieces.
In terms of a weak link? I’m not sure there is one player we can specifically point the finger at it’s usually a drastic collaborative effort. They’ve all had their good days and bad days, some days they look like a bunch of strangers thrown in together. Which is not too far from the truth.
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