Club Owners Or Fans: Who Really Holds The Power?

Dave responds to some pointed remarks made recently by current and former club owners...

A few weeks ago, Paul Mann from Elm Park Royals was invited to take part in a segment of Jim White and Simon Jordan on talkSport, during which Jordan went to great pains to indicate that Reading fans who are protesting Dai Yongge’s ownership today did not kick up a fuss when Dai was spending the money that got us into hot water with the EFL.

More recently, on the latest episode of Wycombe Wanderers fan podcast The Heroes of HP12, Chairboys owner Rob Couhig threw the same comment as Jordan into the mix, which the three other contributors lapped up.

This is a massive elephant in the room for me which needs addressing. It is red rag to a bull to me, but unfortunately it seems to be a pervasive view among some of the more egotistical club owners, as though it offers some form of justification for their anti-fan-protest line. Supporters are there to be patronised, to toe their party line, and to blindly support any action they take as an owner.

I’m fairly sure fans of Portsmouth, Derby County, Darlington and many others (including us here in Reading now) will be of the same opinion as me in stating that, while they did not question their owner’s spending decisions in the months and years leading up to their own particular demises, with the benefit of hindsight they will have done.

And this leads me onto Jordan and Rob Couhig. I would love to have been a fly on the wall in the hypothetical scenario of an organised fan group telling Jordan they didn’t think his spending plans were a wise idea. What would he have done had they done so? I very much believe he would have dismissed them, told them to get back in their box and that their opinions were “…vacuous and ill-informed…” © Jordan on his Up Front podcast.

Likewise, I wonder what Couhig would make of Wanderers fans telling him the same thing. Now, don’t get me wrong – Couhig appears to be a financially sound businessman and is running Wycombe Wanderers with appropriate financial diligence, and so the likelihood of Wanderers fans needing to do that is remote at this stage of his ownership (who knows what the future holds – just ask Jordan how club ownership can quickly go pear-shaped).

However, what does Rob Couhig believe fans of a club should do when evidence clearly shows rogue ownership and massive overspending? At the time of our overspending, yes Reading fans enjoyed it to an extent, with some reservations. But we accepted it on the understanding that Dai Yongge was ensuring the appropriate financial safeguards were in place.

We have, after all, grown to trust our former owner Sir John Madejski who ran the club superbly and, after two busted flushes in TSI and our Thai consortium, we appeared to have genuine wealth. And that is the crux of the matter – we as fans are expected to just show blind faith in our club’s owners but we have no powers to do anything when that ownership turns out to be nefarious.

Sell Before We Dai have fought tooth and nail for the last year to ensure our club gets moved on to owners who show respect and responsibility. We have been very proactive with our campaign, gradually increasing the pressure on Dai to sell the club. We refuse to continue to toe the party line because Dai Yongge is an awful owner, one not to be trusted, one not to be shown any respect as he has shown no respect to us throughout his near seven years at the tiller.

Fans need power, and proper mechanisms to highlight improper ownership through recognised supporters’ trusts. If we had this power then we would not need to take the action that we have.

Granted, it went nuclear in January with the Port Vale abandonment (and it needs to be stressed that the abandonment was organic fan action as Sell Before We Dai only insisted on an on-pitch protest after the final whistle), but as fans of Blackpool, West Bromwich Albion, Sheffield Wednesday, Morecambe, Southend United, Bolton Wanderers, Bury, Stockport County, Port Vale, Luton Town, AFC Bournemouth, Exeter City, Torquay United, Portmouth, Charlton Athletic, Leyton Orient and Wigan Athletic can attest, if they had a mechanism to highlight and formalise an ownership removal process, the significant issues they faced with their clubs would not have happened.

That is the issue – fans don’t have any power currently, and when they wish to voice their displeasure at their owners they have nowhere to go.

It is not irresponsible to raise the issues we have faced at Reading FC. It is irresponsible of the owner to continue to cling on to the club and attempt to bring it down in a clear asset-stripping exercise, and it is irresponsible for another club’s owner to be complicit in that and try to justify it.