A lot of water has flowed under the Humber Bridge since David Lloyd’s purchase of Hull City brought to an end Martin Fish’s long involvement with the club. Here, the affable accountant talks about the difficulties that beset his tenure as Tigers supremo.

What were the circumstances of your being appointed chairman?

Martin Fish: I was invited onto the board in 1987 by Don Robinson and it went from there really, it was a quick escalation to becoming chairman due to a combination of circumstances. Don left the club in 1989, he’d had enough by then and Richard Chetham followed through, and then he had a heart attack in 1991, at that stage I was Vice Chairman and looking after things in his absence. He couldn’t carry on so consequently I took on the chairman’s role in 1991 and continued till 1997.

Was it with reluctance that you took the chairmanship?

MF: It wasn’t something I’d expected, I’d only come on to the board in 1987, so in four years… I’d never expected to be in the position of chairman. It was at a board meeting when it was proposed and the hands went up quick before I had a chance to say anything. Someone had to do the job, Richard couldn’t do it and someone had to keep the club going so I took it on, but I never expected to be the chairman, no.

Were you a lifelong City fan prior to joining the board?

MF: Oh yes, I saw my first game in 1951, 1 saw the end of Raich Carter’s days playing, I supported them from that stage, nine years old I was then. That carried all the way through, I went to away games and everything, my wife was with me, home games, away games, everything. So yes I was a lifelong supporter.

What was the root cause of the financial problems between 1992 -1994?

MF: I think the difficulty was that there was no money available, the Needler family owned the club, they had put a lot of money in over the years, Harold Needler of course built Boothferry Park, and I think they had decided not to put any more money in.

So I was left with a situation where I was trying to run the business purely on gate money, transfer revenue etcetera. Hence, we had to sell players, I had to run the business as a business, and as an accountant it was second nature in a way, but in football that’s very difficult.

It’s nice to have a chunk of money to have a go at, because in those days it wasn’t easy to make money. We were getting very low gates, we were losing the best players, that wasn’t attractive to supporters and they stopped coming and it goes on and on.

It was a rolling thing, it wasn’t easy and the problems centred on the fact we couldn’t pay the Inland Revenue and the VAT and we were back and forth to the High Court.

I raised money by way of debentures, I did everything I could, I sold players when I had to sell them, I didn’t want to but needs must. At least it kept the club ticking along until I could do a deal with David Lloyd and get all of the money. All the creditors were paid, I made sure of that, I got the money from David Lloyd and paid them, rather than leaving him to pay them.

I left the club knowing it was safe, all clear of debt. It was a hard time, and that’s the reason I had to stick with the management because I couldn’t pay big compensation money, I didn’t want to rock the boat, so we drifted on that way. It was a drift on, I accept that and it wasn’t easy, I did the best I could in the circumstances.

You had plans to redevelop the east side of Boothferry Park, didn’t you?

MF: Yes, a new stand that would have contained 6000 people and ran from one end of the east side to the other unlike the Kempton. It was a beautiful thing and we were going to do it. I already had grants for over a million pounds promised from the Football Association.

We got brewery money proposed and I think we were only short of about £200,000. Then the decision came that the Needlers wanted to sell up and get out of it. My ideas came at a time when unbeknown to me the Needlers were thinking ‘no we’ve had enough of this’ so it went on the back burner.

What effect did Christopher Needler’s departure have on the problems?

MF: There was obviously some animosity toward the Needlers, and I’ll never forget Mrs. Needler telling me even Harold Needler had to put up with jibes all those years ago. So she had seen her husband and her son go through the kind of things I was going through, and I think she honestly thought ‘well, enough is enough, we’ve done what we can and we’ve put money in there’.

They did a marvellous job but I think there was a time when she and Christopher felt that this was the time, for me to go through another series of barracking, then perhaps it needed a new brush, and that was the decision.

Terry Dolan’s management caused you a few problems…

MF: I had a principle in the way I’d run the club, in that I believed the manager should manage, I never interfered. I’d go down and say hello to the players and wish them luck and all the rest of it before the games, but I never, ever interfered with decisions, because I think if you appoint a manager you let him manage.

He was able to work on virtually nothing, I told him when he was appointed in fact, I told him that he would have to work with nothing, he’d have to work with players, and when you think y’know, Dean Windass, Linton Brown, he found some players and got some value for them, Alan Fettis and Roy Carroll, the goalkeepers, all of them, they were found by Terry and his team.

It was a good team really, in the sense that I had a series of managers, not just Terry Dolan, but Jeff Lee, John Cooper, Simon Cawkill, and we had meetings and they were responsible for their own departments, Terry’s being the team.

He worked very well with me, I thought a lot about him, I still do, he’s at York at the moment doing a similar job, no money but working hard, working with the players, it was a good relationship but unfortunately the crowds wanted to see attractive football, wanted to see us winning and some of the football, he will accept, wasn’t the best in the world, but it was grinding out results. Towards the end it was more of a survival battle, for players and money.

Terry Dolan taking commission on transfers, is that a normal practice for managers to do so?

MF: I won’t say it’s normal practice, but you can have in a manager’s contract something to say he gets a certain percentage of transfer fees.

Terry had that kind of clause, but there was a minimum figure involved, and it never in fact really got paid out, because he never hit the minimum figure, we always sold for just below. That [clause] was hyped up by the press, they thought they’d hit on something that applied to every transfer and it didn’t.

He did get a bonus in one particular year, I think it was probably the Windass sale and one or two others, it was nothing like the size the media talked of, that was really a reward because he never really got an increase in salary, so got it instead of that:

Terry Dolan received a new three-year contract shortly after relegation to the Third Division, a decision that didn’t go down well with supporters…

MF: I quite agree that it would seem strange to supporters but you have to look at it in context, there was no spare money to pay off contracts for a new manager if I’d brought one in, I couldn’t have paid compensation out for the balance of his contract, and I felt under the circumstances we were working under it was worthwhile continuing because he’d built up the nucleus of a team, a new manager comes in and wants to change it, he wants his own players, you can see how many changes there have been recently at the club when a new manager comes in.

That costs money, fortunately for Adam Pearson he has the money to do that, I hadn’t, I hadn’t any money so I had to stick with what I had. What I was saying to the supporters was ‘support me, stick with it, we are building up some players here’, one example is the Roy Carroll situation. It absolutely amazed me … the clause that I’d built into that contract when he was sold to Wigan would have made Hull City a lot of money, but unfortunately a deal was done by a successor for nothing like the club could have got.

What effect did the fans abuse have on you?

MF: I could stand the abuse to a point, it got a little bit ridiculous when I had to have police protection at certain away games. I’m a big fellow, I have broad shoulders and I can manage it, but when it starts to reach to home that is where I draw a line. I certainly didn’t deserve a double decker, open topped bus coming outside my house one Saturday afternoon, with my wife and daughter trapped in the garage unable to get out.

That is something I won’t forget and I won’t forgive, it doesn’t need all that. The other things… sending cod’s heads to visiting chairmen etc … I had some lovely letters from the chairmen; particularly Jimmy Hill, that you put up with because of my name though it’s not very nice for the clubs that you’re visiting, but I forewarned all the chairman that it was going to happen.

Was there a point when you considered throwing in the towel?

MF: No, I’m not that type, I won’t throw in the towel, I always see a thing through. Whilst I said to my wife that it would not happen again, and it shouldn’t have happened because the police had messed it up, they should have controlled that bus, but there was a change of shift and suddenly they crept in. I said it would never happen again and I was going to make sure it wouldn’t, but you have to bear in mind that.was in the June and by the July we’d sold the club, we were well on in negotiations with David Lloyd so I knew it was coming to an end.

What were the circumstances of David Lloyd coming in, how did it all transpire?

MF: We heard Lloyd was interested, one or two other people who were interested as well, but Lloyd was the only one coming forward. He had a link in Hull with Tim Wilby and the rugby side and it partly came from there as it was Tim Wilby who came and said ‘We could be interested in this’. I remember saying ‘Who’s we?’ and he said ‘David Lloyd and I’.

Then we went into what were quite involved negotiations and I can remember having to be in Hull, then off to Hertfordshire for a meeting, back to Hull and then to London to report to Christopher Needier all in the same day. We got there in the end and Lloyd certainly had the money and it was a question of negotiation from there on.

Do you think David Lloyd had the interests of Hull City at heart?

MF: I can understand you asking that question and I would say yes initially, he showed he had the money and he was certainly enthusiastic, no question. Alright he’d been involved with tennis which is a very different sport to soccer, but he was already involved with the rugby.

I obviously couldn’t foresee the kind of situation, the kind of man he was etcetera, his reaction, his temperament, that came later and I was very disappointed to see the way it all turned out. There was no indication of that when we were negotiating. He genuinely believed he could get the club moving and I had no reason to doubt him at that stage.

What were the circumstances of the decision to give Bradford fans the South Stand?

MF: I’m pleased to be able to put the record straight because a lot of wrong things were said there. The situation with the Bradford match was that I was told by Brian Calam, the police’s chief operations man, that they were expecting some trouble at the game against Bradford.

In midweek, and there were people who heard all of this, John Cooper is one, and he came on the phone, Brian Calam, and he said ‘we’re going to have to switch ends’ and I said ‘what do you mean?’.

He says ‘we’ll have to put the Bradford supporters in the South Stand and the Hull supporters in the North’ and I said ‘I’m going to have a riot on my hands if you do that’ and he says ‘well, it’s up to you, that’s the way we see it to avoid the trouble and if you can’t do that I’m going to hold you responsible for anything that happens on Saturday. Any injury and you will be held personally responsible’.

Consequently, with that responsibility which I couldn’t take on, it meant that if anyone was injured the police would walk away and blame me. I said ‘You’re giving me no choice, you’re putting a gun to my head and I’m going to have to agree to it, but you’re going to create a greater riot by doing it rather than just keeping it as it is’.

I had pressure from Geoffrey Richmond at Bradford as well, he says ‘we’ll be bringing loads and loads’, of course they were heading for promotion and he said ‘you’d better give us more seats’.

I said ‘I can’t, I can’t give you any more, but the police may well decide it at the end because without police backing we can’t hold the match’. That is what happened, I had to concede to that. What annoyed me was although Brian Calam went to the local paper and said ‘blame me for this’ which is quite true, the way it was written he wasn’t ever blamed for it, it was me! It was interesting that he became involved with David Lloyd shortly after that.

Did you feel unfairly treated by the local press?

MF: I think an element of the local press treated me unfairly, you have to understand that they have to find headlines, they have to print whatever they can print, I do know that it wasn’t so much the reporters, it wasn’t Colin Young, Peter Whitfield and so on, but there was a gentleman who is no longer at the local paper who was very much against me.

That I do know, I had it confirmed by one of the reporters who said he was under tremendous pressure to publish all the bad stuff about me, he wanted me out. I didn’t know that until after I’d gone in fact, but I knew there was something. I gave them enough information to print, but the papers have a way of twisting that round and I couldn’t understand it. I’d say to Colin Young and Peter Whitfield ‘Why are you doing this? Why can’t you just print what I’m trying to say?’ and they’d say ‘Oh the editor comes in and he has to fine tune it’ and I’d say it’s not fine tuning it’s twisting it and sometimes articles written by Colin Young were rewritten by this assistant editor.

What happened to the plaque above the players tunnel?

MF: We had an approach from some museum, we got offered £10,000 and a replacement, a plastic one so there was still something there although it wasn’t the original.

This museum was collecting quite a number of them, I think they’d got Doncaster’s and one or two others. But that .£10,000 went into the club, whether people had said I’d pocketed that I don’t know but it’s not true. It was paid into the club account, Tom Wilson who was the secretary can vouch for that as he took the initial call.

When he told me about it he said ‘what do we do? and I said ‘I’m afraid we need the £10,000, if we put a replacement there people aren’t going to notice’ and no one did notice for many months and then it all came out.

But there was nothing sinister about it, it was the fact that we were looking for whatever we could, people might say it was selling the family silver but that club was in danger of going under and that I could not live with. I had to make sure that the club survived because it was my life, or it had been and I was not prepared after all that time I had put in to see that happen.

There was an instance at the High Court where the club very nearly did go out of existence…

MF: Yes, that was a very tricky day. It didn’t help to have some of the action group around, watching the proceedings and having a go at me. It was very difficult, these situations aren’t rubber stamp jobs, they are hearing 300 cases a day, winding companies up.

The judge sits there and he hasn’t got a lot of time to make a decision, normally they get confirmed as wound up or are granted a period of time, it might be six weeks, it might be two months and another hearing is heard then. In this case it was deferred to an afternoon session meaning they want to take a look at it in more detail. That brought a real problem because we didn’t know how the afternoon session was going, the judge clearly wasn’t happy about what was being said, it was all to do with the sale of a player and we couldn’t give an exact date of when it was going to happen, and we couldn’t prejudice negotiations by saying too much about it in the court and the judge didn’t particularly like that.

I got hold of my QC and I said ‘this is how far we can go, and really it’s just unfortunate that we’ve got these other people in the court as I don’t want this to get out, it’s a private court hearing and if the sale is prejudiced then we might not get anything and we go under. The QC put our case across very well and we got the adjournment we wanted. The player was sold and the debt was paid, but it was a very close run thing, the closest Hull City came to going under.

Do you feel the events since your departure have in some way vindicated you?

MF: I’m not happy to have seen the way the club has gone on, through David Lloyd to the Buchanan era, I want to see the club succeed and I hope Adam Pearson and his managers can achieve the success they deserve, then I can think that what I’ve done has played a small part in that. It’s been very disappointing to see, David Lloyd tried his best, I’m afraid Mr. Buchanan and his people… Tom Belton aside, I knew Tom Belton from when he was at Scunthorpe, he got out knowing that it wasn’t right.

That was very dangerous for the club, it could well have gone under, some of the things that had gone on and that would have been a tragedy. I don’t know if it vindicates me, I hope that people see that what I was doing was to the best of my ability, but it doesn’t give me any satisfaction to see the club have difficult times because the supporters don’t deserve that. I want to see someone succeed and the city of Hull happy.

Interview by Martyn Hainstock

If you read the newspapers lately when changes to the transfer system are being discussed, you’d be forgiven for thinking that right now we have a wonderfully competitive Football League in which each club can easily beat any other and in which small clubs are in financial clover thanks to all the cash that filters down through the Leagues from the top clubs.

Listen to the wails of Arsene Wenger and “Sir” Alex Ferguson and you’d think that all this milk and honey will be soured if those pesky Europeans carry on interfering with our precious system. Bollocks. The English league is dying.

As a competitive event, it’s even more predictable than the WWF. Between 1967 and 1973, seven different clubs took the English title. In the last nine years, including 2001, Manchester United alone have won seven times. And as for the small clubs, well, most of them are hanging on by the skin of their teeth, saved only by indulgent bank managers or clever administrators.

The possibility of transfer income deludes too many into spending more than they earn, and in any event the big-money transfer of the lower League player up to the higher echelons has more or less come to an end, as the giants develop ever-bigger youth academies.

I’m all for the scrapping of the transfer system, but let’s dwell a moment longer on the hypocrisy of the big clubs. The same people – Ken Bates, David Dein – who tell us that the elimination of a transfer system will kill off smaller clubs are the self-same people who set up the English Premiership as a breakaway from the Football League in the early 1990s with the express purpose of sharing a smaller percentage of the income with the other 72 clubs.

Don’t believe these money-grabbing shysters for a second when they tell you they want a transfer system to survive so as to nurture the grass roots. They are concerned only with their own share price. Arsenal. I hate Arsenal. How they pleaded for sympathy when Nicolas Anelka refused to play for them. Then they sold him. For £22.5 million. That for a player they’d bought from PSG for half-a-million quid, a player with pace but a very spotty record in front of goal and an appalling attitude.

Cry no tears for the Arse. I know why they want to retain the transfer system and it’s got nothing to do with charity towards clubs in Division 3. (And while I’m on, why do people take Arsene Wenger seriously? A nice soft voice and a French accent – but the guy talks total mince every time he opens his mouth. He says he’ll give up club management for the international game if the transfer system is scrapped, because he won’t be able to build a team – like you can build a team at international level? Twerp.)

I’ll tell you why the big clubs want a transfer system. Because it allows them to inflate their profits by imposing archaic restrictions on the freedom of the players. And because it allows them to deflect attention from the real issue in football today, which is the vital need to share gate and TV money around more fairly than happens at present.

The starting point is that in football a player is treated quite differently from an employee in any other job. This is because of arrangements that are enforced collectively by clubs, Leagues and international associations. Imagine your contract’s up. Another employer offers you better terms. You’ll take the new job. Of course.

A footballer cannot do that. If the player wants to move from a club in England to a club in France, then he can move freely (that is the result of the 1995 Bosman ruling), but it’s far from that simple if you want to move between two English clubs. And imagine you want to change employer even while your contract is in force. Provided you can satisfy the rules governing breach of contract, you can switch jobs even if the old employer doesn’t want you to leave. Not so a footballer. A footballer who tries to do what you or I can do will find himself penalised by the authorities and unable to play for the new team.

There’s no reason why footballers should be treated in this way. And please don’t tell me that without the protection of a transfer system, clubs will stop training youngsters. Sainsbury trains its managers even though some will later leave and go work for Tesco. Every business in the country trains young employees because it needs them to survive, and they do so without for a moment expecting compensation when the worker moves on. Why should football be any different?

You might say that this will put the players in an even more powerful position. If transfer fees vanish, won’t wages rise? Sure. What’s wrong with that? Footballers are entertainers and deserve the market rate. No one says that Tom Hanks earned too much for his last film, and that he better accept half as much for his next one or else no director in Hollywood will hire him.

And David Beckham is worth every penny that a club is willing to pay him. That is how markets work. You might say, won’t players just walk out of clubs on a whim? Well, no – or at least no more than any ordinary employee walks out. Workers stay put if they’re happy and it is the employer’s job to keep them happy.

It’s an everyday matter of negotiating contracts. If a club is worried it won’t keep its players for the full duration of their contract, it could, for example, include a large loyalty bonus, payable after, say, the third and the fourth year of a five-year contract. That’s the way ordinary businesses operate and it is the way football should operate. The transfer system is simply indefensible.

I am not saying football is in all respects a business like any other. It isn’t. If you make sausages, you have no interest in the existence of other makers of sausage – in fact, you’d rather there weren’t any others, so you could control the market. But football clubs need each other. Scotland’s three-second qualifying match with the non-existent Estonians was a lot of fun, but most of the time you need two teams on the pitch to make it worthwhile, and you need some doubt about who’s going to win a competition to make it appealing to customers. So clubs have a sense of mutual solidarity. What I’m saying is that the horizontal relationship between football clubs is unique, for they are inter-dependent, while the vertical relationship between clubs and their players is and should be treated in exactly the same way as any employer/employee relationship.

The future of the English League depends on taking this notion of mutual solidarity seriously. The likes of Southampton and Coventry should demand a much higher percentage of the income of Manchester United and Arsenal be put into a common pool for distribution among all the clubs. Otherwise competition will wither. The transfer system is a red herring in all this, because it is haphazard and, for smaller clubs, involves relative pennies anyway nowadays, and it’s time to stop getting taken in by the big clubs bleating about the transfer system. Forget that, and focus on the real issue – which is the need for the Football League in effect to tax bloated big business like Manchester United for the rare privilege of participating in our League.

It seems that the compromise struck between UEFA and the European Commission contradicts my views, because it does allow some space for a renovated transfer system – it does allow footballers as employees to be treated differently from you and me. It is, however, a fact that whatever deal the European Commission strikes with UEFA in Brussels, it is not binding, in the sense that the ultimate authority on the interpretation of EC law is the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg. In the late 1980s the Commission and UEFA came to a cosy agreement that no more than three foreign players would be allowed to play for clubs in European competition. (This was the rule that Vfb Stuttgart famously broke against Leeds).

In 1995 the European Court decided in the Bosman case that this was contrary to EC rules forbidding nationality discrimination between nationals of EU Member States. The Commission was left looking very stupid: its cosy agreement had no legal effect for these purposes. The same could happen again. Any triumphant announcements by Commission and by UEFA that a solution on transfers has been found could easily be exploded later by a ruling of the Court. And with the players union expressing an intention to bring a test case, this is a live possibility. A personal view is that the terms of the latest “compromise” are plainly in violation of the rules of the EC Treaty, because they envisage disproportionate and unjustified restrictions on the structure of the market for the supply of labour, and in particular they indefensibly treat footballers as subject to restrictions which would not be permitted in other industries…

Steve Weatherill

The last couple of months have been bloody horrible. The prospect of no Hull City AFC has frightened me to the point of feeling physically sick. The city of Kingston-upon-Hull would be the largest in Europe without a professional football side. It would unspeakably depressing for each and every one of us. As well as being economically and socially disastrous for Hull, and football in general it would leave us all at a loose end.

If City were to fold what would we do on a Saturday afternoon. Shopping? Err, no thanks. Watch Premiership football? There are enough sheep in the Hull area that do that, I don’t wish to join them. Support one of our local rivals?

That’d be on my list of possible alternatives somewhere between slitting my wrists and listening to Celine Dion’s entire back catalogue. I reckon a fair few of us would be tempted to watch a bit of grass roots football. Myself and four equally football starved City fans fancied trying this out on the blank Saturday after City’s game at Cardiff.

Our first thought was North Ferriby United. Without wishing to patronise them, they’re a lovely little club. Friendly fans, the opportunity to have a drink whilst watching the game, cheap to get in, the chance to laugh at the size of Darren France’s beer gut, there are loads of reasons to watch Ferriby.

So off to Church Road we headed. Gretna were the opposition and no, I don’t know what a Scottish side are doing in the Unibond League either. It was a sunny, if somewhat cold day, so we were quite surprised when we were informed it was off. I imagine it was due to the Foot and Mouth ‘crisis’ which I can confirm was started by Cardiff City supporters being fed on the remains of fellow Bluebirds fans.

What to do now? We decided on heading to Dene Park, Dunswell, the home of Hall Road Rangers. We didn’t have a clue whether they had a game or not, but it we really didn’t want to go home and be reduced to watching the Six Nations on the telly so the decision was unanimous.

On arriving there the signs weren’t promising. There was a match on one of the pitches involving a team in god’s own colours of black and amber, but park league football isn’t the greatest of spectacles, so we headed on to the main pitch. There was nobody on the turnstiles, but just as we were about to leave we noticed a ball being hoofed high in the air.

Huzzah, football at last. We ambled in to join the 30 or so other fans. Sat near us in the Ted Richardson stand was a man in a L***s United hat with his young son. “Who’s playing mate?” “Haven’t the foggiest.” Nice one.  I only discovered who the teams were after asking the linesman that the game was between Hall Road Rangers reserves and Driffield in the Humber Premier League. Driffield had an absolutely beautiful blue, white and red shirt, reminiscent of the French class of ’98.

Rangers’ stiffs were a damn sight less sartorially elegant with their kit of red and black striped shirts, blue shorts and blue socks. Yeuch. The men from the Wolds even had their subs and coaches wearing matching jackets with their website address on (www.driffieldfc.co.uk if you must know).

Unfortunately they looked less professional once the game actually got underway. Hall Road’s nippy strikers had a field day, with the young looking number 9 (yeah, like I can be arsed to find out who he was) causing Driffield’s ponderous defence and gobby ‘keeper no end of bother. The half time score was 4-1 to Rangers, the highlights of the half being an own goal from the Driff full back, some of the worst fouls I have ever seen and language from the players that was so blue it would make Bernard Manning blush.

Half time was a lot more fun than the intervals at City. Instead of trying to guess which City reserve would be reeled out to make the half time draw we were treated to watching the half time scores on Grandstand and a pint in the warmth of the Dene Park Social Club. It is a very nice set up bringing the club a considerable amount of money.

Indeed it recently hosted Radio Five’s ‘Any Sporting Questions’. As is par for the course at non-league clubs there were a few peculiarities. There was the ‘Dene Park Disco’ that consisted of a single record deck tucked away in the corner of the room. Also there was a bizarre sign – “Parents please ensure children vacate the premises during darts matches”.

They must be incredibly poor players. When the skiing came on Grandstand we supped up to watch the second half. It wasn’t as entertaining as the first, Hall Road added another goal, and there was a sending off – a Rangers player walked after a foul that was nowhere near as bad as the Mark Dennisesque lunges from the first half.

The Hall Road goalie was wearing odd boots, one Adidas and one Diadora. When quizzed as to why he mumbled “No I aren’t, they’re someone else’s”. Err, OK then. I then asked him where his side were in the league. “I dunno, I usually play for the youth team.” The poor kid wouldn’t make much of a guest on ‘Parkinson’.

The game ended 5-1. We were cold, but had enjoyed a break from the usual City-watching routine. If City don’t have a game or you can’t get to see them away, then I’d definitely recommend watching your local non-league side. However if City were to fold and were forced to start off again at this kind of level it would be a demeaning, unenjoyable experience.

Unwittingly the good people of Hall Road Rangers FC opened my eyes to what might have happened if Lloyd, Hinchliffe or Buchanan had succeeded in killing off the club. And I assure you, you wouldn’t like it one bit.

James McVie

It has become almost instinctive amongst City fans of late to herald any change at boardroom level with either cynicism or fear. After years of grappling with gray accountants, homosexual tennis players and thieving Sheffield fuckwits, we have naturally become sceptical of anyone sporting pinstripes and drooling diarrhoea about five-year plans.  

This time, though, I was more fearful than normal. The administrators were using the usual sales spiel, “top ten city”, “massive potential” etc., which is guaranteed to attract the most self-serving gobshites in the country. To cap it all off, the fatso at the Hull Daily Mail led us to believe that our prospective buyers were Americans. The South Yorkshire numbskulls were, in my opinion, complete bastards on every level. But Americans?!!

My initial fears were somewhat allayed, however, when the identity of the new owner was finally revealed. Firstly, Adam Pearson spoke with a flat northern English accent and not a Texan drawl, which was a good first sign.

When it was discovered what Mr. Pearson’s business background was, and what his plans were for the club, I was doubly impressed. In fact, I haven’t been this excited to be a City fan since Christopher ‘the debonair’ Needler sold up to David Lloyd (I know, but trust me on this one!).

Adam Pearson is of the kind we’ve sorely lacked at this club for too long – someone who can blend his football and business together and get results. In his relatively short spell at Leeds, Pearson was the man who took Leeds from a nicely ticking over football club to the sixth biggest earner in Europe. This feat is made even more remarkable when you consider that as a football team, Leeds are an incredibly overrated bunch of fuckwits who spend more time beating up ethnics than they do collecting trophies. Pearson also possesses the attribute most required of football chairmen, namely the ability to generate money from outside sources, and I’m not talking Chinese restaurants here.

Pearson’s career has been built on making cash for businesses via sponsorship deals, outside investment etc. Where Nick Buchanan’s idea of keeping the club running smoothly was to borrow money from the players union, Pearson can generate cash for the club without the danger of a transfer embargo, and presumably without putting his own money into the club as well.

To be able to take a few quid from avaricious suited and booted types without having to pay it back is an art in itself. Also, Pearson has made no rash promises so far. All the noises made were good ones, such as Brian Little will remain as manager, we shall move to the ‘super’ stadium when it is completed in 2072, Brian will be given a ‘limited’ amount of cash in the summer and, most importantly, the club will finally stand on its own financial feet in the next fourteen months or so. This is much more important than promises of Premiership football within five years, or playing on the moon.

Hull City haven’t been financially stable for over a decade. The thought that we’ll be paying our own bills in such a relatively short time is worth a lot more than how big the chairman’s bank balance is, even though money is an important factor in the modern game. To get out of this division you don’t need big money, you just need to have everyone within the club pulling in the same direction, for proof of this just look at the Scunny-lingus, who managed to get out of the dung heap affectionately known as ‘Nationwide Division Three’ with an idiotic manager who pissed his pants during a cup final and no major cash investment from the board.

The likes of Stockport and Grimsby survive in Division One without megabucks, having to get by on boardroom cohesion and team spirit. This may appear unlikely to happen to Hull City at the present time, but strange things happen in football. Bradford City are in the Premiership, for a start. And Terry Dolan’s got a job. Doesn’t seem so unlikely now, does it?

In football, history can often repeat itself, for instance Carlisle will stay up (at the expense of York), Man United will win the league, and Brian Laws will throw a tantrum when City beat them. Similarly, City could well repeat the events that occurred during the 1980′s, with Don Robinson in charge. Just like now, Robinson bought the club as it was going through one of its darkest periods. Robinson’s City climbed from a similar position to where we are now to what should have been an old Second Division play off place. Robinson was similar to Pearson in his ability to make the club profitable without splashing out millions he doesn’t have, and was a master at boosting the club’s profile.

The rumour currently doing the rounds is that a Harrogate businessman who recently sold his internet company for £25 million will be Pearson’s first board appointment, and in Brian Little, we have the best manager in the division. Whitmore, Goodison, Whittle, Greaves and an on form Eyre are players good enough to grace Division One. We’ve been through a hell of a lot during the last decade. Now we can sit back and bask in the glory to come.

Danny Lodge

The last couple of months have been bloody horrible. The prospect of no Hull City AFC has frightened me to the point of feeling physically sick. The city of Kingston-upon-Hull would be the largest in Europe without a professional football side. It would unspeakably depressing for each and every one of us. As well as being economically and socially disastrous for Hull, and football in general it would leave us all at a loose end.  

If City were to fold what would we do on a Saturday afternoon. Shopping? Err, no thanks. Watch Premiership football? There are enough sheep in the Hull area that do that, I don’t wish to join them. Support one of our local rivals?

That’d be on my list of possible alternatives somewhere between slitting my wrists and listening to Celine Dion’s entire back catalogue. I reckon a fair few of us would be tempted to watch a bit of grass roots football. Myself and four equally football starved City fans fancied trying this out on the blank Saturday after City’s game at Cardiff.

Our first thought was North Ferriby United. Without wishing to patronise them, they’re a lovely little club. Friendly fans, the opportunity to have a drink whilst watching the game, cheap to get in, the chance to laugh at the size of Darren France’s beer gut, there are loads of reasons to watch Ferriby.

So off to Church Road we headed. Gretna were the opposition and no, I don’t know what a Scottish side are doing in the Unibond League either. It was a sunny, if somewhat cold day, so we were quite surprised when we were informed it was off. I imagine it was due to the Foot and Mouth ‘crisis’ which I can confirm was started by Cardiff City supporters being fed on the remains of fellow Bluebirds fans.

What to do now? We decided on heading to Dene Park, Dunswell, the home of Hall Road Rangers. We didn’t have a clue whether they had a game or not, but it we really didn’t want to go home and be reduced to watching the Six Nations on the telly so the decision was unanimous.

On arriving there the signs weren’t promising. There was a match on one of the pitches involving a team in god’s own colours of black and amber, but park league football isn’t the greatest of spectacles, so we headed on to the main pitch. There was nobody on the turnstiles, but just as we were about to leave we noticed a ball being hoofed high in the air.

Huzzah, football at last. We ambled in to join the 30 or so other fans. Sat near us in the Ted Richardson stand was a man in a L***s United hat with his young son. “Who’s playing mate?” “Haven’t the foggiest.” Nice one.  I only discovered who the teams were after asking the linesman that the game was between Hall Road Rangers reserves and Driffield in the Humber Premier League. Driffield had an absolutely beautiful blue, white and red shirt, reminiscent of the French class of ’98.

Rangers’ stiffs were a damn sight less sartorially elegant with their kit of red and black striped shirts, blue shorts and blue socks. Yeuch. The men from the Wolds even had their subs and coaches wearing matching jackets with their website address on (www.driffieldfc.co.uk if you must know).

Unfortunately they looked less professional once the game actually got underway. Hall Road’s nippy strikers had a field day, with the young looking number 9 (yeah, like I can be arsed to find out who he was) causing Driffield’s ponderous defence and gobby ‘keeper no end of bother. The half time score was 4-1 to Rangers, the highlights of the half being an own goal from the Driff full back, some of the worst fouls I have ever seen and language from the players that was so blue it would make Bernard Manning blush.

Half time was a lot more fun than the intervals at City. Instead of trying to guess which City reserve would be reeled out to make the half time draw we were treated to watching the half time scores on Grandstand and a pint in the warmth of the Dene Park Social Club. It is a very nice set up bringing the club a considerable amount of money.

Indeed it recently hosted Radio Five’s ‘Any Sporting Questions’. As is par for the course at non-league clubs there were a few peculiarities. There was the ‘Dene Park Disco’ that consisted of a single record deck tucked away in the corner of the room. Also there was a bizarre sign – “Parents please ensure children vacate the premises during darts matches”.

They must be incredibly poor players. When the skiing came on Grandstand we supped up to watch the second half. It wasn’t as entertaining as the first, Hall Road added another goal, and there was a sending off – a Rangers player walked after a foul that was nowhere near as bad as the Mark Dennisesque lunges from the first half.

The Hall Road goalie was wearing odd boots, one Adidas and one Diadora. When quizzed as to why he mumbled “No I aren’t, they’re someone else’s”. Err, OK then. I then asked him where his side were in the league. “I dunno, I usually play for the youth team.” The poor kid wouldn’t make much of a guest on ‘Parkinson’.

The game ended 5-1. We were cold, but had enjoyed a break from the usual City-watching routine. If City don’t have a game or you can’t get to see them away, then I’d definitely recommend watching your local non-league side. However if City were to fold and were forced to start off again at this kind of level it would be a demeaning, unenjoyable experience.

Unwittingly the good people of Hall Road Rangers FC opened my eyes to what might have happened if Lloyd, Hinchliffe or Buchanan had succeeded in killing off the club. And I assure you, you wouldn’t like it one bit.

James McVie

If you read the newspapers lately when changes to the transfer system are being discussed, you’d be forgiven for thinking that right now we have a wonderfully competitive Football League in which each club can easily beat any other and in which small clubs are in financial clover thanks to all the cash that filters down through the Leagues from the top clubs.

Listen to the wails of Arsene Wenger and “Sir” Alex Ferguson and you’d think that all this milk and honey will be soured if those pesky Europeans carry on interfering with our precious system. Bollocks. The English league is dying. As a competitive event, it’s even more predictable than the WWF. Between 1967 and 1973, seven different clubs took the English title. In the last nine years, including 2001, Manchester United alone have won seven times. And as for the small clubs, well, most of them are hanging on by the skin of their teeth, saved only by indulgent bank managers or clever administrators.

The possibility of transfer income deludes too many into spending more than they earn, and in any event the big-money transfer of the lower League player up to the higher echelons has more or less come to an end, as the giants develop ever-bigger youth academies.

I’m all for the scrapping of the transfer system, but let’s dwell a moment longer on the hypocrisy of the big clubs. The same people – Ken Bates, David Dein – who tell us that the elimination of a transfer system will kill off smaller clubs are the self-same people who set up the English Premiership as a breakaway from the Football League in the early 1990s with the express purpose of sharing a smaller percentage of the income with the other 72 clubs.

Don’t believe these money-grabbing shysters for a second when they tell you they want a transfer system to survive so as to nurture the grass roots. They are concerned only with their own share price. Arsenal. I hate Arsenal. How they pleaded for sympathy when Nicolas Anelka refused to play for them. Then they sold him. For £22.5 million. That for a player they’d bought from PSG for half-a-million quid, a player with pace but a very spotty record in front of goal and an appalling attitude.

Cry no tears for the Arse. I know why they want to retain the transfer system and it’s got nothing to do with charity towards clubs in Division 3. (And while I’m on, why do people take Arsene Wenger seriously? A nice soft voice and a French accent – but the guy talks total mince every time he opens his mouth. He says he’ll give up club management for the international game if the transfer system is scrapped, because he won’t be able to build a team – like you can build a team at international level? Twerp.)

I’ll tell you why the big clubs want a transfer system. Because it allows them to inflate their profits by imposing archaic restrictions on the freedom of the players. And because it allows them to deflect attention from the real issue in football today, which is the vital need to share gate and TV money around more fairly than happens at present.

The starting point is that in football a player is treated quite differently from an employee in any other job. This is because of arrangements that are enforced collectively by clubs, Leagues and international associations. Imagine your contract’s up. Another employer offers you better terms. You’ll take the new job. Of course.

A footballer cannot do that. If the player wants to move from a club in England to a club in France, then he can move freely (that is the result of the 1995 Bosman ruling), but it’s far from that simple if you want to move between two English clubs. And imagine you want to change employer even while your contract is in force. Provided you can satisfy the rules governing breach of contract, you can switch jobs even if the old employer doesn’t want you to leave. Not so a footballer. A footballer who tries to do what you or I can do will find himself penalised by the authorities and unable to play for the new team.

There’s no reason why footballers should be treated in this way. And please don’t tell me that without the protection of a transfer system, clubs will stop training youngsters. Sainsbury trains its managers even though some will later leave and go work for Tesco. Every business in the country trains young employees because it needs them to survive, and they do so without for a moment expecting compensation when the worker moves on. Why should football be any different?

You might say that this will put the players in an even more powerful position. If transfer fees vanish, won’t wages rise? Sure. What’s wrong with that? Footballers are entertainers and deserve the market rate. No one says that Tom Hanks earned too much for his last film, and that he better accept half as much for his next one or else no director in Hollywood will hire him.

And David Beckham is worth every penny that a club is willing to pay him. That is how markets work. You might say, won’t players just walk out of clubs on a whim? Well, no – or at least no more than any ordinary employee walks out. Workers stay put if they’re happy and it is the employer’s job to keep them happy.

It’s an everyday matter of negotiating contracts. If a club is worried it won’t keep its players for the full duration of their contract, it could, for example, include a large loyalty bonus, payable after, say, the third and the fourth year of a five-year contract. That’s the way ordinary businesses operate and it is the way football should operate. The transfer system is simply indefensible.

I am not saying football is in all respects a business like any other. It isn’t. If you make sausages, you have no interest in the existence of other makers of sausage – in fact, you’d rather there weren’t any others, so you could control the market. But football clubs need each other. Scotland’s three-second qualifying match with the non-existent Estonians was a lot of fun, but most of the time you need two teams on the pitch to make it worthwhile, and you need some doubt about who’s going to win a competition to make it appealing to customers. So clubs have a sense of mutual solidarity. What I’m saying is that the horizontal relationship between football clubs is unique, for they are inter-dependent, while the vertical relationship between clubs and their players is and should be treated in exactly the same way as any employer/employee relationship.

The future of the English League depends on taking this notion of mutual solidarity seriously. The likes of Southampton and Coventry should demand a much higher percentage of the income of Manchester United and Arsenal be put into a common pool for distribution among all the clubs. Otherwise competition will wither. The transfer system is a red herring in all this, because it is haphazard and, for smaller clubs, involves relative pennies anyway nowadays, and it’s time to stop getting taken in by the big clubs bleating about the transfer system. Forget that, and focus on the real issue – which is the need for the Football League in effect to tax bloated big business like Manchester United for the rare privilege of participating in our League.

It seems that the compromise struck between UEFA and the European Commission contradicts my views, because it does allow some space for a renovated transfer system – it does allow footballers as employees to be treated differently from you and me. It is, however, a fact that whatever deal the European Commission strikes with UEFA in Brussels, it is not binding, in the sense that the ultimate authority on the interpretation of EC law is the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg. In the late 1980s the Commission and UEFA came to a cosy agreement that no more than three foreign players would be allowed to play for clubs in European competition. (This was the rule that Vfb Stuttgart famously broke against Leeds).

In 1995 the European Court decided in the Bosman case that this was contrary to EC rules forbidding nationality discrimination between nationals of EU Member States. The Commission was left looking very stupid: its cosy agreement had no legal effect for these purposes. The same could happen again. Any triumphant announcements by Commission and by UEFA that a solution on transfers has been found could easily be exploded later by a ruling of the Court. And with the players union expressing an intention to bring a test case, this is a live possibility. A personal view is that the terms of the latest “compromise” are plainly in violation of the rules of the EC Treaty, because they envisage disproportionate and unjustified restrictions on the structure of the market for the supply of labour, and in particular they indefensibly treat footballers as subject to restrictions which would not be permitted in other industries…

Steve Weatherill