Football Chairmen & Women - In a League of Their Own

Sean O'Conor

Delia Smith remains Britain's most famous TV chef, who for a quarter of a century has taught the nation in a professional yet pleasant way how to make good simple dishes at home.

But, to the blissful ignorance of a legion of her housewife devotees, Delia cultivates a darker side as a die-hard football fan and has put her money where her mouth is by becoming the joint major-shareholder in her local side, Premiership Norwich City. As far as most Canaries fans are concerned though, she is the de facto chairman and face of the club.

For the past few years Delia has smiled at and applauded the East Anglians' promotion and relegation travails from the directors box, but in late February when the East Anglians took on fellow relegation-candidates Manchester City in a six-pointer, the surrender of a 2-0 lead to the visitors made the cook really spoil her broth and in the process create one of the season's most memorable moments, enough to make that night's national news bulletins.

In an 'official' pitch invasion to go down in football history alongside the late Brian Clough's cuffing of celebrating fans, Graeme Souness' death-defying planting of a Galatasaray flag in the centre-spot after the Turkish Cup Final or David Pleat's delightful skip of joy after a late Raddy Antic strike had saved Luton from the drop, Delia grabbed a microphone and festooned in her green and yellow scarf in the centre-circle, called the Norwich fans the best in the league before berating them for their lack of balls and failing to support their team as vocally as they should!

Her impassioned ‘Where are you?' and ‘Let's be ‘aving you!' cries are now being worn on t-shirts at Carrow Road in tribute to a unique moment of heartfelt fandom.

Indeed, it is difficult to think of many, if any other club directors who could holler at the fans on the stadium P.A. and then be congratulated for it. Delia is of course a genuinely nice person and nationally popular but she is also a chairman who cannot be accused of not loving the club.

Whilst it was a gloomy and wintry night in Norfolk, under the floodlights Delia seemed bathed in a glow of admiration but chairmen do not always get such an easy ride.

Ask any Brighton fan about Bill Archer, whose burning effigy lit up the Sussex sky on more than one occasion or just look at the disorder already committed and threatened by certain Manchester United fans against the possible chairmanship of American Malcolm Glazer.

The previous incumbent at Carrow Road, Robert Chase, was extraordinarily unpopular in comparison with Delia and Canaries fans still speak of him in vituperative tones as someone who seemed aloof and unwilling to invest in the team or listen to the fans, rather like an absentee landlord uninterested in improving his property as long as the rent kept pouring in.

Likewise Tottenham fans still curse Alan Sugar's ten-year reign at White Hart Lane although the Amstrad founder, who is currently playing on his reputation as a ruthless boss by being just that on the TV show “The Apprentice”, did rescue the club from administration and refused to partake of the shady business practices that were the norm when he entered football.

He successfully sued The Daily Mail when it labelled him “a miser”, an accusation Spurs fans would concur with however as supporters demand success and expect their team's owners to keep digging deep into their pockets until it arrives.

But beware of what you dream of: Leeds reached the 2001 Champions League semi-final and were outbidding the likes of Manchester United to buy players such as Rio Ferdinand before they found themselves relegated and having to sell all their stars three years later.

The floodlight of financial ruin caused by a risky gamble based on a Champions League qualification that did not materialise has cast a dark shadow over a once great club from which it has yet to recover.

Elland Road was hit by a whirlwind and the chairman Peter Ridsdale, who had won so much respect for his stewardship of the Yorkshire club including his dignified response to the tragic death of two Leeds fans in Istanbul, left the club in disgrace at having masterminded the disastrous spending spree.

Leeds' pre-tax loss of £49.5million in 2003 was the worst ever posted by an English team until Chelsea's jaw-dropping announcement of a £88 million debt earlier this season.

But with the Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich in charge money seems no object. He represents a new breed of chairman who did not exist in England in such numbers a decade ago.

Whilst Italian clubs had long lived off billionaire chairmen such as Juventus with the FIAT money of the Agnelli family, England's teams were poorer in comparison until the Premiership arrived.

Media mogul Robert Maxwell controlled two mediocre English teams Derby and Oxford in the 1980s but was unwilling to splash out in the manner of similar barons such as Massimo Moratti at Inter or Silvio Berlusconi at Milan, for instance.

This all changed when steel magnate Jack Walker bought Blackburn the Premiership title in 1995. Now businessmen are falling over themselves to take over one of England's twenty Premiership clubs, not to make money, which is difficult, but because it places them in the most high-profile and most exclusive club of directors in the nation.

But even though Chelsea may win the treble this season there are alternatives to Roman Abramovich or Florentino Perez, whose reckless spending spree for galacticos at the Bernabeu is redolent of a magpie collecting shiny but useless objects for its nest.

Unless they employ impressive youth systems like Ajax or Auxerre or unearth a coach like Jose Mourinho, who won last season's Champions League for the unfancied Porto, directors will have to spend, which means more of the above.

But you can have strict financial rules like Arsenal or Bayern Munich or follow Martin Edwards who has built the Manchester United empire with its big fanbase and huge merchandising operation, one Sir John Hall has tried to ape at Newcastle United.

Football chairmen are of course not always good news. Some have been convicted of embezzling their clubs' money and others have just seemed mad: Ken Bates at Chelsea installed an electric fence at Stamford Bridge in 1985 before the council stopped him turning it on and Jimmy Hill at Coventry proposed exploding a giant firework visible all over the city whenever the Sky Blues scored a goal for instance.

Then there was Stan Flashman, the well-known 1960s ticket tout ‘Big Fat Stan' who boasted he could get tickets to the Queen's garden parties and once announced he was putting ‘spies' on the terrace to identify the fans most critical of the club!

For many people in football, the blazers in the directors' box are the untouchable puppet-masters who park their Jags in front of the main stand and entertain clients, detached from the team that is suffering from their indifference on that green field far below.

As readily as those fans sing ‘Sack the Board' as a reflex once the season becomes unsalvageable, they gleefully quote Len Shackleton's classic autobiography chapter entitled “What the Average Director Knows About Football” (he left the page blank). But you could argue that at least the Hills, Bates and Flashmans were characters, a precious commodity in today's game.

The future seems to involve more boring businessmen as chairmen, which is a shame. Perhaps the most colourful of the old school was the outspoken Jesus Gil, whose 16 year tenure at Atletico Madrid saw him involved in almost one hundred court cases and seemingly as many hirings and firings of managers, Ron Atkinson included.

However, he said before his death in 2004 that his last wish was to be buried in the Atletico flag. From the dressing room to the boardroom our colourful sport is losing its characters. When music-hall veteran Tommy Trinder ran Fulham from the mid ‘50s to the mid ‘70s you felt he had a genuine love for the club. So let's celebrate Delia's outburst as she is a real fan, even if she sits in the directors' box.

Sean O'Conor

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