Wardle - the wilderness years

[tolmie's hairdoo]

His heart was in the right place, his only failing being that he became starstuck by Keegan, just as David Bernstein had been.

Wardle allowed Keegan to stay in the role maybe ten months too long.

He basically didn't have deep enough pockets in the end - mainly as a result of Bernstein's reckless stewardship and the accumulation of £50m in debt he sanctioned. Another, who thought the sun shined out of Keegan's arse, his personally shameful treatment of Joe Royle. Never ceases to amaze me the credit Bernstein receives in some quarters.

His supposed principles on not spending £5m on Robbie Fowler, were a penny that dropped far too late. A City fan, yes. A Bean counter, yes. A decent crisis manager, possibly. A saviour, never. He brought us to the brink more than anybody - him and Macintosh.

Bit harsh on Bernstein there, although he would be the first to admit that mistakes were made. For a start, £30m of that debt was to pay for the move to CoMS. Or would you rather we'd stayed at Maine Road?

I've actually spoken to him at length about those days and he accepts that he was in awe of Keegan but his justification was that he's taken us out of the Championship in style and we ended up 9th in our first season back in the Premiership. Keegan came to him and said (and I quote DB virtually verbatim here) "KK said for £30m I can get us into the top 6. And we believed him. Why wouldn't we?"

The point of the move to CoMS was that the increased revenue would cover the debt. Our income went up £13m in the first year at CoMS and this should have been enough to pay the debt but after he went, costs went up and there was no control over cash flow. That was down to Mackintosh. That's when the debts started going up and when Wardle had to start pumping money in.

It was Bernstein who finally got us out of the mess of the Swales/Lee days and Wardle allowed Mackintosh to get us back in that state.

I will dispute that with you, blue.

Firstly, Bernstein was also sat on the board of French Connection and Blacks Leisure at the time, not able to give his full attention (and by that, I mean a Premier League chairman)

Bernstein was responsible for Macintosh, another bean counter who cultivated his own reputation at Sony.

It was only the money advanced by Mr Livingstone (owner of Eidos our former sponsors) which came to the initial rescue following our promotion out of the third tier.

By the way, I have no time for Tueart, but it was his relationship with Livingstone that brought him on board, allowing Tueart to weasle his way in.

Francis Lee was responsible for signing us up for the stadium move, so for you to argue that Bernstein showed some sort of hindsight in terms of the increase in revenues this would undoubtably bring, is hollow.

He and Macintosh also leveraged this club with American outfit Bear Sterns for £25m to pay for the additional stand which which needed to be built, at ridiculous hamstrings.

Bernstein was also happy to allow the fires burn and allow those less informed, to agitate for his return to the board.

As has always been the case, up until the arrival of Sheikh Mansour, too many people with self-serving agendas have had too much of a say in how this club existed.

Bernstein, Chris Bird, Macintoss, the latter of the two, being paid hundreds of thousands of pounds each year, with their own little power bases.

Makes me so angry.

 

[Didsbury Dave]

[quote="Prestwich_Blue]
It was Bernstein who finally got us out of the mess of the Swales/Lee days and Wardle allowed Mackintosh to get us back in that state.

[/quote]

A bit simplistic that, in my opinion, PB. Yes, Bernstein cut costs when we were in division 2. Yes, he was Chairman when we shot up the divisions. But when he left we had more debt than when he started.

Good thread this, by the way.

 

[The Fat el Hombre]

Very interesting thread, although like a couple of others I think some people are being way too harsh on Bernstein. I think he did a very good job for us and was disappointed when he left. Yes he did give Keegan a wedge to spend, but if he hadn't then people would have whinged about us lacking ambition and all that rubbish, at least he got to the point where enough was enough and tried to block the fowler transfer

Wardle took money out of the club.

you'r gonna have to explain that

 

[tolmie's hairdoo]

The comparison between Ridsdale and Bernstein is very unfair. Bernstein didn’t mortgage everything on the basis of getting in to the champions league and with big decisions he could only act on instruction of the shareholders. He also found the money to pay for the development of Eastlands whilst getting us in the Premier League and keeping us there.

I don’t believe Swales always had City’s best interests at heart either. He was never a supporter in the sense Wardle is and he used the club to win pointless political battles and to inflate his ego as part of a glorified dick swinging contest. It was always him first and City second, where as Wardle and Bernstein seemed to appreciate that they were, in the end, simply custodians of a greater institution.

I business terms selling to Thaskin worked out well but we were verging on financial collapse and we’d become a pawn in a horrible political game. Wardle was lucky things worked out as they did but it will never be to the clubs credit that he sold out Shinawatra.

Swales was a lot of things, but his only failing was being obsessed with getting one over United - and most of us can identify with that.

He was a blue through and through. A disaster as a chairman, but even he was unfairly bastardised by the Fight With Franny campaign.

Remember Colin Barlow and John Dunkerley? My point being, they didn't stick around too long once they made their own cash.

How about the hatchet man John Maddock, jesus, now I come to think of it, Swales was the best of the lot - at least you knew where you stood with him.

I sit rather uncomfortably knowing that as a naive 20-year-old at the time, it seemed a bit of a laugh twisting the knife into Swales all the time, backing the Lee campaign.

Know doubt all that shit ultimately killed him.

Just hope Swalesy is now looking down with his dodgy comb over, pissing his sides that his ultimate dream is set to be a reality...

 

[twinkletoes]

Very interesting thread, although like a couple of others I think some people are being way too harsh on Bernstein. I think he did a very good job for us and was disappointed when he left. Yes he did give Keegan a wedge to spend, but if he hadn't then people would have whinged about us lacking ambition and all that rubbish, at least he got to the point where enough was enough and tried to block the fowler transfer

Wardle took money out of the club.

you'r gonna have to explain that

He loaned the club money and charged interest.

 

[Anonymous]

oh please do! i love a good mackintoss horror story. How that man could have been left in charge of anything other than his own bodily functions is beyond me. The most uncharismatic, lying, sniveling, arrogant, shit bag, this side of Peter Kenyon. In fact, mackintoss was Kenyon without the business nous. A car without an engine. A house without a roof. A leader without a voice.

That's being charitable to the man.

The years have mellowed my vitriol towards Mackintoss....;- )

 

[Didsbury Dave]

Swales undoubtedly made some howlers, not least appointing John Maddock.

But Lee was far worse for the club. I think he tried as he has a huge ego, and that ego was what drove him to take us over, but his personality caused major problems at the club. I reckon that's why Coppell left. It's certainly why Dave Bassett turned us down. Lee was a dictator and it fucked up the club culture from top to bottom.

The truth is we were badly run for decades, many decades, by many people and many factions.

I hope those days are behind us.

 

[Dyed Petya]

I will dispute that with you, blue.

Firstly, Bernstein was also sat on the board of French Connection and Blacks Leisure at the time, not able to give his full attention (and by that, I mean a Premier League chairman)

Bernstein was responsible for Macintosh, another bean counter who cultivated his own reputation at Sony.

It was only the money advanced by Mr Livingstone (owner of Eidos our former sponsors) which came to the initial rescue following our promotion out of the third tier.

By the way, I have no time for Tueart, but it was his relationship with Livingstone that brought him on board, allowing Tueart to weasle his way in.

Francis Lee was responsible for signing us up for the stadium move, so for you to argue that Bernstein showed some sort of hindsight in terms of the increase in revenues this would undoubtably bring, is hollow.

He and Macintosh also leveraged this club with American outfit Bear Sterns for £25m to pay for the additional stand which which needed to be built, at ridiculous hamstrings.

Bernstein was also happy to allow the fires burn and allow those less informed, to agitate for his return to the board.

As has always been the case, up until the arrival of Sheikh Mansour, too many people with self-serving agendas have had too much of a say in how this club existed.

Bernstein, Chris Bird, Macintoss, the latter of the two, being paid hundreds of thousands of pounds each year, with their own little power bases.

Makes me so angry.

An awful lot of in correct statements here.

1. Bernstein wasn't meant to be full time. The whole idea was that he was a non-executive chairman, and he was never intended to give more than a day or two a week to the club while others had responsibility for its day-to-day running. His input was primarily in strategic issues and wasn't compromised at all by his other interests.

2. It was not "only the money advanced by Mr Livingstone (owner of Eidos our former sponsors) which came to the initial rescue following our promotion out of the third tier". Eidos did become the club's shirt sponsor for the 1999-2000 season. However, the significant financial event around that time was a share issue which saw Sky subscribe for just under 10% of the shares for around GBP 5.5 million and Wardle and Makin write off approximately the same amount of loans, which were converted to shares. That share issue allowed the club to be debt free for the first time since the sixties.

3. It wasn't Dennis Tueart's "relationship with Livingstone that brought him on board, allowing [him] to weasle his way in". Tueart was appointed as a director in December 1998, and was the nominee on the board of Wardle and Makin, this being before Wardle became a director. Representing the interests on the board of the (then) second largest shareholder gave DT quite a significant degree of influence long before Ian Livingstone and Eidos became the short sponsor.

4. Francis Lee didn't sign us up to the stadium move, he simply initiated the first negotiations with the Council concerning the move. The club didn't sign any meaningful document relating to the move until a Memorandum of Understanding was concluded in September 1998 (IIRC, it was announced on the day we played Walsall at home in a midweek Division Two game), and the binding commitment to go there was signed in August 1999, on the pitch before we played Wolves in the first game of the new season.

5. "Bernstein, Chris Bird, Macintoss" may have had "their own little power bases". However, they were all directors with a minimal shareholding and could have been dismissed at any time by a majority of the shareholders at a general meeting. It's with the shareholders that the real power in a company lies, and Wardle and his partner held the biggest bloc of shares in MCFC from November 1999 onwards. You seem to ignore this completely.

I could debate this at length if I had the time, but I don't. Suffice to say, I broadly agree with Prestwich. However, if people are going to slate Bernstein, can it please at least be on the basis of the facts as they actually were rather than those that weren't but happen to back up the argument?

 

[The Fat el Hombre]

He loaned the club money and charged interest.

At what rate?

 

[pace89]

Lee just seemed to accelerate the disaster that was waiting to happen under Swales. If he’d just been a director charged with sorting out our commercial deals, sales and marketing he might have been alright. It remains astonishing to this day that someone who’d been in football for so long could so incompetently select managers and then treat them with such utter contempt (bollocking players in the dressing room in front of the manager etc, etc).