Wardle - the wilderness years

[twinkletoes]

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?

Exactly.

 

[Prestwich_Blue]

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.

You're entitled to your opinions but you've got some of your facts wrong.

Bernstein was a chairman, not a chief executive therefore had no need to be full-time. Very few chairmen are, even at big public companies.

I've always understood Tueart was put on the board by David Makin. Tueart became a director not long after Wardle & Makin acquired a large shareholding. I've never heard the story that Ian Livinsgstone personally put money into City but I have heard that he got us Eidos sponsorship without (his) board's approval.

The Games were awarded to Manchester in November 1995 and Lee resigned in March 1998 so it may well have been Francis Lee that started the discussions with the City Council. These were concluded late in 1999 though so Lee had been gone a year. What I was trying to say is that Bernstein was the one who undertook the securitisation on the basis of the increased revenue. The annual cost of that was around £5m, compared to increased revenue of £13-15m.

I don't understand your criticism of the deal to build the North Stand or what you mean by "hamstrings". The work required to finish off CoMS was part of the arrangement with the council, the Bear Stearns deal was quite a good one for a football club with little security and, as I've shown, could easily be covered by the increased revenue.

As regards the promotion of Mackintosh, I've heard various stories from everyone involved and I still can't work out the truth. I've heard that Wardle & Makin didn't want Mackintosh but also that Bernstein wasn't convinced about him as CEO. I simply don't know but suspect that Mackintosh was lighter on his feet than Bird was and got the job without either party having any great confidence in him (although I'm not sure I believe that Wardle preferred Bird over Mackintosh).

And DD, we had more debt when Bernstein left for the simple reason that we'd had to pay for the building of the North Stand and the fitting out of the rest of the stadium, plus we had to finance KK's spending. Obviouly a lot of that (KK's) was unwise but no one knew that at the time.

Edit: I do agree that there were too many people that put their own agendas ahead of the club and am delighted that this no longer seems to be the case. You're also not the first person to criticise the paying of large salaries/fees to directors, including someone very well-connected with the club for many years who thought it was the worst thing we ever did.

 

[Dyed Petya]

On the Francis Lee and Swales point, I don't have time to analyse this now so I'm just going to copy and paste a post I wrote a while back in a tread about Fancis Lee as chairman.

Let me declare an interest here that makes me far from impartial. I had occasion to see the all kinds of documents reflecting the state of the club in 1994 at the time of Lee's takeover. After that little experience, I really couldn't despise Swales more if I tried.

Swales's legacy was really very poor in terms of the off-field state of the club, and we were heading in only one direction if he'd stayed.

Before Lee came, the club shop and merchandising rights were licensed to a third party (bloke called Eddie Phillips) for a flat fee of GBP 60k per year on a long-term deal. The same year, United were turning over GBP 8 million and Newcastle GBP 6 million from merchandising, generating profits in the millions. Lee got us out of that deal and started to put in place a commercial structure that vaguely resembled something befitting football in the 1990s as opposed to the 1970s.

He also, as someone says, did a lot of work with the Commonwealth Games bid team with a view to moving us to the Commonwealth Stadium after the Games. And don't forget the Academy. We got the newly invented Academy status with the first batch of applicants in 1998, but the decision to go for it, the planning and the overhaul of the Platt Lane facilities necessary for our application to be accepted were all down to Lee's regime.

(Credit also to the board after he left. After relegation in 1998, we had to make all kinds of cuts to compensate for the anticipated drop in revenue - turnover eventually fell from around GBP 15 million in 1997/8 to GBP 12 million in 1998/9. With the Academy expected to cost GBP 750k per annum to run and money still to be spent to complete the Platt Lane upgrade, shelving creation of the Academy for a couple of years would have been seen by many as a sensible decision at the time to alleviate a short-term crisis. Thank heavens they took the long-term view).

As everyone says, where he fell down was, ironically given the way he kept saying what a plus his football background represented, on the football side. Ultimately, whether a club is badly run or well run, the biggest effect on the bottom line is the success or otherwise of the team.

Lee horribly mishandled the managerial situation - not only in appointing Ball, but also undermining Brian Horton, who spent a season and a half with the press telling everyone he was two games from the sack when Lee should either have backed the manager properly or sacked him earlier if the chairman didn't feel able to offer the appropriate support. And Lee also dictated transfer policy, resolving to sell high earners (who happened to be the best players).

He didn't ever, I believe, impose on a manager an unwanted player, but he did also play an active role in identifying targets along with the manager, and he also insisted on approving every deal at the time (that changed later, and didn't apply under Frank Clark). So when people talk about the unwise decision to trade Walsh for Creaney, that was a joint decision between Lee and Ball, not Ball's decision alone.

 

[lancs blue]

As Dyed Peta's post suggests, Lee and Wardle were just left with the results of 20 years of Swales's chronic mismanagement to sort out, any criticism of them has to be tempered by this stark reality.

 

[fbloke]

Here are a few simple overviews as far as I can tell from my understanding, and some behind the scenes information.

Swales - A man who professed to love the club but was soon dazzled by the fame and power. This was accentuated with his position in the FA set-up

He ran the club like a corner shop and took pennies when deals were worth pounds.

He also tried to keep himself away from criticism by blaming everyone but himself.

FH Lee - Knew that things were less than rosy and stemmed the flow out of the club by renegotiating many of Swales' amateurish deals.

Became what he professed to hate, a chairman who entered the dressing room and a businessman who used his connections to do deals and limit peoples influence - Alan Ball etc.

Dunkerley and Barlow were small time mates of FHL and extended the point I made about limiting peoples influence.

He also didnt have as much money as people thought and definitely limited his exposure more cleverly than Wardle.

(I was approached by FHL and some of the takeover 'panel' with a view to investing in the club even though he didnt know who i was or whether i had a pot to piss in)

Bernstein - a part time appt who needed to be a full time one.

Should have been the steady hand on the tiller but got far too involved in the politicking at the club.

Bird/Mackintosh and others - old style footie directors had egos and earned fortunes from little effort. They fit that description fully.

Wardle - a reluctant man with his heart overruling his head and very limited resources that he made readily available to the club.

Never had the chance to clear the decks and start again as was needed and by the time he realised the need for a massive outside buyout it was almost too late

Makin - see Wardle.

Stephen Boler - a chancer of the highest order who I believe was one of the reasons Swales lasted as long as he did. Money in at low levels and no interest in the club.

The more recent developments need not really be commented on but the fact that so many people can be listed and had influence is an indication as to the problem.

If anyone could be bothered to list all of the people involved over the last 30 years I reckon it would run to a fair few pages.

I believe my original point is still true though. Of all the people in the debacle that was City from Swales up to the Sheikh, Wardle is the one who was most well intentioned.

For that we owe him our gratitude.

 

[NICKS BACK]

To be honest, between Wardle, Makin, Mackintoss, and Bernstein we don't really know where the truth lies.

However you don't have to be a genius businessman to know that collectively, they had no plan B. They spent big with KK, but seemingly overnight went to asset stripping. Whatever the strategy was, it was amateurish and nearly run the club into the ground. The lying to supporters was even worse. Anyone remember "We don't need to sell our best players to service our debt..." coming out of Mackintoss's mouth a matter of weeks before the sale of SWP...which was contrary to popular belief, came after a phone call between certain people within City's heirarchy and SWP's people in which it was intimated that it was BEST for both parties if he did in fact move.

Anyway, it's history now. I don't doubt that Wardle for his part was a City supporter. But he was clearly not up to the job of running our club, much like the vast majority who had gone before him...

look whatever you say we brought some major names during that period, Anelka Fowler James
McManaman, these were seriously better than anything I had seen since the late eighties. Keegan
unfortunately lost the plot as usual, but I remember that period with a lot of affection, we always seemed one or two players away from cutting the mustard.

Wardle did ok, we went rom yo-yo club to dross and back to the prem. Not many here didn't rate Wardles decision to instate Keegan.

I certainly didn't

 

[Anonymous]

To be honest, between Wardle, Makin, Mackintoss, and Bernstein we don't really know where the truth lies.

However you don't have to be a genius businessman to know that collectively, they had no plan B. They spent big with KK, but seemingly overnight went to asset stripping. Whatever the strategy was, it was amateurish and nearly run the club into the ground. The lying to supporters was even worse. Anyone remember "We don't need to sell our best players to service our debt..." coming out of Mackintoss's mouth a matter of weeks before the sale of SWP...which was contrary to popular belief, came after a phone call between certain people within City's heirarchy and SWP's people in which it was intimated that it was BEST for both parties if he did in fact move.

Anyway, it's history now. I don't doubt that Wardle for his part was a City supporter. But he was clearly not up to the job of running our club, much like the vast majority who had gone before him...

look whatever you say we brought some major names during that period, Anelka Fowler James
McManaman, these were seriously better than anything I had seen since the late eighties. Keegan
unfortunately lost the plot as usual, but I remember that period with a lot of affection, we always seemed one or two players away from cutting the mustard.

Wardle did ok, we went rom yo-yo club to dross and back to the prem. Not many here didn't rate Wardles decision to instate Keegan.

I certainly didn't

I'm not going to get into a long and drawn out argument about who felt what back then. I know that I thought the signings of Fowler and McMinimum were shocking. This proved to be true. Keegan was left in charge for nearly a year too long, and only once the club was literally potless did he leave. The clowns in charge ran the club as badly as many who went before them - but with higher stakes.

 

[m27]

look whatever you say we brought some major names during that period, Anelka Fowler James
McManaman, these were seriously better than anything I had seen since the late eighties. Keegan
unfortunately lost the plot as usual, but I remember that period with a lot of affection, we always seemed one or two players away from cutting the mustard.

Wardle did ok, we went rom yo-yo club to dross and back to the prem. Not many here didn't rate Wardles decision to instate Keegan.

I certainly didn't

I'm not going to get into a long and drawn out argument about who felt what back then. I know that I thought the signings of Fowler and McMinimum were shocking. This proved to be true. Keegan was left in charge for nearly a year too long, and only once the club was literally potless did he leave. The clowns in charge ran the club as badly as many who went before them - but with higher stakes.

Very similar to me that Billy. The promotion season under Keegan was undeniably brilliant the followng year ok (but not as good as some may make out) but I look back with immense frustration on the rest of his tenure. Some people seem to think that you can't help but love Keegan but I can't stand the bloke anymore. He held our club to ransom and spent millions on utter rubbish and then just let the situation fester when it wasn't clicking. He bullied and emotionally blackmailed Bernstein and Wardle into giving him the cash and then wasn't prepared to dig in when it mattered. He tried the same at Newcastle but Ashley had the guts to stand up to him, probably the only thing he's done right at the club since he's been in charge.

Keegan's spending nearly sent this club under and don't forget it.

 

[fbloke]

I'm not going to get into a long and drawn out argument about who felt what back then. I know that I thought the signings of Fowler and McMinimum were shocking. This proved to be true. Keegan was left in charge for nearly a year too long, and only once the club was literally potless did he leave. The clowns in charge ran the club as badly as many who went before them - but with higher stakes.

Very similar to me that Billy. The promotion season under Keegan was undeniably brilliant the followng year ok (but not as good as some may make out) but I look back with immense frustration on the rest of his tenure. Some people seem to think that you can't help but love Keegan but I can't stand the bloke anymore. He held our club to ransom and spent millions on utter rubbish and then just let the situation fester when it wasn't clicking. He bullied and emotionally blackmailed Bernstein and Wardle into giving him the cash and then wasn't prepared to dig in when it mattered. He tried the same at Newcastle but Ashley had the guts to stand up to him, probably the only thing he's done right at the club since he's been in charge.

Keegan's spending nearly sent this club under and don't forget it.

Keegan is suing Newcastle for £8m suggesting that not allowing him to be in control of transfers was constructive dismissal and he points to hsi record in the transfer market as evidence of his abilities there.

I reckon even after paying him £8m Newcastle will be quids in rather than allowing him to buy!

 

[m27]

Very similar to me that Billy. The promotion season under Keegan was undeniably brilliant the followng year ok (but not as good as some may make out) but I look back with immense frustration on the rest of his tenure. Some people seem to think that you can't help but love Keegan but I can't stand the bloke anymore. He held our club to ransom and spent millions on utter rubbish and then just let the situation fester when it wasn't clicking. He bullied and emotionally blackmailed Bernstein and Wardle into giving him the cash and then wasn't prepared to dig in when it mattered. He tried the same at Newcastle but Ashley had the guts to stand up to him, probably the only thing he's done right at the club since he's been in charge.

Keegan's spending nearly sent this club under and don't forget it.

Keegan is suing Newcastle for £8m suggesting that not allowing him to be in control of transfers was constructive dismissal and he points to hsi record in the transfer market as evidence of his abilities there.

I reckon even after paying him £8m Newcastle will be quids in rather than allowing him to buy!

His appointment at Newcastle was nothing short of astonishing. He had publicly declared that he hadn't watched a second of football since he left us so how the hell could he pick up the pieces at Newcastle?? The fact the Geordies lapped it up just confirmed what I had always believed; they are thick beyond belief and almost as sentimental as the Scousers.

The story is that Ashley made it clear to Keegan that the budget was small and Keegan accepted....but then in no time he's asking for permission to approach Thierry Henry!!! Geordies have said that this is all Ashley propoganda but I believe it because it is classic Keegan behaviour. The bloke's strange.