SWFC

One chapter closes and another begins

Just under a year ago something happened that has turned out to be even more pivotal than I had
previously thought. I am talking about Saturday 12th of December 2009, when we played Leicester
away. This was the fixture, which provided the evidence I needed to convince the rest of the board
to relieve a good man, Brian Laws, of his job. It was also a day when I was sat with Milan Mandaric
for the afternoon. Before the game, our conversation was focused on the investment opportunity at
SWFC and how that compared to Leicester. Milan confirmed that he had made an approach
previously but the old board did not seem to want to discuss selling the club to anyone. They just
wanted people to put money into the club and work with them. Milan was trying to raise investment
for Leicester to fill the £6m pounds per annum cash requirement that existed there and was blown
away by the deal that I was describing as being available at SWFC i.e. new equity being invested
would gain control and it was no longer necessary to pay off all the debt and shareholders in full to
take over the club.

Less than a year later and Milan turned out to be the guy that took the opportunity of doing the best
deal in football!!!

Now that everyone has signed legally binding agreements I finally feel comfortable about sharing
certain insights and will also remind many of you about some other things. When that is done with I
will indulge myself (for the first time since many of you ever heard of me) and then I will be downing
tools and just concentrating on being a fan.

Oh and if I did not do it, the full picture would never have been painted, as Howard was (right to do
so but) full of crap with his protestations of talking about the past only once the future was secured
and not before. As with everything I have published this will be me acting as a custodian, telling the
Club’s story objectively and based on facts and actual events (excluding the self-indulgent section
titled “My Story” which will indeed be my story and very much from my perspective). I assure you
that there will be no other source covering this story, so this is as about authoritative as at gets.

So, one last War and Peace sized read and I am done. Then we can all just (hopefully) focus on a
positive future for our club!

Contents
1. Things you need to know about football today
2. Grierson and his “Brethren”
a. Dave “it was not my fault” Allen.
3. Howard Wilkinson & Nick Parker
4. The staff at SWFC
5. Wednesdayites
6. My story
7. Milan Mandaric and the future
1. Things you need to know about football today
There are two type of football clubs. There are the ones where just about everyone involved knows
what the reality of their club is and no one seeks to go beyond the realistic potential of the club.
These clubs tend to have a good relationship between board, staff and fans and relative to their true
potential they are “successful”. This success is founded on the integrity, or honesty, of their situation
which enables everyone to get on with their job/role and to contribute positively to creating the
best outcome. There are also the ones where this is not the case. They are without fail, unless loads
of money is thrown at them, “unsuccessful”.

Corruption has always been part of the fabric of football (as we all saw again this past week in
Zurich) and this culture spiralled out of control when the money went through the roof on the back
of the formation of the Premier league and the associated media deals that have underpinned this
phase of football. We are all familiar with the fact that old school managers used to collect a bag of
cash and/or other sweeteners as part of transfer deals. In the modern era (early nineties onwards)
the control of transfers and the carrying out of deals was moved from the 1st team manager’s office
to the Chairman/CEO’s office.

Now here is how you fiddle on transfers (as described and evidenced to me by the people in football
that I have learned from these past 3 years):

Quite simply you “over pay” for a player. The amount representing the overpayment is divided up by
the football agents, between the dodgy people at both the buying and selling clubs.

Now, it’s very difficult to over pay for “proper” players, as their agents tend to want to protect
proper players from being affected by being dealt with improperly. Their values are also driven by
true market forces. It’s easy to overpay for a crock (player with well known injury records) and it’s
easy to over pay for players with bad attitudes (which everyone in football hears about). The easiest
type of player to over pay for is “a crock with an attitude problem”…

Why is this the case? This is because no one wants them so the value of the player is set freely by
the two clubs and the agents in the middle…

Here is how it looks in practice. Let’s say you have a player with a very bad injury record… ordinarily
you would sign that player (if you were brave or daft enough to) on the basis that you pay little or
nothing up front and then any transfer fee would be paid based on that player playing a certain
amount of games for your club. The player would also take a hit in wages either in the weekly
amount or a shift to being paid more based on appearances instead of guaranteed wages. If a fiddle
is afoot then a player will sign for a significant transfer fee not based on appearances and they will
also benefit from a well-paid long term contract.

Most people in football are well aware of this issue and they are also negatively affected by it. This
effect manifests itself in players that seem to not be trying their best and managers and coaching
staff that seem to be just doing a PR job. Sadly, all too many football people play this game also and
are not victims of it.

Now, go take a look at every crash and burn story in modern football and I promise you it will be
down to fiddling undermining the football operations and the balance sheet of the club…

Why have we not heard about this from the authorities and why have they not cleaned it up?

Too many people in power in football have been tainted by these issues and the structure of football
makes thing next to impossible to change overnight. i.e. the administrators do what the clubs tell
them to do based on how they vote on issues. So if too many clubs are run by crooks and the
administration is filled with dodgy football people then things will take time and they will not get
much profile exposing the negativity – oh and it’s hard to sign major commercial sponsors in an
environment when you are cleaning house…

Moving on to non player commercial deals, this is how you fiddle on commercial deals in a football
club: You agree to take an inferior product or service from a supplier on the basis that you get a
payment for the long term contractual commitment and the increased profit margin that is created
by the use of the poor quality (and therefore cheaper) product or service. This would evidence itself
in the form of a poor quality shirt on a kit deal or poor quality food in terms of catering / hospitality.

Now that I have got that out of the way, let’s focus on SWFC.
2. Grierson and his “Brethren”
Bob Grierson and Dave Richards joined the board at SWFC at the same time. What 99% of fans did
not realise, and had no reason to want to, was that these guys were the latest generation of
acceptable prospective board members groomed by another club that, it would appear, has
controlled SWFC from the day it was founded. This club is based at Tapton Hall, just off Fulwood
Road in Sheffield. I say appears, as it is my understanding that excluding myself, Joe Ashton, Dave
Allen and Howard Wilkinson, the directors of SWFC have all been members of said “club”. The
generation before them was led by Bert McGee and featured the likes of Geoff Hulley and Keith
Addy.

This system of control had been relatively successful for most of our history but now it faced a real
problem. If your only source of investment is from an old boys network that sits on a local economy
that is shrinking, how do you raise the funding needed to invest in a business that operates in a
world where the competitors are attracting new and very wealthy investors? You have to seek
“outside” investment and that would almost certainly result in someone from outside ending up in
control of the club. Not to worry, three men had a plan. Bob Grierson, Dave Richards and Howard
Culley came up with a plan to raise outside investment by listing the club on the London Stock
market. This plan would raise investment in two stages. Firstly from a Venture capitalist firm as well
as from certain people who were given the opportunity to invest ahead of the float and then from
the formal listing.

At this point, the board held less than 5% of the shares in SWFC and shareholders, many of which
had inherited shares from relatives that bought the original shares in the club, were unhappy about
the move. Not least because under the plan, certain “Executive directors” would be granted share
options that would further dilute the original shareholders and also present those individuals with
an opportunity to make money out of the success of the club. There were also complaints about the
situation where only certain people who had a relationship with the board were able to buy in on
the first placing and this was especially contentious when people started to hear that this included
people who not only were not Wednesday fans but also fans of other local teams!!!

These complaints were smothered under a PR offensive based on the need for the club to be able to
spend big to compete at the top of the Premier league. The deal went ahead with the initial placing
priced at 80p per share, with expectations being set that the formal listing would be priced at circa
£4 per share.

Charterhouse was the Venture capitalist firm and they put in circa £17m for an “option” to buy over
40% of the clubs shares. The board and their lucky associates put in just over £1m. Prior to this
point, the control over transfer policy and carrying out of deals resided with the manager. On the
pitch, the club had traded fantastically in terms of squad development and also financial
performance. Sitting here now, typing this up, I clearly remember Dave Richards speaking publicly
about the need for football boards to react to the issues of corruption that had been highlighted by
the events surrounding Brian Clough by taking control over contract negotiations and transfer fee
negotiations and removing those responsibilities from the manager…

What happened next was that SWFC went from being one of the shrewdest exponents of the
transfer market to one of the worst performers. This was the phase where we went from signing
players that replaced good players with same or better (technically, physically and mentally) to
replacing players with new players that were clearly inferior and also had questionable medical
records and well documented attitude issues. This is etched in the memory of all Wednesdayites in
the form of the destruction of title challenges under David Pleat with replacements largely being
made up of players that were low level premiership or more realistically best suited in what is now
the Championship. The standout deals were the following ones:-
 Fee Prior App Ave / SWFC Appearance Ave/Season Fee
Player Info
Paid record Season record SWFC Received
Andy £2.75 1986-1998 =
23 games 1998-2002 = 86 22 £0 Failed medical at West Ham
Hinchcliffe m 294
£2.5 1986-1998 = Contract inc pay bonuses
Wim Jonk 23 games 1998-2001 = 70 23 £0
m 298 while injured
£2.8 1992-1999 = History of being mentally
Gilles DeBilde 23 games 1999-2001 = 59 20 £0
m 181 difficult
Simon 1992-1999 =
Free 18 games 1999-2003 = 53 13 £0 4 yr deal at £15k per week
Donnelly 146
Phil O'Donnell 1990-1999 =
Free 27 games 1999-2003 = 20 5 £0 4 yr deal at £15k per week
(RIP) 214
1993-1999 =
Gerald Sibon £2m 16 games 1999-2002 = 129 36 £0 £20k per week wages
114

These deals represent circa £10m in transfer fees and circa £15m in wages. There can be no doubt
that it was from this phase of management of the club where the debt problem came from….

SWFC PLC - Net debt 1991-2009

Year end £000's

31/05/1991 -923
31/05/1992 -3,138
31/05/1993 -1,899
31/05/1994 -1,870
31/05/1995 -2,630
31/05/1996 -8,389
Charterhouse Deal 31/05/1997 5,650
31/05/1998 -6,461
31/05/1999 -11,788
31/05/2000 -16,271
31/05/2001 -16,348
31/05/2002 -17,027
31/05/2003 -23,697
31/05/2004 -26,992
31/05/2005 -27,048
31/05/2006 -26,575
31/05/2007 -27,796
31/05/2008 -25,941
31/05/2009 -25,659
Note – Bob Grierson and Dave Richards joined the board in Oct 1991.

The PLC plan backfired when the stock market fell out of love with football clubs (excluding Man
UTD) and the original investors never saw the £4 share price. The board, (and their associates)
holding less than 10% of the shares in the club, operated with Charterhouse sitting in the
background wanting out but never made any substantive moves to get a deal done (almost certainly
would have resulted in a change in the boardroom).
The constant disruption of changing managers and the conflict between boardroom and
professionals in relation to how the football side should be run resulted in the club being relegated
from the Premier league in 2000. There were no clauses in player contracts reducing wages as a
result of relegation and Wednesdayites around the world had to watch their Chairman hand the
Premier League trophy over to Man UTD as part of his new role as Chairman of the Premier league
while our club played out its last game in the premiership at Hillsborough.

Dave Richards left, leaving Bob Grierson and Howard Culley running things. Now there was a new
problem. The debt was increasing because those Players on Premier league contracts did not want
to move as they would have had to take major pay cuts (i.e. they would get their true market value)
if they were to move so the club had to pay them until their contracts ran out.

This all meant that the club needed to find an annual cash injection in order to break even, before
player sales. Bob and Howard had a new plan. They approached local businessman, Dave Allen and
asked him for his advice on how to run a football club leaning on his experience as a casino and dog
track owner.

The board still had a problem though. Charterhouse were looking to sell their 40% holding in the
club and at this point they were looking for circa £6m for their shares. There just was not enough
wealth within the board and their associates to lay out £6m.

The board implemented a policy of getting rid of all players that had played in the premier league as
quickly as possible, a policy which resulted in the players that were actually contributing moving on
and the ones that were not contributing just seeing out their contracts. This all resulted in relegation
to League 1.

The board then negotiated a deal to buy Charterhouse’s shares for £1.5m pounds. This is where
Dave Allen was stitched up. Dave had the personal wealth to do the deal on his own but the
proposal was made for Dave, Keith Addy and Geoff Hulley to equally contribute to the deal. This
presented a new opportunity, which was deemed by the board to be a problem. Under PLC rules if
someone or a group of people deemed as acting in concert acquired more than 29.9% of the shares
then they would have to make an offer to all shareholders. This is what Dave could have done and
should have done but he was not given the option. Instead the supporters trust was gifted 10% of
the shares and everything carried on as it was before. Dave Allen became Chairman and started
spending his own money on the team while other board members did not contribute.

This lack of contribution was not to last though and the Co-op bank demanded that the board put up
personal guarantees and submit directors loans in order for it to carry on supporting the club
financially. This was the latest point in time when the board should have accepted reality and
seriously sought outside investment. They did not do so though as the financial position of the club
would have meant that serious investors would have been looking at investing new equity (and
taking control) in return for a write down of the debt. There would have been no return on those old
80p shares and there would have been no profit on the shares acquired from Charterhouse.

Bob and his brethren were happy, they were in control and they had someone on the board willing
to fill any cash shortfall. All was good, right? Err no, the natives were restless and they had every
reason to be.

2a. Dave “it was not my fault” Allen

The natives were the fans and especially the fans working in the club who talked to all of the hard-
core fans who in turn talked to most of the regular followers. What they were restless about was the
disconnect between the PR claims of seeking to return to the premier league while the club sold its
best players to repay the loan notes which the bank would only live with if their debt was paid down
in proportion. There were also strong rumours of corruption linked to major commercial
arrangements, and it was fair to say that morale within the staff was negative to the point that most
had given up.

Now, I had a lot of sympathy for Dave Allen, based on how he was suckered into getting involved at
the club when the old boys played to his ego when I believe that he was initially looking to do
something good for the local community without losing out financially. If he had bought the club and
sold it on things could have been very different much earlier (and I would have been saved all
manner of grief). That sympathy evaporated based on how he reacted to the situation he found
himself in and definitely went based on how thankful and supportive I found him in respect of my
efforts to dig him out of the hole he had left himself and the club in, i.e. not very!

Dave became frustrated when he realised that the other major shareholders and directors were
quite happy to see no change at the club and they were resisting his every effort to influence change
in terms of investment. They were also happy that Dave was taking the public flack as Chairman of
the club.

Unfortunately things became unhealthy as a result of how Dave reacted to the natives asking
questions about the boards’ strategy and also about the conduct of the executive management of
the club. These questions famously came to a head when the board, driven by Dave and the
executive, whom Dave had put in place, pushed to sue the fans for comments made on internet chat
rooms. The unfunny irony being that not one board member accessed the internet at the time, and
their actions were prompted by the people that were in fact the targets of those complaints /
questions. These would print off various examples of postings and say to Dave and the board “look
at what they are saying about YOU” when in fact the really emotive stuff was being directed at the
executive and their associate[s].

The supporters trust also played into the boards hands by choosing to use Ken Bates approach for
Wednesday as a means to prove that the board were intransigent. Unfortunately this backfired and
the board using its influence over the local media branded the supporters group as trouble makers
and Bates as the cockney devil incarnate, which resulted in a major spilt in the fan base and in
recriminations based on a very poor understanding of the true facts and events that have carried on
to this day.

And so it was that our club became the first sporting club on the planet to sue its own fans and it
actively sought to set fan against fan in order to deflect attention from the real issues and the
agenda that was well entrenched!

Despite the disfunctionality in the boardroom, Paul Sturrock hit a lucky streak and the club went
from the bottom 3rd of league 1 and sneaked in to the playoffs. Then SWFC turned into an
unstoppable force culminating in a magical day for the club when promotion was achieved at the
playoff final in Cardiff.

Dave – it was not your fault. You were stitched up and set up. “They” took advantage of you, you
know this, and you know that I know, because you told me. But it was partially your fault, because I
implored you to expose them for what they had done and clean up the club. You did not do this and
you just walked away making reference to a complaint of lack of confidentially (you were right to
complain by the way, and the culprit was someone that many fans think stood up to you and in fact
they never actually did). You have to take responsibility for the fact that the Co-op bank was looking
to your personal guarantee based on your involvement as Chairman of the club in their continued
support of the club. The Co-op also took you at your word when you told them you would be raising
£11m from the sale of the training ground when the local politicians told you consistently there was
no way the deal was going to deliver such value. You have to also take responsibility for the fact that
you drove the decisions to have loan notes repaid while fans were being told we are headed for the
Premier league when in fact we were investing so little on the pitch that we were consistently
amongst the bookies favourites for relegation. You empowered an executive that put in place
commercial agreements and ticketing and pricing policies that accelerated the erosion of the
support of the fan base and cost the club millions in annual revenue. The exec you empowered
spent your and our clubs monies on signing players with terrible injury records for large upfront fees.
But it’s not all your fault; your responsibilities for what happened to our club are secondary to Bob
and his Brethren’s. I have to say also it’s a mystery why you still publicly back the one man who
orchestrated how you were stitched up and ultimately forced you out of the club…

No true Wednesday fan is ever going to forgive you for the destruction and poison that came about
as a result of your tenure and every time you say in public that it was all going so well while you
were in charge, this negativity is re-enforced. By the way every Wednesdayite is happy to hear you
claiming that you will be getting £1.5m back from Milan, but no one is fooled. The bank wrote off
70% of their debt and Wednesdayites are familiar with the concept of deals being done based on
confidentiality clauses, which protect the sellers from embarrassment when they have publicly
painted themselves into a corner.

Getting back to Bob and his brethren – following Dave Allen’s departure Bob was running things
again with a free hand (just as he had been the entire time prior to Dave Allen’s involvement) and
the board finally relented and put in place a process to seek outside investment with the
appointment of leading Football M&A operators Deloittes. Well, err no, the board set a public term-
sheet requiring prospective owners to pay 30p per share for the shareholdings of the major
shareholders (excluding Wednesdayite) and also repay the loan notes in full up front. This meant
that any prospective owner had to repay the bank debt as the bank was “senior” to the loan notes
and the shares in the financial structure of the club. All this meant that any investor would have to
lay out circa £40m before investing a single penny into developing the business and the club. Also
the appointment of Delloittes did not result in the sports finance team in London managing the
transaction; we ended up with a junior guy in the Delloittes Leeds regional office running the
process.

This all meant that that Wednesday missed the boat of very wealthy institutions and individuals
wanting to invest in the bigger clubs in English football.

It also resulted in our club being subject to a prospective £500m takeover lead by a county court
judgement dodger who, perversely, was not denounced by our board and was publicly backed by
Dave Allen. The CCJ dodger was Geoff Sheard and Geoff has an interesting link to our club:

Geoff Sheard and Chris Ronnie teamed up to bid for Blackburn Rovers, (Chris is widely covered in the
media by way of his history at JJB Sports). Chris’s brother Andrew Ronnie was UK managing director
of Diadora at the time when Preston were with Diadora (Geoff was the retail manager at Preston)
and also at a time when Kaven Walker gained board support for the club to switch the kit supplier to
Diadora. Andrew Ronnie set up “Sourcelab” which our board were told had the license for Lotto in
the UK (which had been obtained by Sourcelab based on the promise to Lotto of the contract with
SWFC – Lotto’s agent for the UK is not in fact Sourcelab, but a company called Quest as listed on
Lotto’s website) and there were no better proposals than the Sourcelab (Lotto) proposal. There was
a very high level of dissatisfaction in the fan base relating to the quality of the manufacture of the
shirt when the club was with Diadora and Lotto (Sourcelab).

This latest shambles was a step too far for many fans and all of the staff at the club. It also
compelled me to take proactive action (more on that later).
What happened next is well documented in my prior publications and principally within the
following documents:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/43605031/LS-Response-Redacted

http://www.scribd.com/doc/43599709/SWFC-22112010

http://www.scribd.com/doc/38759914/SWFC-51010

http://www.scribd.com/doc/37501612/NPRMGQnA

I also recommend reading the following articles published by the Yorkshire Post:-

http://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/sheffield-wed/Owls-in-crisis-part-one.6572915.jp
http://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/sheffield-wed/Owls-financial-position-deteriorates-and.6574392.jp
http://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/sheffield-wed/Owls-in-Crisis-Part-three.6575963.jp

3. Howard Wilkinson & Nick Parker

You really have to read the documents linked above and then also remind yourselves of what you
have witnessed this past few months in order to form a full opinion.

I brought both these men into the club and together we formed the plan of getting rid of the old
guard that were entrenched in our club, modernising and professionalising the way the club was run,
and implementing a realistic (not asking investors to pay over the odds) and professionally run
investment process a d finally rebuilding the relationship between the club and its fans and also the
local community. Being the one who brought them into the club I feel partially responsible for their
actions since my departure, but the bottom line is they are grown men and have to take full
responsibility for their own conduct. I suspect that both will be gone in the not too distant future
and in Nick’s case I think that is entirely appropriate, as I do not see how he can hold the trust of
fans following his public statements backing the long standing directors over what has happened in
the last year or so and also his now infamous Iraqi minister for propaganda “we are playing the
taxman” video, notwithstanding his breaking of trust with the fans at recent Q&As as well as the way
he mislead the Wednesdayite executive about the true nature of HMRC and also the American
investors that were supposed to buying the club this past summer.

Nick has played it smart internally by positioning himself as a champion of the staff and protector of
jobs which is bizarre as it his actions that lead directly to HMRC issuing the original winding up
petition which put all staff back to an environment that was the same as the one we walked into in
January 2009. For those of you that consider Nick’s actions acceptable based on self-preservation,
there is no basis for that view. The rules of the PLC are such that all directors have to vote to remove
any director, which means that I could have stayed on and we could have sat the old directors out,
working with the bank to do the deal that had just been done. Make no mistake his action was
motivated by opportunism not self-preservation and he even told us (those of us that attended the
last Q&A) what the opportunity was. I paid a heavy price for Nick to gain what, in the grand scheme
of things, is a very small reward by way of the opportunity he grabbed. What was my relationship
with Parker before getting involved at SWFC? There was none, Nick was recommended to me by a
mutual business acquaintance that I had respected and trusted for many years, someone who had
been a key relationship to me during the development of PlusNet. The person in question is a Blade
(GRRRRRR should have known it was a stitch up ) and to be fair to him he did say that he had not
worked with Nick directly in a professional capacity but knew of him. I could be wrong about the
timescale of his tenure though as Milan seems to like having unpopular CEOs…

With regard to Howard, setting my personal issues aside and also setting aside my strong beliefs that
it is completely unacceptable to be a custodian of our club that is incapable of maintaining a position
of integrity and trust and also asking fans to ignore the fact that he publicly backed the validity of the
bid by the long standing directors while resisting Milan Mandaric’s approach (something which most
fans might put down to a football person ending up out of his area of expertise i.e. corporate and
commercial issues) I believe that Howard has a crucial role to play at the club.

Although it is usually not well publicised every single successful club in English football has a director
of football, this role is important. The priority of the 1st team manager is competitive matches. The
schedule of training and matches does not leave much time for long-term development projects.
The role is usually filled by a football person with strong administrative capabilities, good experience
and respect within the game and the ability to manage the potential conflict between football
people and owners/board members who don’t see things the way football people see them.

It will take at least a couple of years to develop the management structure at the club and start to
influence the long term output of the academy at the club and in that time Howard can play a vital
role helping with short term issues and also long term at board level.

Nick has looked after number one throughout this past year often to the detriment of everyone
around him. Howard, for me, made some very bad calls but only because he gave himself a very
poor brief in terms of what was acceptable in relation to resolving the issues facing our club this past
summer – that brief included not supporting any efforts from the fans to save the club and also
thinking that it was acceptable if not advantageous for the incumbents to remain in control.

Despite what has already been documented and certain views I will share in the self-indulgent
section later I believe it is crucial that Howard stays at the club for at least the mid-term.

4. The staff at SWFC

Most of the staff at the club are actually Wednesdayites and even those that aren’t have a strong
emotional connection to the club by way of the negative effect of the disruption created by the
boardroom this past decade or so. This negativity made the staff pull together and survive through
siege mentality. The vast majority of the staff are also low paid compared to their peers and also
based on the commercial market. Many of the staff have also had to face unhappy fans over the last
decade or so and bear the brunt of people’s frustrations about the mismanagement of the club.

From the front line troops that work in the club shop, through the security, hospitality and
maintenance people through to the people that work on the second floor operating the clubs
administrative and commercial functions right through to the football staff at the training ground, I
got to know these people well. It was these people and the fan base as a whole that I used as my
motivation during my tenure and with everything I have sought to do since resigning from the
Chairmanship. I know that these people all understand the problems of the club have emanated
from the boardroom and that its lack of professionalism, honesty and fundamentally not doing what
is right for the club at all times, has held things back and created huge issues. They will no doubt be
more relieved about an impending change of culture even more so than the financial benefits this
takeover brings. These people deserve the opportunity that is in front of them and I hope they fulfil
their and the club’s potential and enjoy this ride where they have had to endure in the past.
5. Wednesdayites
Alongside the staff, my fellow Wednesdayites are the true heroes in this long sorry and drawn out
process. The way in which Wednesdayites have endured, what is the longest meltdown process with
no let up undergone by any big club in the modern era as well as stuck with the club, is phenomenal.
I was blown away by the shear level of support that I experienced in my efforts to modernise the
club, in creating change in the boardroom and also in working in partnership with the fans to rebuild
our club. The consistently high turnout of home fans during my time signalled that the fans were
doing their bit to support the club. It was completely understandable that this dropped off
significantly when the old guard retook control of the club, with the threat of administration being
the straw that broke the camel’s back, in relation to the fans.

I believe that we need to accept the deal (no I am not talking about the financial and share deal) that
Milan is offering and really grasp the opportunity of working in partnership with Milan as our club
finally embarks on a process focused on progression with the historical impediments removed.
There are no guarantees of success but you certainly can give success a better chance of happening
by everyone working together and sharing the benefits of the highs and bearing together the
difficulties of the lows.

There were 45,000 of us at Cardiff a few years ago. Based on the demand that we experienced when
sales had to be stopped in the run up to the Crystal Palace fixture last season, we could have seen a
similar number at S6 if the seats had been available. You have to bear in mind that this demand is
after a long sustained negative period and is not representative of what demand would be like after
a sustained period of positivity.

6. My story <self-indulgent mode on – sorry!>

In 2004, when I found myself in the position of being able to justify the decision for PlusNet to
become main sponsor at SWFC in 2004 it created the opportunity for me to try and make a
statement about local businesses supporting the club. This was something that I had hoped was
going to start a trend. I hoped that this would happen as the many discussions I had had with
business men and fans in the corporate area of the club identified that the club was not seeing
anything like the true potential income as there was a well established perception in the local
business community that the board were operating a closed shop at the club and that the people
themselves were an old boys network closed shop. This meant that, not only were many businesses
put off culturally, but because of this lack of proper focus on commercial clients, businesses
understood that they would not be able to experience an appropriate 21st century sports hospitality
model if they were to bring their customers, trading partners and staff to Hillsborough. When we
agreed to the sponsorship I made a stipulation to Ian Leech (who is now and was then a member of
the commercial team) that I wanted nothing to do with any of the board members nor the CEO as
they seemed to me to be a set of fossils with no understanding of how a modern consumer facing
business needed to operate never mind how an important community asset need to be managed i.e.
they had no concept of the term “custodian”. I just wanted to put something into the club and then
just be able to turn up as a fan and watch the games.

This plan did not work out as I received a call from Ian Leech, during which he apologetically relayed
that it was necessary to meet with the CEO as part of the sponsorship process. I agreed to meet the
CEO at PlusNet’s offices, which were at the time at the side of the Sheffield Arena. Kaven Walker
arrived and walked into my office and his opening line was “you’ve done well for yourself haven’t
you son, should I be buying shares in your company?” What happened to “hello my name is x it’s
nice to meet you, tell me why you want to get involved with the club”?!

I told Kaven “we had worked hard and have been very lucky. Because we have been successful and
more innovative than our competitors in a market where our competitors are much bigger than us I
would recommend anyone to buy our shares but I would not tell anyone when to sell our shares”.
Not a good start. Things soon got worsened as Kaven’s follow up was “being the main sponsor of a
football club is a very powerful position, and as CEO I am very powerful, we can pretty much do
whatever we want”. I was horrified and responded with “Kaven I am a techie entrepreneur and we
are in the business of creativity and our products are bought based on trust and as such our
reputations are everything and I have no interest in getting involved in any activities that would call
into question the integrity of my personal brand”. After a brief discussion on football the meeting
ended. What I took away from it though, ultimately led to me becoming more involved at the club.
This meeting and one other discussion confirmed my view about where our club was headed. They
probably don’t remember, but I had the briefest of discussions with Dave Allen and Bob Grierson
during which I said that I thought the way forward was for the club to take advantage of the work
already done to put the PLC structure in place and to seek a listing on the stock market. This would
mean selling new shares (equity) cheaply to institutions resulting in said pension and investment
funds each having circa 5% holdings and collectively accounting for circa 50% of the shares in the
club, thereby raising circa £10m, which would fund the club as it sought to establish itself properly in
the championship. Thereafter it would enable the club to be sold to a new owner who would be
looking to take the club into the Premiership. The response I got was “we are ok, we don’t need to
do that, we have everything under control internally”!!!!! What followed this was being asked “how
much I was willing to put into the club”?!?!?!?!

So, my worst fears based on everything I had seen heard and experienced were confirmed. Our club
was underfunded, the directors were pulling cash out of the business at the wrong time when we
needed to get established in the championship and they had no interest in pursuing any path that
would result in them losing control of the boardroom

I concluded that because of the characters in the boardroom and also the nature of the CEO, that
our club would not be progressing any time soon and was more likely to meltdown one more time
resulting in the club going into administration.

This view was reinforced over the next year or so as more of the staff opened up to me and
expressed their concerns about the conduct of the board and also the CEO.

I decided to keep a watching brief and to try and put something in place when the club did indeed
melt down in order to save the club from the potential consequences of administration.

This view was confirmed and was made more profound when Dave Allen departed in November
2007 and more crucially the creation of the poisonous environment by the events that led up to that
departure.

I concluded that if the club went into administration, then based on the agenda within the
boardroom and the fractured relationship with Dave that the club may not come out of
administration. This made me move from being reactive to being proactive.

I identified that the CEO was the one who appeared to have the strongest influence over who got
close to the club and therefore decided to build a relationship with him. I did this by pointing out to
Kaven that in the event of administration the first guy to be fired would be the CEO and alternatively
under an investment scenario, the CEO, if he was a key party of that success, could earn a fortune by
being key to the new owner making a huge profit on the back of taking the club into the Premier
League. This seemed to have an effect and Kaven opened up. He told me about his view that the old
directors just wanted to sit in place forever, that he had had an offer from Dave Allen that he would
be gifted Dave’s shares and able to run the club as he saw fit if he got rid of Wednesdayite and the
other major shareholders and that another offer of being able to go to Chesterfield if he got Dave’s
loan notes repaid. Wow, at least this explained the whole Geoff Sheard debacle!
I asked Kaven if there was a business plan in place and to describe the nature of the investment
process that had been implemented. There was no business plan and the investment process
consisted of Deloittes vetting enquiries and handing thing off to Kaven and Bob.

I told Kaven that investors needed to be proactively sought and sold to, on the basis of a business
plan and ideally having shown some progression against said business plan. I offered my services for
free, to help him achieve this. This led to a meeting with Bob Grierson in September 2008 and the
rest is well documented in the document linked above and again here:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/43605031/LS-Response-Redacted

Before setting up that meeting I had to get permission from my better half Lynn, in order to get
involved at S6. This was because I had been very much the absent father during the PlusNet years,
which was especially difficult for Lynn as the eldest of our three boys is autistic. The deal we had
was; once I was done with PlusNet I would be making up for my previous absence. I also had to
mentally commit to delaying my own process of dealing with ending up morbidly obese namely by
way of delaying my skin operations until after implementing the business plan and associated
investment process. This was a serious issue, as most people in my position end up putting weight
back on as a result of the depression created by having lots of layers of flabby skin, which actually
looks worse than being huge.

I was very cautious about Bob and Kaven and this caution was shared fully by Nick as we engaged in
the business plan investigation and development process. Our scepticism was confirmed by the
behaviour of Kaven and also the lack of depth in the information we were provided by Bobs finance
team. We ultimately concluded that we could pitch to investors knowing the club could perform
better financially (something which was proven by the revenue growth which was created last
season).

My plan at the time was purely focused on clearing out the boardroom, by way of changing the
ownership and hopefully installing Nick and Howard as long term management working alongside
the new owner. I never intended to become chairman and just wanted to be able to support a club
that was set up to try and progress. As crazy as this sounds, and it sure sounded crazy to Nick, I had
not even spoken with Howard at that point but I told him that based on everything I knew about the
club and Howard that he would not say no when he was asked to help by the right people with the
right agenda for our club.

The financial information we were given, showed that the club was break even in cash terms
excluding player sales and other exceptional income (!!!!) and this and the potential for growth at
SWFC was what we took to prospective investors. Strong emphasis was given to the break even
nature of the club as many other clubs in the Championship were losing between £5m- and £10m
per annum and in a time that was post the financial markets melt down this was a crucial selling
point for our club. We were also told that the club’s commercial agreements were both clean and
sound and the club was effectively investor ready (!!!!). Following the removal of the then CEO a
very different picture emerged that threatened the entire process more on that in a bit.

So everything was looking good. I just had the small problem of having painted Howard Wilkinson in
the plan as a key component, but as yet I had not even talked to him!

When I contacted Howard, my first line was “my name is Lee Strafford and I have been working
within SWFC for the last couple of months with a view to implementing a business plan and an
investment process and you have never heard of me” – the context being that for the first time in
the club recent history confidentiality had been maintained – this intrigued Howard so I just said “its
time to save our club Howard can I meet up with you to discuss this?” Howard invited me round to
his house. Nick and I went along to what Nick would describe as a never-ending series of bizarre
meetings (compared to what he had experienced in his business life). Howard wanted to know my
motivations and what our plan was and made the point that all too often in football people did not
have a clear plan and that lead to their downfall. We presented him with the business plan and he
quietly read it and finally remarked, “that’s not garbage from a football perspective and the
financials don’t look out of line either.

He asked what we wanted from him and I told him straight – I wanted him to be chairman and to
control the football side of things with Nick running the admin and governance and there would be a
need to hire a senior commercial person and or the new owner[s] would bring that person in.
Howard wanted to know what I wanted out of the process and I confirmed that I had made enough
money not to have to work again, but not enough to invest in football and that following my gastric
band surgery I was less able to work in a full time environment due to the associated reduced
stamina and strength. Also, exposure to stress was something that directly created discomfort and
pain, which further exacerbated my new weakness. I told him that all I wanted was to spend a few
months implementing the changes and then just enjoy watching our club move forward again. He
said he needed to think about things as he was due to step down as Chairman of the LMA and he
had promised his better half to retire from full time work in 2009 as he turned 65. Howard wanted
to know if we understood how destructive the CEO and the board were and that if they were
removed the club would be immeasurably better off even before anything was improved in terms of
the finances at the club.

In the follow up meeting, Howard confirmed that he was willing to do everything he could to help us
but that he could not be Chairman due to his commitment to his better half and also potential
conflict of interest with the LMA, and also as he would in all probability he would end up knocking
out one or more of the board if he had to work with them directly! He said that I should be Chairman
but before I thought about that I should realise that in his view the squad that had been assembled
mainly by the CEO was not mentally and physically strong enough to avoid relegation and in the
absence of investment and removing the board then the role of the Chairman would be doomed to
failure. I told him I knew what he was talking about having had direct confirmation about who had
been signing players and also the working environment Brain Laws was operating in which is best
described as completely poisonous. I then told him that I was committed to doing whatever
necessary which was legally and morally right in order to remove the current board and the baggage
that was holding the club back and enable it to move forward. I added that given that I had no long
term ambition to be involved in the clubs management and that I needed to get back to my own
personal plan of retirement and protecting my health while tinkering with techie projects, that I
would take that responsibility on for the short term.

Howard then asked me what I would do if things did not work out and I told him that the only way
things would not work out would be if I was screwed by the old guard in which case I would work on
the outside and blow the whistle and influence other Wednesdayites and all the stakeholders
around the club to force the change needed to finish my task.

Nick and I joined the board on December 17th 2008 and Howard became a technical consultant to
the board but did not become a Director.

The day we removed the CEO was a huge day and what followed was both horrifying as well as
uplifting.

It was uplifting because it created hope in the fanbase and also the staff. I was horrified as the
manager shared his view that due to recent transfer policy operated above his head that he only had
8 or 9 players that he felt he could rely on not just in terms of technical ability competing at
championship level but more importantly based on mental and physical ability to contribute across a
whole season. The staff confirmed that all of the major commercial agreements that were in place
were not in the best interests of the club and were responsible for the eroding revenue and fan
confidence in the club. The academy manager confirmed that the lack of strategy around training
ground infrastructure was seriously impeding the ability of the academy to maximise the potential of
football talent in the region. All of them confirmed that although meaningful investment was needed
in the mid to long term that in the short term the priority was being smart and maximising the
existing resources and everyone working to a sensible plan based on a shared vision and culture that
everyone could buy into.

This all meant that the club was not in fact investor ready – Nick and I remarked on the fact that the
club was in a much bigger mess than we suspected and more importantly than what we had been
led to believe by the Bob Grierson, why in the blue hell did they let things get this bad and did
nothing about it?!?!?!?! Well at least we had the fact that club was cash breakeven to rely on (!!!!!!).

Part of the horror was finding all the stories where good people had been totally screwed by the bad
people at the club, I made it my personal mission to get to the bottom of all this damage and meet
everyone I could and put things right in whatever way I could even if that just meant the Chairman
of this great institution listening to them letting them tell their story and sharing their pain and then
officially apologising to them. This included fans, former staff, former players and former coaching
staff. My view was that the Wednesday family had to be brought together and go through a healing
process and that is where the term “Forward Together” came from.

In those early months we were supported in our efforts by most of the long standing directors who
just seemed to be happy that someone was sorting the mess out for them, and we were motivated
by the positivity coming from the staffs reaction and also the reactions of the ever increasing
number of Wednesdayites that recognised the attempt to turn the club round and modernise it and
also bring about change in the boardroom.

This would turn into frustration in the spring / summer of 2009 due to the fact that despite
managing to execute on everything that we planned to do up to and including getting the leading
sports finance brokerage in ICS to take on our clubs investment process, the mood of Grierson
especially seemed to get worse and worse.

Believing that I had done everything possible to put everything in place to sort the club I finally
arranged to have my skin operation scheduled. The procedure was a belt lipectomy (don’t Google if
you are squeamish) and the doctor’s recommendation was full rest for 3 months in the initial phase
of recovery. This was out of the question but I had no idea how rough my recovery period would be
thanks to dear old Bob.

Bob had been supportive in the early part of the year and had turned into what we thought was just
a miserable sod from spring onwards. His real agenda would unfold after that years AGM and after I
had had my surgery. Bob had regularly let Nick down by being destructive in board meetings despite
discussing matters at length with Nick in advance of the board meetings and he had finally
confirmed that part of his agenda revolved around a long standing commitment made to Mick
Wright about returning him to the board as chairman after they had gotten rid of Dave Allen and
Kaven Walker (hello Dave – that’s your friends real position dude).

Ken Cooke had never been supportive of what we were doing and he was joined by Bob by the
summer and this left Geoff Hulley supporting Nick and I as he could see that what we were doing
was for the benefit of the club and also made financial sense. While we were busy doing our best
for the club Bob was busy setting in motion a process, which would enable him to regain the control
of the board irrespective of what damage it did to the club.

Something else that happened was that on the back of the clear traction we were getting on the
2018 World Cup bid process a sustained negative PR process kicked off in Sheffield resulting in my
autistic son seeing his school environment going from being a supportive one, to one where he was
receiving constant abuse as a result of my involvement at the club. This was particularly hard to take
as up to that point many Blades like most Owls had recognised that I was just a Sheffield lad looking
to put something back into his community and I was wished well.

The above and also the certain very bad people realising that I was determined to clean up our club
and remove their influence is what brought about the threats to me personally. A classic example
being when I was approached by someone in the corridor outside of the boardroom after a match
and warned that if I did not stop what I was doing, making a certain loan note holder look bad I was
going to be seen to. I just could not believe that this had happened in such a place!

Someone once described us Wednesdayites as scum cretins and morons but I have to say apart from
the odd showing of insanity and emotion driven lack of thinking I saw no evidence of that on the
terraces – but I saw plenty of that in people close to or associated with the board past and present.

Prior to the 2009 AGM we knew that we were tracking on being a couple of hundred thousand
pounds short of budget and this prompted the disposal of Richard Wood whose agent had made
things straightforward for us by demanding that he be made the highest paid player in the club.

Bob launched his pre-emptive strike at the board meeting before the AGM and while I was still in
lots of pain and taking lots of medication and should have still been at home and in bed. He used the
Nov 5 board meeting to push the blame of what Nick was about discover onto me and Nick, all of
this being designed to shift the support of Geoff Hulley. This was the latest example of Nick being let
down by Bob breaking agreements on what would be said in the board meeting and it prompted me
to tell Nick that something stunk about over reaction to a shortfall of a couple of hundred thousand
pounds against a budget of £15m+ and his financial controller wanting to resign due to stress. I
urged Nick to dig into the numbers and find out what was actually happening. At the next board
meeting Bob made his agenda clear.

At the point where Nick discovered that all the numbers we had been given were bullshit and the
club was not break even before player sales and other exceptional income, I told Nick that this was
Bob’s attempt to regain control of the club and he did not care what that took even if the disruption
screwed the investment process and the relegated the club. I wanted us to tackle Bob directly and
prove that we had been misled and Nick convinced me that the investment process would result in
the problem being removed despite my protestations to the contrary. I trusted Nick’s judgement
against my own better judgement. I have to say that the feeling of being let down and taken
advantage of by people who I was actually helping on the basis I would receive no personal benefit
for said help, was almost indescribable at that point.

That was when I reminded myself that this was the guy that had worked with Dave Richards and put
the club in the position it was left in and who had ensured that the club stayed under the control of
him and his associates irrespective of what that did to the club itself.

In the January Board meeting Nick confirmed that he had discovered that the club did in fact actually
need circa £1.5m of cash to be found each year in order to break even and we hoped that Bob would
cease his offensive while we continued to focus our efforts on keeping the club in the championship
and seeking a positive outcome to the investment process.

This was not to be and Bob stepped up his campaign. Whenever I hear people say that these people
may have made mistakes but had the best interests of the club at heart it just makes me want to
puke as I know that what they did was not about what was in the best interests of the club but was
in fact all about maintaining the status quo i.e. “their status quo”.
The realisation that these people would do anything to retain control of the club was you would
think as bad as things could get, but no my low point was the realisation that when I needed Parker
to do the right thing by me and my family personally he decided to screw me and my family
needlessly. This is followed closely by discovering in early November that Parker and Wilkinson had
been actively trying to smear me and stop me communicating with local journalists and various fan
groups all while they actively supported the process of the long standing directors making a bid for
the club having driven the club to the wall in order to get the price down as low as possible. I could
get my head round the old guard treating me like shite as I never liked them and they were the
enemy what I can’t get my head round is the fact that I stuck to “our” plan and Nick and Howard
diverted from it and their actions made my family pay a heavy price and they also used my club
against me – that is personally unforgivable and the damage that was done is why I can never and
never want to get involved at the club again.

I know that many fans do not understand what was actually going on in the club and as a result of
me being the Chairman when we were relegated many just see me as a failure and I can live with
that. I can do so as I know that if I had not taken action when I did then nothing would have changed
and the club would have been stuck in a groundhog day while the rest of football continued to move
forward. Moreover based on the hundreds of occasions since I resigned as Chairman where I have
met Wednesdayites, and the thousands of messages that I have received also, who have all
confirmed that they understood what I was doing during my tenure and understood and appreciated
what I was doing working on the outside since I resigned. Given all that feedback, I know and greatly
appreciate the fact that the vast majority of Wednesdayites appreciate my input and efforts.
Unfortunately this leads to people wanting me to get involved in the club going forward and I hope
that based on reading this document that getting involved at the club again would be asking too
much of me and my family as much as I would have liked to be able to positively impact our club in
the future.

So in conclusion, I set myself the task of removing the incumbents and modernising the approach of
the club – mission accomplished!!!! But the price my family and me had to pay was too high and the
club ended up in the wrong division (hopefully for a short period of time), oh and the bad guys
almost won because two people did not stick to the plan – thankfully the Co-op bank woke up and
took charge of proceedings and an opportunist grabbed the opportunity!

This is what I take from my experience in the club:

Pride: From the reaction of the staff to our mission to clean up the club, modernise it and remove
the systemic cancer. From the reaction of many fans that recognised what we were trying to do and
helped us in that process however they could. From the association between our club and the
Children’s Hospital which represented everything that was good about our club and the power it had
to be a vehicle for good in the local community, this being in stark contrast to seeing everything that
had been poisonous about our club in the recent past. That pride was best represented in the week
where we secured the double over our younger cousins and also did the press launch of the
partnership with the hospital by way of a club visit to the hospital – bearing in mind that was also
when most progress was being made on the clean-up and modernisation work then yes that would
have to be the highlight of my time!

Passion – the deep love of fans and staff towards our club and how important our institution is to
everyone is something that blew me away. It energised me and the sense of responsibility this
created kept me going through that awful period between Nov 2009 and May 2010.

Humility – I never let the office of chairman get to my head, throughout my time it was always about
what is best for the club and representing the club to my best ability. This was hard to do because
you have pressures from all directions, your energy being drawn on in every case and no-one to
support you. What helped was being reminded of what the club meant to everyone and also seeing
the many stories of how inappropriate behaviour of other custodians had done damage to the club
and its relationship with the fans.

Regret – Despite the good things that were achieved and the ultimate aim that was achieved albeit
after I resigned, the personal toll on my family and me leaves me having to regret getting involved.
My regret also extends to Nick and Howard as given how things turned out they need not have
chosen to support the efforts of the incumbents to not only stay in situ but strengthen their hold
over the club. They could have had a very positive relationship with the staff and fans if they had
acted differently and the pain they caused me in recent months while I just stuck to the pre-agreed
plan would not have manifested itself.

Bitterness – This last point brings me to this most awful of words, strangely I struggle to feel
embittered towards the old guard as they behaved as they had done throughout the time I have
been following the club. My bitterness is reserved for Howard and Nick, had they just been honest
with me they could have saved my family and me immeasurable grief. Them and the small number
of Wednesday fans that wanted to protect their relationship with the board and in so doing despite
knowing what I had done, sacrificed and been put through still decided that shitting on me was ok.

Disappointment – My whole approach was based on taking the responsibility of custodianship

seriously and acting with integrity (warts and all) at all times and trying to inspire everyone around
me to do the same. My disappointment lies in the fact that it has ultimately been proven that the
sacrificing these principles by Nick and Howard in the face of the apparent power of the old board
was folly and as a result the club ended up to face more disruption than was necessary. If everyone
concerned had stuck to an approach based on integrity instead of embracing an approach that
compromised integrity I have no doubt that things would have turned out even more positively.

Satisfaction - The task I set myself was to change the board and modernise the club and re-engage
the club with the fans and the community. I will admit to you now that, based on what Howard said
to me at the beginning about the risks of dealing with the board and also the flawed nature of the
squad that had been assembled as a result of the poor governance at the club, I accepted that
relegation might have to be part of the overall process that resulted in the changes being effected.
Notwithstanding the price that had to be paid, there is satisfaction that the task was achieved. It’s
easy to look back now and wonder what would have happened if I had not taken action as at the
beginning of my involvement everyone that truly cared about the club had either drifted away or
was walking painfully with the club but not trying to effect any change. The fact that so many people
have over the last year or so become active in trying to improve all aspects of our club also gives me
great satisfaction.

Hope – These past 15 years or so it was plain to see that there was nothing to grab onto to give you
hope about the way the club was being run and the ability to confidently and realistically hold the
view that the club would be able to progress in the football pyramid any time soon. In stark contrast
to this what lies in front of us can give us all hope and that is where I am now. Just about all of the
issues that needed to be dealt with at the club in order for it to be able to progress have now been
dealt with and now it’s down to everyone to execute and deliver on that hope. Be that the fans who
need to financially and emotionally support the club, the staff who need to do the hard work or the
new owner that needs to provide the leadership, vision, stability and finance to support that
progression.

So what’s in my immediate future? Hopefully a great family Christmas and then in the new year I will
be undergoing the second and final skin operation following my weight loss and once that recovery
is out of the way I will be looking to get involved in technology projects, community projects and also
mentoring the next generation of techie entrepreneurs that are going to collectively bailing out the
local economy! OH and supporting our club and hopefully enjoying this ride more than the previous
15 years or so! 

7. Milan Mandaric and the future

Speaking of hope…

On December 14th Milan Mandaric will take full control at our club and we will start out on a new
chapter. This chapter could be full of reward but it will also have its challenges and difficulties along
the way. Wednesday set up for success and with momentum is a force to be reckoned with in
football and that is what we can all hopefully look forward to in this next decade or so.

Let’s not all get carried away though and lets not assume that it will all just fall into place. Success
has to be earned. Everyone has a role to play in making our club successful.

I have no doubt Milan will invest in the club to try and drive things but the budget for the playing
side will still be primarily driven by season tickets, commercial income and projected match-day
tickets. This means he needs us every bit as much as he has been saying in the media this past week.
We all have to commit to a 3-5 year journey where we all engage with the club as and how our
financial status enables.

I expect Milan to sell the club on, once it is properly established in the Championship (no this was
not achieved the last time we were promoted) and that is fine as far as I am concerned, so long as
where Milan benefits, then so do we by virtue of our club going from strength to strength and
hopefully being passed into the control of good owners who want to be part of getting the club
established in the Premier League.

To Milan, I would say that based on my dealings with you past and recent and with all due respect to
your experience within football, I know that you are underestimating our club. This is
understandable as this is by far the biggest club you have been involved in but I have no concerns
about you getting your arms round the positives of a bigger club, my concerns lay with the fact that
it is the biggest club that has had the most extended length of time that a club has gone through
which has been poisonous and painful. This presents a bigger challenge than you have faced before
and therefore I feel that you are underestimating the task not of winning the support of the fans in
the short term (which has pretty much already been achieved) but more importantly keeping the
support of the fans in the mid to long term. My advice would be that whether or not you plan to
throw lots of money at the team that Wednesdayites respond best to honesty (warts and all) and
will stick with you so long as you are straight with them. The have become attuned to dishonesty
and have proven their ability not only to not support it but to actively and effectively work against
any dishonesty.

Many Wednesdayites, while being euphoric about you coming in as the saviour and taking our club
forward, will be feeling a little nervous about the negatives that you have left behind at other clubs
and will be hoping to not see signs of these negatives being replicated. You can take the opportunity
to cement your relationship with the fans by forming a strong formal working relationship with what
could be a new and reborn and revitalised fan group facilitating a positive relationship with every
member of the fan base, and you can give the fans base as a whole comfort about your
custodianship of our club by providing comfort about how you will manage the governance of the
club going forward and how the assets of the club will be handled and protected.

Finally I wish you well – this could well be the most emotionally and financially rewarding
relationship you have had yet with any club and that sure would make for a great swansong.
To my fellow Wednesdayites I would say – dare to dream but don’t forget the lessons of the recent
past and don’t expect anyone else to make it all happen for us!!!

Up the Owls!!!!

Regards

Lee