Where did it all go wrong.....
Posted: 29 Dec 2014, 05:56
My apologies for the length of this post, but like quite a few that used to post more regularly on here, I haven't done so for a while and so I have more to say than I usually would!
Like a lot of long suffering fans that post on here it appears, I too have found my enthusiasm for TUFC severely tested over the developments of the last couple of years. As 2014 draws to a close and after more than 7 years of their ownership the "new" consortium that took over the club way back in 2007 does seem to be falling apart at the seams. It has made me question, where did it all go so badly wrong?
There are some that may well consider our current position about right for a club with let's face it a hardcore support of just 2000 or so, although of course in reality there are far more of us when you take into account all the exiles that make our away support, in terms of numbers relative to our home support, so commendable even at this low point in our history. Maybe, we are now at a level that befits a small seaside town in a far flung outpost of the country, but the speed and rapid descent is understandably hard to take for all supporters when you consider the relative success that we enjoyed under the first five years of the new owners.
It is hard to take, when not so long ago we were regularly beating the big city teams in league and cup competitions, taking the scalps of the likes of Portsmouth, Plymouth, Bristol (Rovers), Blackpool, Bradford, Swindon and Rotherham to name just a few. With the greatest respect to the clubs involved to now find ourselves being humbled by the likes of Alfreton, Braintree and Telford and "celebrating" a "decent point" at the likes of Dover and Welling is quite hard to take.
It has made me wonder where and when it all went wrong and despite the relative success we enjoyed in those first few years under the new owners, I have come to the conclusion that actually several mistakes were made before they had hardly even got their feet under the table! Firstly, from the outset, there were far too many people involved - starting out with a board of 9 or 10 was far too many to begin with - it must have made the decision making process difficult and the Board was just too large and unwieldy. With the greatest respect to all those individuals, all successful people in their own right, you have to wonder what apart from a few quid some have really contributed to the cause. Personally, I think it would have been far better to have started with just a few "hands on" Directors who could really make a difference while supporting the Bristows .... rather than just trying to trouser every wealthy fan in the Bay for the odd £50k!
Secondly, I also believe through conversations that I have had, that they paid Mike Bateson too much for the club in the first place. In a game of poker, the well meaning group of fans, lost out to the hard nosed businessman Bateson. Of course, it also meant, straight from the off, that they had less than they originally intended for the playing budget and whilst it may have not have had too much of an immediate impact I am sure it probably did a little further down the road.
Thirdly, they then rushed too quickly to reappoint Colin Lee. Whilst he would undoubtedly have made a good Director of Football in my opinion, to give him the Chief Executive role was in hindsight I believe a mistake. I would not have had a problem with Lee in that role if he was the owner of the club and using his own money .... as I suspect he would have made a far better job of it, he would certainly have spent a lot less!
It would have been far better, to have appointed someone with previous experience in the role, someone who understood football but with experience in accountancy and making sure that the Bristows (in the main) money was being spent wisely. The Board must be given credit for backing Lee in appointing Paul Buckle (a good appointment as it turned out) but they surely should have paid more attention to the commercial side. Appointing a lovely guy like Daryl Batten may have been a popular choice but Daryl's expertise has always been in hospitality ( and still is to this day!) and at a time when they should have been "cashing in" on the new found optimism surrounding the club they failed to take advantage of the situation.
Quite simply, under Lee, we were losing money hand over fist and it appeared that no one knew what was going on! I will always remember a fans forum meeting where the then Chairman Simon Baker suggested in January that we were looking at a break even or small loss position for that year ... six months or so later we posted a loss of more than £600k if memory serves me right and Lee was finally relieved of his duties when the Board finally realised that he was spending money like there was no tomorrow!
I had always expected, even assumed, with all the collective experience that the Board had in their numbers that with all the solicitors, accountants and successful businessmen in their ranks that the club was in "safe" hands ... alas, when you consider the size of the record making losses we have made over the intervening years, I suspect it was more a case of them making sure that their own personal investment didn't grow to an unacceptable level, but neglected to put a brake on things when it became clear that the club was becoming ever more reliant on the benevolence of the Bristows' to keep the club afloat.
Quite clearly we were spending far too much money in those early years and yet no one seemed to do anything about it. With all the success (relative) that we were enjoying on the field, as a mere fan, I didn't care too much about the record breaking losses but even I did find myself questioning how well the club was being run when we were enjoying the benefits year upon year of play off monies, FA Trophy final, successful FA Cup runs, transfer sale proceeds, Wembley and old Trafford appearances and of course promotion via a play off final and all of this and we were still posting huge losses! All of the above should have been unbudgeted ... so goodness only knows how far we would have come in over budget and what sort of losses we might have posted if we hadn't enjoyed such success!
For all his faults and for all the mediocrity on show, bar the "Rosenior years" of course, the one thing with Mike Bateson was that he always ran a tight ship and the club was always in safe hands under him even during some of the most trying periods in our history. Sadly, as much as I don't want to admit it,but given our current predicament I have a lot less faith in the current Board, as we have become far too reliant on the generosity of one individual to sustain the club and she (and her family) have already given plenty enough. As Thea herself has said she is not a " bottomless pit" and if (as seems likely) she hasn't already said enough is enough, she will do one day soon and then what happens? I guess it all depends on whether Thea is prepared to write off the huge loans that have accumulated over the years.
The other thing with Bateson was that actually as he proved time and again, when he genuinely thought our League status might be seriously in doubt he would always come up trumps with the appointment of the likes of Warnock, Lee and Atkins even if only on a short term basis, proving sufficient to ensure we stayed up. He also showed ambition on occasion too with the £70k we gambled on a Eiffion Williams and the £75k we threw away on Leon Constantine. Unfortunately, I don't think the current Board have been able to act quite so decisively and certainly not as effectively, as our relegation proved, when it came to our time of need and lessons we should have learnt when we nearly went down in the 12-13 season were not heeded the following year and we paid the ultimate price.
On the pitch, if there has to have been a pivotal moment when it all started to unravel then for me it would be, as others have suggested, that FACup Round 1 defeat to Harrogate under Martin Ling. Up to that point the Board had grown accustomed to banking the prize money, gate money, TV appearance (Yeovil, Coventry) money that decent runs in the Cup had brought under Buckle. That all changed when we slumped at the first hurdle under Ling. I can always remember a rather forlorn sounding Ling giving an interview to BBC Radio Devon around that time saying something along the lines of "relying on income from an FA Cup run was no way to run a football club". Of course, he was being quite obtuse and it wasn't clear to me at least at the time as to whether he was actually referring to his own club or just generalising ... it soon became clear it was indeed TUFC he was on about!
You have to feel sorry for Ling, given that just a few short months earlier, he had sold off the "Crown Jewels" through the transfers of O'Kane, Olejnik and Ellis - sales that (over time admittedly) brought in £600k to the football club and everyone or so it seemed at the time anyway, wrongly as it turned out, assumed that the club was flush with money ... the cost of building Bristows bench put paid to that. Being told that he had no money to spend in the January, transfer window, when he had just banked the club £600k in the summer, would have bene enough to drive anyone to contemplate resorting to drink you might think, and many speculated at the time that it did for Ling, but in reality it simply drove him to despair and as we now know, within a couple of months it had all become too much for him.
More mistakes by the Board, such as giving Shaun Taylor too much time, nearly cost us relegation two years ago, but ultimately we stayed up, so job done. I didn't have a problem with the appointment of Alan Knill at the time (although I felt there were better candidates around) as I thought that the reappointment of Martin Ling represented too much of a risk given his health issues and the stresses involved in running a club like ours. Whether Knill was the right appointment or whether Hargreaves was as his ultimate replacement is all very subjective but what is clear is that they have both had to work under very difficult circumstances as the purse strings have been pulled ever tighter.
Rather like the Greek economy, indeed the global economy, we the fans just like the citizens of Greece, now appear to be having to pay the price for all those years of over spending by those in control of the purse strings. At least the Greeks can vent their anger in the direction of their politicians and the bankers though, whereas who of us with TUFC in our heart can really ever point the finger at the benevolent Thea Bristow and her family. She is clearly not the best Chairperson or indeed spokesperson you would wish for your football club, she would admit as much herself I am sure, but she has given so much over the years and for a few brief years in our history she really did make a difference and helped bring us some good times and happy memories .... sadly though you get the feeling those times are probably behind us, for the foreseeable future at least, and you cannot help but wonder if the custodians of our football club could and should have made so much more of the fantastic (once in a lifetime? ) opportunity of having a hugely supportive lottery winner amongst our fan base. Personally, I can't help but feel that that opportunity, given where we are now, seems like it may have been wasted.
Of course, on a positive note, the real legacy of the "Bristow years" may well prove to be the redevelopment of the ground and of course Bristows' Bench. I should also add the development of Seale Hayne training ground but at the moment that seems to have had more of a negative impact than a positive one and whether it will ever be truly " finished" or whether it will revert back to little more than a farmers field in years to come is I suppose anyone's guess!
For all the improvements at Plainmoor (yes that's right Plainmoor for that is what it will always be to me and the rest of us) though, is there any amongst us who wouldn't trade it in for a three sided ground with a squad good enough to compete with the " big boys" in League 2, or even dare I say it League 1, which we came so close to doing two seasons in a row a short while back? Funnily enough, I really enjoyed that season where everyone squeezed into either the Popside or the Family Stand - the atmosphere was the best it had been for years in my opinion and there was a real sense of "togetherness" which feels a little lacking on match days now I feel.
One final gripe (I promise!) and something that I believe has really stunted our progress on the pitch given the importance put on it by the Board when they first took over the club and that is ..... why is it after SEVEN long years we stil seem totally unable to produce our own players from within the Youth set up? Whilst it was the right decision, in my opinion, to release young Niall Thompson and Danny Sullivan in the last couple of weeks, it is depressing that yet again we have failed to be able to get young players to make the step up. Following in the footsteps of the likes of Saul Halpin, Ray Spear, Kyrtis MacKenzie it has become an all too familiar pattern of failure to make the step up and does anyone really hold out any more hope for the likes of Hutchings, Purcell and Chaney? Of course young Ives may make the grade, but will it even be with us ? Not only that but from what I have seen of late, he still has an awful lot to learn anyway.
To their credit the Youth set up have at least seen some reward for the efforts with the sale (£40k) of young keeper Neal Osborne to Southampton and they were unlucky not to cash in on the £50k agreed with Aston Villa for young Prynn but in terms of producing players for the first team we have Ashley Yeoman as the only flag bearer and his future (yet again!) must be in some doubt beyond the summer.
Why is it that Exeter (and to a lesser extent these days - Plymouth) can continually produce young players (mostly local in the main too) that are able to easily make the transition into their first team and then inevitably get sold for a small fortune down the line. The likes of Grimes (rumoured to be on his way to the Premiership for a seven figure fee), Pym, Sercombe, Nicholls, Bennett and Moore-Taylor to name just a few, all came through their Academy system as far as I am aware and are all now featuring regularly in their first team these days and all making an impact too. They are just a few more in a long procession of players that their youth set up has produced over the years, including the period when they were in the Conference with us, which includes the likes of Dean Moxey and Daniel Seaborne both of whom made it to the Premiership.
I do wonder how good a job is being done and how close an eye the Board keeps on the youth set up and what, if any, performance targets are being set. Are they quite simply just left to get on with things in the hope that eventually they might just produce something or are they closely monitored and set clear targets? The honest answer is I don't know, but what I do know is that so far they have failed to secure one single player, on a pro contract, that has really got anywhere near to being an established first team member... in seven years of trying. It may seem harsh to some, but those are the FACTS and in a results based business, a cutthroat one at that, some might say that that fact alone might be enough to consider a change is necessary.
Of course, the stark reality is that within the next couple of years, when the central funding for the Academy has all gone, we may well be faced with the same difficult decision that Mike Bateson had to make and it would be no great surprise if the whole thing was shut down again It would be a great shame, of course, but rather like Bateson did all those years ago you have to wonder whether all that investment is truly worthwhile and, as was the case back then, if you aren't either developing kids for the first team and/or receiving transfer money back from their sale on .... then really, what is the point of it all?
If you are still reading this, then fair play to you! I have gone on far too long, but as is always the way with forums like this it is a great way to "get things off your chest" .... even though you know, in your heart of hearts that no one is really listening .....
Like a lot of long suffering fans that post on here it appears, I too have found my enthusiasm for TUFC severely tested over the developments of the last couple of years. As 2014 draws to a close and after more than 7 years of their ownership the "new" consortium that took over the club way back in 2007 does seem to be falling apart at the seams. It has made me question, where did it all go so badly wrong?
There are some that may well consider our current position about right for a club with let's face it a hardcore support of just 2000 or so, although of course in reality there are far more of us when you take into account all the exiles that make our away support, in terms of numbers relative to our home support, so commendable even at this low point in our history. Maybe, we are now at a level that befits a small seaside town in a far flung outpost of the country, but the speed and rapid descent is understandably hard to take for all supporters when you consider the relative success that we enjoyed under the first five years of the new owners.
It is hard to take, when not so long ago we were regularly beating the big city teams in league and cup competitions, taking the scalps of the likes of Portsmouth, Plymouth, Bristol (Rovers), Blackpool, Bradford, Swindon and Rotherham to name just a few. With the greatest respect to the clubs involved to now find ourselves being humbled by the likes of Alfreton, Braintree and Telford and "celebrating" a "decent point" at the likes of Dover and Welling is quite hard to take.
It has made me wonder where and when it all went wrong and despite the relative success we enjoyed in those first few years under the new owners, I have come to the conclusion that actually several mistakes were made before they had hardly even got their feet under the table! Firstly, from the outset, there were far too many people involved - starting out with a board of 9 or 10 was far too many to begin with - it must have made the decision making process difficult and the Board was just too large and unwieldy. With the greatest respect to all those individuals, all successful people in their own right, you have to wonder what apart from a few quid some have really contributed to the cause. Personally, I think it would have been far better to have started with just a few "hands on" Directors who could really make a difference while supporting the Bristows .... rather than just trying to trouser every wealthy fan in the Bay for the odd £50k!
Secondly, I also believe through conversations that I have had, that they paid Mike Bateson too much for the club in the first place. In a game of poker, the well meaning group of fans, lost out to the hard nosed businessman Bateson. Of course, it also meant, straight from the off, that they had less than they originally intended for the playing budget and whilst it may have not have had too much of an immediate impact I am sure it probably did a little further down the road.
Thirdly, they then rushed too quickly to reappoint Colin Lee. Whilst he would undoubtedly have made a good Director of Football in my opinion, to give him the Chief Executive role was in hindsight I believe a mistake. I would not have had a problem with Lee in that role if he was the owner of the club and using his own money .... as I suspect he would have made a far better job of it, he would certainly have spent a lot less!
It would have been far better, to have appointed someone with previous experience in the role, someone who understood football but with experience in accountancy and making sure that the Bristows (in the main) money was being spent wisely. The Board must be given credit for backing Lee in appointing Paul Buckle (a good appointment as it turned out) but they surely should have paid more attention to the commercial side. Appointing a lovely guy like Daryl Batten may have been a popular choice but Daryl's expertise has always been in hospitality ( and still is to this day!) and at a time when they should have been "cashing in" on the new found optimism surrounding the club they failed to take advantage of the situation.
Quite simply, under Lee, we were losing money hand over fist and it appeared that no one knew what was going on! I will always remember a fans forum meeting where the then Chairman Simon Baker suggested in January that we were looking at a break even or small loss position for that year ... six months or so later we posted a loss of more than £600k if memory serves me right and Lee was finally relieved of his duties when the Board finally realised that he was spending money like there was no tomorrow!
I had always expected, even assumed, with all the collective experience that the Board had in their numbers that with all the solicitors, accountants and successful businessmen in their ranks that the club was in "safe" hands ... alas, when you consider the size of the record making losses we have made over the intervening years, I suspect it was more a case of them making sure that their own personal investment didn't grow to an unacceptable level, but neglected to put a brake on things when it became clear that the club was becoming ever more reliant on the benevolence of the Bristows' to keep the club afloat.
Quite clearly we were spending far too much money in those early years and yet no one seemed to do anything about it. With all the success (relative) that we were enjoying on the field, as a mere fan, I didn't care too much about the record breaking losses but even I did find myself questioning how well the club was being run when we were enjoying the benefits year upon year of play off monies, FA Trophy final, successful FA Cup runs, transfer sale proceeds, Wembley and old Trafford appearances and of course promotion via a play off final and all of this and we were still posting huge losses! All of the above should have been unbudgeted ... so goodness only knows how far we would have come in over budget and what sort of losses we might have posted if we hadn't enjoyed such success!
For all his faults and for all the mediocrity on show, bar the "Rosenior years" of course, the one thing with Mike Bateson was that he always ran a tight ship and the club was always in safe hands under him even during some of the most trying periods in our history. Sadly, as much as I don't want to admit it,but given our current predicament I have a lot less faith in the current Board, as we have become far too reliant on the generosity of one individual to sustain the club and she (and her family) have already given plenty enough. As Thea herself has said she is not a " bottomless pit" and if (as seems likely) she hasn't already said enough is enough, she will do one day soon and then what happens? I guess it all depends on whether Thea is prepared to write off the huge loans that have accumulated over the years.
The other thing with Bateson was that actually as he proved time and again, when he genuinely thought our League status might be seriously in doubt he would always come up trumps with the appointment of the likes of Warnock, Lee and Atkins even if only on a short term basis, proving sufficient to ensure we stayed up. He also showed ambition on occasion too with the £70k we gambled on a Eiffion Williams and the £75k we threw away on Leon Constantine. Unfortunately, I don't think the current Board have been able to act quite so decisively and certainly not as effectively, as our relegation proved, when it came to our time of need and lessons we should have learnt when we nearly went down in the 12-13 season were not heeded the following year and we paid the ultimate price.
On the pitch, if there has to have been a pivotal moment when it all started to unravel then for me it would be, as others have suggested, that FACup Round 1 defeat to Harrogate under Martin Ling. Up to that point the Board had grown accustomed to banking the prize money, gate money, TV appearance (Yeovil, Coventry) money that decent runs in the Cup had brought under Buckle. That all changed when we slumped at the first hurdle under Ling. I can always remember a rather forlorn sounding Ling giving an interview to BBC Radio Devon around that time saying something along the lines of "relying on income from an FA Cup run was no way to run a football club". Of course, he was being quite obtuse and it wasn't clear to me at least at the time as to whether he was actually referring to his own club or just generalising ... it soon became clear it was indeed TUFC he was on about!
You have to feel sorry for Ling, given that just a few short months earlier, he had sold off the "Crown Jewels" through the transfers of O'Kane, Olejnik and Ellis - sales that (over time admittedly) brought in £600k to the football club and everyone or so it seemed at the time anyway, wrongly as it turned out, assumed that the club was flush with money ... the cost of building Bristows bench put paid to that. Being told that he had no money to spend in the January, transfer window, when he had just banked the club £600k in the summer, would have bene enough to drive anyone to contemplate resorting to drink you might think, and many speculated at the time that it did for Ling, but in reality it simply drove him to despair and as we now know, within a couple of months it had all become too much for him.
More mistakes by the Board, such as giving Shaun Taylor too much time, nearly cost us relegation two years ago, but ultimately we stayed up, so job done. I didn't have a problem with the appointment of Alan Knill at the time (although I felt there were better candidates around) as I thought that the reappointment of Martin Ling represented too much of a risk given his health issues and the stresses involved in running a club like ours. Whether Knill was the right appointment or whether Hargreaves was as his ultimate replacement is all very subjective but what is clear is that they have both had to work under very difficult circumstances as the purse strings have been pulled ever tighter.
Rather like the Greek economy, indeed the global economy, we the fans just like the citizens of Greece, now appear to be having to pay the price for all those years of over spending by those in control of the purse strings. At least the Greeks can vent their anger in the direction of their politicians and the bankers though, whereas who of us with TUFC in our heart can really ever point the finger at the benevolent Thea Bristow and her family. She is clearly not the best Chairperson or indeed spokesperson you would wish for your football club, she would admit as much herself I am sure, but she has given so much over the years and for a few brief years in our history she really did make a difference and helped bring us some good times and happy memories .... sadly though you get the feeling those times are probably behind us, for the foreseeable future at least, and you cannot help but wonder if the custodians of our football club could and should have made so much more of the fantastic (once in a lifetime? ) opportunity of having a hugely supportive lottery winner amongst our fan base. Personally, I can't help but feel that that opportunity, given where we are now, seems like it may have been wasted.
Of course, on a positive note, the real legacy of the "Bristow years" may well prove to be the redevelopment of the ground and of course Bristows' Bench. I should also add the development of Seale Hayne training ground but at the moment that seems to have had more of a negative impact than a positive one and whether it will ever be truly " finished" or whether it will revert back to little more than a farmers field in years to come is I suppose anyone's guess!
For all the improvements at Plainmoor (yes that's right Plainmoor for that is what it will always be to me and the rest of us) though, is there any amongst us who wouldn't trade it in for a three sided ground with a squad good enough to compete with the " big boys" in League 2, or even dare I say it League 1, which we came so close to doing two seasons in a row a short while back? Funnily enough, I really enjoyed that season where everyone squeezed into either the Popside or the Family Stand - the atmosphere was the best it had been for years in my opinion and there was a real sense of "togetherness" which feels a little lacking on match days now I feel.
One final gripe (I promise!) and something that I believe has really stunted our progress on the pitch given the importance put on it by the Board when they first took over the club and that is ..... why is it after SEVEN long years we stil seem totally unable to produce our own players from within the Youth set up? Whilst it was the right decision, in my opinion, to release young Niall Thompson and Danny Sullivan in the last couple of weeks, it is depressing that yet again we have failed to be able to get young players to make the step up. Following in the footsteps of the likes of Saul Halpin, Ray Spear, Kyrtis MacKenzie it has become an all too familiar pattern of failure to make the step up and does anyone really hold out any more hope for the likes of Hutchings, Purcell and Chaney? Of course young Ives may make the grade, but will it even be with us ? Not only that but from what I have seen of late, he still has an awful lot to learn anyway.
To their credit the Youth set up have at least seen some reward for the efforts with the sale (£40k) of young keeper Neal Osborne to Southampton and they were unlucky not to cash in on the £50k agreed with Aston Villa for young Prynn but in terms of producing players for the first team we have Ashley Yeoman as the only flag bearer and his future (yet again!) must be in some doubt beyond the summer.
Why is it that Exeter (and to a lesser extent these days - Plymouth) can continually produce young players (mostly local in the main too) that are able to easily make the transition into their first team and then inevitably get sold for a small fortune down the line. The likes of Grimes (rumoured to be on his way to the Premiership for a seven figure fee), Pym, Sercombe, Nicholls, Bennett and Moore-Taylor to name just a few, all came through their Academy system as far as I am aware and are all now featuring regularly in their first team these days and all making an impact too. They are just a few more in a long procession of players that their youth set up has produced over the years, including the period when they were in the Conference with us, which includes the likes of Dean Moxey and Daniel Seaborne both of whom made it to the Premiership.
I do wonder how good a job is being done and how close an eye the Board keeps on the youth set up and what, if any, performance targets are being set. Are they quite simply just left to get on with things in the hope that eventually they might just produce something or are they closely monitored and set clear targets? The honest answer is I don't know, but what I do know is that so far they have failed to secure one single player, on a pro contract, that has really got anywhere near to being an established first team member... in seven years of trying. It may seem harsh to some, but those are the FACTS and in a results based business, a cutthroat one at that, some might say that that fact alone might be enough to consider a change is necessary.
Of course, the stark reality is that within the next couple of years, when the central funding for the Academy has all gone, we may well be faced with the same difficult decision that Mike Bateson had to make and it would be no great surprise if the whole thing was shut down again It would be a great shame, of course, but rather like Bateson did all those years ago you have to wonder whether all that investment is truly worthwhile and, as was the case back then, if you aren't either developing kids for the first team and/or receiving transfer money back from their sale on .... then really, what is the point of it all?
If you are still reading this, then fair play to you! I have gone on far too long, but as is always the way with forums like this it is a great way to "get things off your chest" .... even though you know, in your heart of hearts that no one is really listening .....