Gary Andrews

There are many reasons for a man to disappear, or at least go very quiet. Reggie Perrin had his reasons, as did Lord Lucan. Brian Wilson went a bit mad, while everything gone downhill for Mike Ashley after he decided to do away with both the reclusive and the multi-millionaire bits of his description when he brought Newcastle United.

I’ve not purchased the Toon Army. Neither have I taken control of Exeter City. But it’s fair to say that football has played a reasonable part in the slight silence on here over the last couple of weeks.

This isn’t to say that I’ve got obsessed to the point of installing 15 TVs in my house obsessively detailing how Scunthorpe United profit from their use of long throw-ins. In fact, it may come as a surprise if I say that I’m usually not too bothered if other events clash with any given game. Football can be put to one side.

But not now, not at this current point in time. It’s the business end of the season, you see, and there are so many twists and turns and then double-twists and then turns that aren’t so much turns as slight bends in the road that, nonetheless, still have an impact on the league.

In short, football is currently just too exciting. The Premier League is actually, for once, reasonably interesting. The Championship still has plenty of surprises. Ligue 1 and the Bundesliga make me wish I lived on the continent. Burton may just bottle it. And, of course, Exeter City can still gain their second successive promotion in as many years if they beat Rotherham away next week.

If you’re one of those who enjoy reading my ill-thought out analysis on the state of the media than you may want to blame Exeter that it’ll take a week longer to get back to normal service. You see, all of this could have been avoided today if we’d just beaten bloody Morecambe at home, rather than freeze for the first 45 minutes and only manage a 2-2 draw.

Had Exeter won, there would have no doubt been eulogies on here before I wound down the football excitement and started posting stuff that actually interests people. Instead, I’m still wound tighter than a watchspring ahead of next week’s trip from St Pancras to Up North (it’s all up north from Exeter, really). And then, if we balls it up at the Don Valley Athletic Stadium, then we’ve got the playoffs to come. Christ on a bike and all that.

The best you can hope for in that case, is that Exeter end up playing Dagenham, which is an easy journey for me, and means I can still get home long before the last tube and still have time for fish and chips before Match of the Day. Marvellous.

You probably don’t really need to know any of this. You don’t need to know that I have at least a dozen posts in my draft folder that probably won’t get written until the end of the season for League Two clubs.

Unless you’re planning on emailing me with important stuff, you don’t need to know that I’m mostly replying to people saying: “Sounds great, but I’ll have to wait until after the football.” And you also don’t really need to know that I should really apologise to the lovely people at BT MyPlace who sent me a load of stuff that I took a glance and liked a lot at before firing off an email saying: “Yes, this looks ace, I’ll almost definitely write something about it,” before getting distracted on an article on Boca Juniors and River Plate, or something similar.

And now I feel I should apologise again because I’m writing this long, rather pointless apology rather than writing about their service, which I quite like, and linking it into wider social media trends and no doubt throwing in an arbitrary quote from, say, Mark Twain, just because I can.

That’s the problem with us bloggers. We’re so damn unreliable.

So, yes, apologies to people waiting for anything that isn’t football on here. I’ll get back to writing about exiting new trends in PR and social media. I would add journalism to that list as well, but it’s got enough problems as it is without needing the added pressure of exciting new trends.

Anyway, this is a rather lengthy, rambling way of saying an awful lot when I don’t have anything much to say at all, other than being able to discuss the not-so-finer points of Exeter’s 2-2 draw with Morecambe, and you probably don’t want to read about that here.

Normal service will be resumed soon. In the meantime I’m off to read about the Eredivise.

written by Gary Andrews \\ tags: Exeter City, football, Morecambe

The first twofootedtackle podcast went live today, and a lot of the week has been spent preparing for it. Now that we’ve got the first one out of the way, it should get easier (I’m already working, mentally, two weeks in advance on them).

On this week’s pod, my partner in crime Chris Nee and I, along with my old friend, colleague and sports journalist John Stanton, discuss… *deep breath*

The Carlos Tevez saga, Champions League, MLS, the Premier League title race, England internationals, AFC Wimbledon, Tooting and Mitcham, the fall of Charlton Athletic, and our favourite football blog posts.

Phew.

That’s quite a bunch.

In all honesty, we could have probably gone on for another hour, but I think we’ve got it just about right. John was an excellent first guest and hopefully he’ll be back on the pod at some point. I cannot wait for next week’s recording.

And I’ve still found time to squeeze out a Soccerlens piece on Scarborough Athletic. They were formed from the ashes of Scarborough FC and they’ve just won their first promotion. Go Scarborough.

I also have stuff I want to write on here. This has been somewhat disrupted by only getting a bit over three hours sleep last night due to an accident with my contact lens and my eyeball that required a trip to A&E. Fun times.

written by Gary Andrews \\ tags: AFC Wimbledon, Carlos Tevez, Charlton Athletic, football, football podcast, Manchester United, MLS, podcasting, podcasts, Premier League, Scarborough Athletic, twofootedtackle

Soccerlens: Why referees deserve our respect.

I’ve also learnt something after writing this piece. It’s just been pointed out to me that Otis Redding actually did the original version of Respect, not Aretha Franklin. Who knew? Not me, that’s for sure.

written by Gary Andrews \\ tags: Andy Gray, FA respect campaign, football, Mike Riley, refereeing, Respect

I’ve also had a bit of a soft spot for Manchester City. One of my best friends at university was a fanatical City supporter and I’d frequently become a de facto Blues supporter when watching them down the pub. In return, he got the dubious fare of the likes of Exeter v Accrington and Exeter v Grays.

Thankfully, said friend has never been too happy at Thaksin Shinawatra’s takeover at Eastlands, unlike the majority of Manchester City fans, who were happy to brush corruption charges, frozen assets, questions about cash flow and a poor human rights record to one side in pursuit of a place in the European Big Cup.

That said, City’s current situation – with Thaksin on the run and questions about cash flow – should come as a surprise to absolutely nobody. Other than the fans who chose to bury their head in the money-shaped sand.

Needless to say I’m not impressed. The resulting article can be seen at Soccerlens. I’m expecting a fair bit of stick in the comments. I’ve already been called a United fan, though, which is probably as about as bad as it’ll get.

written by Gary Andrews \\ tags: football, Manchester City, Soccerlens, Thaksin, Thaksin Shinawatra

Toddle on down to your newsagents and pick up a copy of When Saturday Comes and you’ll fine a piece from me on Leigh Genesis in there (don’t think it’s available online, soz).

Also, had I got time I’d have liked to have done a quick bit of comment on the Rotherham situation. However, Ian at Two Hundred Per Cent has written a fantastic piece, which would put anything I had to say to shame:

“Next, they have to make a firm promise that they will move back in Rotherham, even though they have no money to build a new stadium (they are completely reliant on council plans for a new community stadium for this to happen).  Knowing the speed at which local authorities move and considering that we are in the middle of a property crisis that we haven’t seen in a generation and that Rotherham’s financial straits are such that, in the current climate, they would never find funding themselves for such a project, they’re going to have make a promise that they surely know that they can’t guarantee. They must be back in four years. This is the same Football League that, ultimately, allowed Wimbledon FC to be uprooted and moved to Milton Keynes, even though they voted against it, isn’t it? It is the same Football League that routinely allows clubs to demolish their town centre stadia and move to out of town sites that are only accessible by car, isn’t it? I can’t think of a single good reason for insisting on this when they have only moved four miles in the first place.”

Sorry if this has all been very football centric in the past few days. Incredibly busy, mostly with football-related work stuff as well. It’s invading my head, badly. I had a dream last night at Dean Windass tackled the feral youths of South London using nothing but a snooker cue.

I could probably do with getting out more, I know…

written by Gary Andrews \\ tags: football, Leigh Genesis, points deduction., Rotherham, When Saturday Comes

“It’s about this time,” said Steve as the train passed through Dartford, “that I can feel my soul being sucked out of the window.”

You could see the reason for his anguish. The South Eastern service from Charing Cross into Kent hardly passes through aesthetically pleasing parts of South East London but, in comparison to Northfleet, Lewisham is closer to the Lake District.

Northfleet is meant to be an up-and-coming area: desirable due to the newly opened Eurostar terminal nearby along with a massive regeneration scheme for the area. For the time being, the area currently opens new chapters on the words grim and depressing in the dictionary.

Northfleet is also home to curious football ownership experiment that is MyFootballClub.co.uk, the fansite that raised enough cash to buy Ebbsfleet United and now votes on most aspects of team business, including selecting the line-up. Quite what the Premiership and foreign fans who’ve invested their thirty-five quid in the club would make of the area when they step is the train is a moot point.

Any MyFC member who hails from South Wales will probably recognise the some design principles that lay behind such delights as Port Talbot and Milford Haven: industrial estates, sparsely used land around estuaries, and the occasional bleak house and pub. The shrimp seller en route to Stonebridge Road is one of the few bits of local colour. Even the brilliant sunshine couldn’t do anything for the area. As Dr. Dave, a veteran of Northfleet away travel, commented, the concrete works look just the same in the sun as they do in the rain.

Thankfully house hunting in Northfleet wasn’t the order of the day: even the grimmest parts of Britain can be lit up by the beautiful game, hence my presence on a sunny February day in Kent: Ebbsfleet United v Exeter City.

[Ebbsfleet is not the same as Northfleet, although the two are close. Ebbsfleet, until recently, didn't exist until the new Eurostar terminal opened. It's soon to be joined by an Angel of the South statue. A 30ft lump of concrete would accurately reflect the area. Ebbsfleet United were, until recently, Gravesend and Northfleet but the name was changed to, apparently, tap into the potential growth of the area. Judging by the crowds, they may have some time to go until that vision is realised.]

The game promised to be an intriguing one. Both terms were on a good run of league form with Ebbsfleet winning their last four and Exeter unbeaten in the same number and both had recently seen off teams with title aspirations (Nigel Clough’s Burton Albion and Stevenage Borough respectively). The stage was set for a classic encounter. Shame neither side were keen on playing classic football or, for large chunks of the game, any kind of football at all.

This isn’t to say either side were committed to breaking up the match with consistent fouling to disrupt the opposition’s rhythm. More than the ball very rarely made contact with the foot in the first half, with head tennis the order of the day, and Ebbsfleet 40-love up on points, as the tactic was largely their own doing.

Fleet manager Liam Daish has a side that not play pretty football but, as Jade Goody or Jodie Marsh will tell you, lacking aesthetics is in no way a hindrance to success. Indeed, previous Conference champions have employed a very direct, physical approach, with a touch of skill. Playing like Brazil won’t necessarily get you out of the league.

A shame, then, that Exeter play best as a neat passing side with ball to feet and got quickly sucked into an aerial battle that they had little chance of winning. Fleet are a tall, physical side and were winning much of the headers in the centre of the park, while Akinde was having plenty of success against Rob Edwards at left-back, often drawing the centre-back out of position as well and exposing holes in Exeter’s rearguard.

After nearly twenty minutes of hoof and head (with a bit of running), and Exeter getting very little of the ball, Ebbsfleet’s tactics paid off when Akinde lured City centre-half Danny Seaborne into making a lunge in the area. No mistake from McPhee and Fleet were one up from the spot.

But for Andy Marriott in the Exeter goal, Ebbsfleet could have been three-up by half time. And that’s about the only other comment you could make of the first half: a dire spectacle but one with Ebbsfleet very much on top. Any MyFC fan wanting good football would have been disappointed, but impressed nonetheless at the efficiency of the home side.

Proceedings picked up in the second half when Exeter manager Paul Tisdale rang the changes, moving Edwards to a deep-sitting central midfielder, bringing on teenager George Friend at left-back and removing striker Steve Basham to go 4-1-4-1.

What seemed to many like a defensive switch had the opposite effect, with Edwards on hand to mop up the second ball, something Exeter were badly lacking in the first half. Suddenly the away side were on the ascendancy and were back on level terms after a sustained period of pressure saw Matt Gill strike a sweet low shot from outside the area into the bottom right-hand corner.

Soon after Ebbsfleet started to work out how best to cope with the new formation and the game slowed down again, albeit in a far more open fashion than the first half. Both sides had chances to win it with Akinde rounding the keeper before deciding to take an extra twenty touches and contrive to blast over from five yards, while at the other end Exeter’s Wayne Carlisle was denied an almost certain goal by a superb last-ditch tackle from Fleet left-back, and purveyor of a dodgy mullet, Sacha Opinel to leave it honours even.

If the first half was to football what Northfleet is to architecture then the second half was akin to the Eurostar terminal: pretty but not a lot going on beneath the surface, although impressive in places.

Both sides look well primed to steal a play-off spot and with teams above them faltering this match could well be repeated as a play-off semi, or even final, in which case MyFC fans may fancy running a campaign to get Liam Daish installed as the ‘Angel of the South’. Assuming he stays, that is, and doesn’t resent having his team picked by people playing a glorified Championship Manager game.

Waiting for the train back to civilization, the Eurostar terminal was visible from the less glamorous surroundings. On one hand, it had done its best to blend into the surroundings with a large, empty car park. On the other, the sleek new building seemed somewhat incongruous with the sparse industrial estates.

And therein lies the same for Ebbsfleet United FC. The long ball football is as attractive as the area its played in, but its effectiveness is closer to a high-speed Eurostar train (albeit one that requires you to spend vast portions of the journey looking up into the sky). And just as Northfleet is looking to evolve as an area, so is the fan-owned club, although we won’t know for some time if either can be called a success.

written by Gary Andrews \\ tags: depressing parts of England, Ebbsfleet United, Exeter City, football, MyFc, Northfleet

Of all the places in the world, Ebbsfleet United seems a strange club to attempt to start a footballing revolution at. But today there’s much hype, excitement and general hyperbole about the future of football, as fans site myfootballclub.co.uk announce their takeover of The Football Club Formerly Known a Gravesend and Northfleet, or TFCFKAGAN for short.

For those not 100 per cent au fait with the altruistic website’s aims (and who can’t log onto it due to the heavy amount of traffic), it can basically be signed thus. Twenty thousand plus members have all chipped in £35 with the aim of buying a club, and running it along open, transparent and democratic principles, where the fans have control and vote on all aspects of the club, right down to team selection.

Sounds great, doesn’t it? The REAL fans reconnecting with a club and keeping out all those evil millionaires who so slight the Beautiful Game. Which is fantastic, but this is a football club we’re talking about – a private business – not a peace keeping mission to restore democracy to Pakistan, which seems almost more in keeping with the site’s mission statement.

Still, there’s been a real grassroots fans movement in recent years, with Supporters’ Trusts coming to the fore. Surely this is not only a logical conclusion, but good news for the game in general.

Well, in a few words, no. No it isn’t.

In longer words, It’s as near to pure communism or socialism as you’re going to get in football, and while a community owning the club is, in principle, seems attractive, there’s all sorts of areas that are heading for trouble on this.

Firstly, there’s the potential for this to be a footballing version of Orwell’s Animal Farm. You’ll have some people with more experience than others, you’ll have some with better ideas than others, and you’ll have some with inflated senses of their own importance. Eventually there’ll be the realisation that pure democracy within a business such as a football club isn’t effective, and there’ll be much bickering as those at the top try to convince those at the bottom that THEY KNOW BEST.

Secondly, I can’t see somebody like Liam Daish, or any other football manager worth his salt being overly happy about having his tactics and plans dictated to him by fans. These views may differ wildly and you’ll probably end up with a conservative consensus formation for most games. That may be fine for some, but on other occasions a more attacking or specific formation/tactic may be required for a specific game. That’s what scouts are for. Having fans, especially a large number of whom who’re not familiar with lower league football, and who won’t have the inclination to scout Crawley v Droylsden to get a handle on tactics, is another recipe for disaster.

You’re also going to face problems with firstly signings and secondly cash flow. I can see a vast proportion of those who’ve put money in wanting ‘names’ to sign for them and there’s a real danger they could end up signing aging pros at the end of their career on vastly inflated salaries, at the expense of gems from the lower leagues, or even the youth system.

Take Dagenham and Redbridge. Their top scorer last season, Paul Benson, came from way down the lower leagues (not much further above park football), while Craig Mackail-Smith, now at Peterborough, also came from down the lower league pyramid. My team Exeter City signed a guy called Matt Taylor from Team Bath over the summer, who is somewhat of a lower-league Vidic and has turned out to be somewhat of an inspired signing, having netted for us half a dozen times this season from set pieces, make a couple of vital goal-line clearances and is generally a defensive colossus. Again, not the kind of player a group of fans would vote on, as they’d have never heard of him. That’s the manager and scouts’ job.

This doesn’t even consider the very daft idea of transparency which, presumably, involves ensuring the balance sheet is available to all. If rival clubs know how much cash the club can spend, they’ll adjust their prices upwards accordingly. That’s not going to help Ebbsfleet.

Also, there’s the players to consider in this as well. How would they feel knowing their future ultimately lies in the hands of the fans rather than the gaffer, who’ll often see things on the training ground the rest of us aren’t privy to.

For example, last season two Exeter players – Richard Logan and Dean Moxey – were out of contract. Logan had been signed in January on a six month contract and had looked average, bar the odd spectacular goal. Moxey was a youth product who’d had an injury hit couple of seasons and appeared to have lost his way. I advocated releasing them both. Paul Tisdale begged to differ with my opinion, and those of a vast proportion of our fanbase. The upshot? Logan is currently our top scorer having reached double figures before November, while Moxey is having the season of his life and has easily been our best, most consistent player and should be the first name on the team sheet each week at the moment. Goes to show what I know.

In the short term, and with the type of cash they’ve apparently got floating around, it could work. TCFKAGAN may sign a couple of decent players for their push to the play-offs, it’ll attract interest, and potentially more cash, for the club.

But the BSP (or Conference to you and I) is a notoriously difficult league to get out of , and if the success takes a while in coming, I can see interest in this dwindling as all those Premiership or casual fans who’ve got enthused lose interest in a team that’s hovering around in the top-tier of the non-league and gradually start to stop paying their subs.

Sure, Ebbsfleet may pick up a few extra fans, but how many of these will be there come the end of the season, or even the following season when Fleet need to travel to Northwich on a cold, wet Tuesday night to keep in touch with the play-offs. Say you, as an Arsenal fan, put you cash into it, but the team had a poor run of form and it was a choice between stumping up a bit more cash or staying in to watch the Gunners in the Champions League on the box? Which would you choose?

Finally, I think their choice of club is a poor one. Ebbsfleet are a bit of a ‘one of those’ clubs. They periodically threaten the play-offs and have a reasonable band of support but, much like Woking, they’ve not really achieved anything in recent years and suffer from their proximity to bigger teams in nearby London. They also changed their name to an as-yet non-existent place to tap into ‘burgeoning’ support, a la Franchise FC. They’re reasonably stable, but suffer from having bigger, ex-league clubs around and other non-league clubs with sugar daddies.

Myfootballclub would have been better, and more welcome, investing into a club with history and/or troubled by debt. Someone like Halifax or Swindon, for example. In that case they’d be more welcomed by fans and there would be a real sense of ‘Hey, we can achieve something here. We can awake a sleeping giant.’

Ebbsfleet, with no disrespect, are a bit of a ‘nothing’ team. They’re not especially bad, they’re not as good as the top teams, they simply exist. It’s hard to get excited about that kind of club, just as it’s hard to get excited about Chelsea suddenly buying their way to the best manager and players in the world. To be honest, even forming their own team and working their way up through the non-league pyramid would be a better, and more satisfying idea. You just can’t buy passion.

It could give them stability (although TCFKAGAN has always struck me as a very stable club). What’s more likely is, after a good first season, the great scheme will hit a few unforeseen problems and they’ll either start running into financial and administrative difficulties, they’ll start slipping down the league, or, as is most likely, they’ll be forced to sell. I give them about 36 months before the dream turns sour and TCFKAGAN is on the lookout for new owners.

It’s a nice idea in principle, but will bring chaos in practice.

There’s actually a couple of clubs out there who operate a similar, but more practical method. AFC Wimbledon immediately spring to mind, and that’s largely because they’ve got such a dedicated and large fanbase determined to stick one to Franchise FC. And good on them. Their model works because they’ve started from scratch, everybody’s clear on their aims and objectives and they didn’t try to shoe-horn an existing reasonably-well run football club, and an idealistic fans model together.

Exeter’s the other example, with the Supporters’ Trust taking over when we were on the verge of folding. But even then, there’s the realisation that we can’t have complete democracy and transparency in everything. Our original model worked well for the first season and a half, but there was soon a growing realisation that a fan’s passion was no substitute for business nous, and we couldn’t ask the supporters to dig into their pockets every time we needed cash.

We’ve now got a clearer line of communication between the Trust board (the majority shareholder) and the club’s directors – we’ve got a more business-like, commercial operation in place and we’re one of the very few teams now in the lower leagues to turn in a profit. It’s also very satisfying to know those in charge are, ultimately accountable to us – the fans – and we’ll never again be fleeced by a couple of conmen.

That’s not to say the Trust model is perfect, and there are problems and issues I won’t go into here. Trusts such as that at York City eventually sold up. There’s also the issue of investment. If a rich Exeter supporter offered to invest in the club for a space in the board, it that would cause a serious amount of soul-searching.

Fan involvement, and money IS a great idea, and I honestly believe more clubs should have some form of supporter trust representation involved at boardroom level, if not as majority shareholder (this won’t work for everyone) then at least being a shareholder with a say in how the trust is run. I’m a passionate believer in Supporters’ Trusts and think their involvement is generally a positive thing in football, even if they come equipped with their own set of problems.

But myfootballclub.co.uk? It’ll go down as a worthy and well-intentioned, but ultimately unsuccessful, footnote in the annuls of non-league clogging.

I’d be interested to see what bloggers with a good understanding of economics, like Tim Worstall and Chris Dillow, make of it. But, for the time being, Two Hundred Per Cent has the final word:

“Ultimately, this club has been sold to be the plaything of a few thousand would-be Alex Fergusons. Whether this proves to be beneficial to the club and its supporters is open to question, but one thing remains certain. Myfootballclub and Jason Botley have done very nicely indeed out of this, and would appear to be the only thing that matters to them.”

UPDATE: Brian’s not too impressed either.

written by Gary Andrews \\ tags: Ebbsfleet United, football, good intentions, myfootballclub, supporters' trusts