15

STOP THE TRAIN, I THINK I WANT TO GET OFF!

AFTER THE EUPHORIA of getting into the play-offs it never really entered my head that we wouldn’t get past our opponents Bristol City in the semi-finals. This was not arrogance, it was just that I had never seen all the parts of the football club working together so well, as beforehand there was always some sort of dissension within the ranks. I often said that I could buy the best player in the world, build a brand-new stadium and sell tickets at half price and someone, somewhere, would complain the hot dogs tasted like shit. But not this time: fans, owner, manager and players were in complete harmony.

We lost the play-offs against Bristol City, not in the pathetic manner we had whimpered out in 2006 but with a fully committed performance in both games. In truth, in the first leg at Selhurst Park, we met inspired opponents and were slightly under par and got beaten 2–1. After going a goal down we equalised through a penalty from Ben Watson but they scored a world-class goal with virtually the last kick of the game.

The second leg was on the Tuesday, and although history dictated that no team that lost the first leg had ever progressed, I felt anything was possible with Neil. He was slightly irritated as the Bristol City players and fans had, in his view, over-celebrated on the Saturday, but this just seemed to increase his determination.

Driving to the away leg I listened to talkSPORT, who were carrying an interview with the Bristol City chairman. He was talking about the game and their hopes for success. He also mentioned me, saying I was a strange person, not overly friendly, and would only speak if I were spoken to. It was a rather unnecessary comment, I thought, as well as stupid, because he had not actually spoken to me so by definition he was guilty of the very thing he was accusing me of! I sincerely hoped I had the opportunity to speak to him after the game and give him my commiserations.

The atmosphere was incredible but with so much at stake it was also very tense. We were brilliant and at half-time were 1–0 up through Ben Watson, who scored as he had in the first leg. Bristol City were all over the place and the weight of expectation from their fans seemed to play heavily on their players’ minds, and if this continued in the second half, there was only going to be one winner.

Bristol City fans are very fervent, as I had heard first hand when we had played them earlier in the season. This time I got to see it first hand at half-time. As I went outside the directors’ entrance to have a cigarette with some of my friends I was confronted by a couple of hundred of their supporters. They stood in front of me screaming – and I do mean screaming – abuse at me inches from my nose. Stewards tried to get between them and get me to go back in but I was going to finish my cigarette.

So I stood there, smoking eye to eye with these hate-filled fans. They were standing so close to me that when one of them was screaming at me, bits of the burger he was eating flew out of his mouth and hit me in the face. Charming. But I stayed there. I was dying to say ‘One–nil’ but I kept it to myself. I was not moving or backing down. When I eventually finished my cigarette, I gave them a wink and thanked them for the generosity of their kind words. Just as I was about to leave my friends behind me broke into a chorus of: ‘You’re Welsh and you know you are, you’re Welsh and you know you are.’ Apparently this is a massive insult to Bristolians. We just got through the doors before being lynched.

In the second half the team got even better and in the seventy-second minute we were awarded a penalty. Looking down to the dugout I caught Neil’s eye and we both knew our time had come. Bristol City were out cold, their fans in virtual silence, and if we scored there was no doubt in my mind we would go through. I watched Ben Watson, a young player who had come from my cherished academy, step up to score his third goal of the tie – and he missed!

This penalty set in motion a sequence of events that would ultimately end in the direst of consequences for me!

That miss, as it often does, reinvigorated the other side and appeared to sap everything out of us. The team gave everything to get to that point, now we were flat on our feet. We struggled through to extra time as the scores were level on aggregate and then completely ran out of gas as Bristol City scored twice and ended the dream.

There were no recriminations between Neil and myself, just a feeling of what could have been. There was mutual respect between us. We were a unified double act, and the only competition between us was who could say the most controversial thing in the media.

A week or so after the play-off loss I went to lunch with Neil and we discussed the future. Neil, being something of a crafty bugger asked me a question that took me into a theoretical cul-de-sac: ‘Do you think I am the best manager in the division?’

Innocently, I said: ‘Of course you are, Neil.’

‘Well, how come Dave Jones at Cardiff is getting paid more than me?’

‘I guess he won’t be any more!’ was my response.

That was the quickest £250,000 pay rise Neil ever got. He was delighted and called his wife Sharon and in his broad Yorkshire accent said: ‘You’ll never guess what chairman has done?’

So that was Neil and I wedded together as far as he was concerned.

As at the end of every season I was handed the budgets for the following year and the cash flow forecast made for bleak reading once again. We had lost significant monies in the last year and the same was forecast for this season, but more importantly than losses we were now showing a significant cash call.

Losses don’t always mean cash calls. They do in the end but losses in football clubs can come from areas such as player depreciation on your books or, in some instances, sales of players for values that are less than they are valued on your balance sheet. Players are valued in accounting terms by the amount you pay for them, reduced every month by the period of their contract. So for example a player you buy for a million who signs a four-year contract depreciates at £250,000 per year, so after twelve months that same player would be on your balance sheet at £750,000 and so on. On the converse, young players from your academy carry no value, as they have cost nothing. Of course, when you sell such a player you show gains.

This year the budgets and cash flows showed a cash call of just under £5 million to stand still. This was the inevitable cash flow catch-up of the losses of £2.6 million and £8.1 million of the two years just gone. By now I had nearly £35 million invested in Palace and whilst I was still very liquid in cash terms it was getting towards the red-line area of my finances that I had promised myself and my family I would never cross. I decided I needed to get some funding and looked for a likely source.

In 2007 I had met Jason Granite, who was a senior figure at Deutsche Bank in the high-risk lending division, which was what lending to football clubs is classified under. I had looked at doing a deal with Jason on some funding but it never materialised. By early to mid-2008 Jason had set up a hedge fund called Agilo, which had a lot of money under management and was looking to lend into potential high-risk sectors with the requisite interest charge. There were no other traditional methods of raising money for football clubs outside of the Premier League besides third-party investment via selling equity, and there was no queue of people for that.

My relationship with Jason was very good. He asked me for advice on some investments they were looking to make, namely the acquisition of the Sports Café group of restaurants which had gone into administration, given I knew the previous owners and had experience in both sport and restaurants. More importantly though, he said if I ever required some funding we could do a deal.

Following the play-off loss and being advised of yet another huge cash call for the next season I made good on his offer and borrowed £5 million, payable back over four years at a rate of 15 per cent. Yes, it was expensive, but it was the only money available and I needed it. Costs were coming a little more under control as certain big-wage earners were coming off the payroll. Coupled with the team’s performance of last season and the management team we had I could see that in the next eighteen months our costs were going to reduce dramatically without us losing our ambition and having to sell all our best assets to keep feeding the ravenous beast that is a football club.

The final part of the decision for me was that I wanted to use the money we borrowed to fund the shortfall that would merely enable us to stand still. Any money I had available I wanted to use to advance the club and keep supporting Neil. The paperwork for this deal was immense, the security required was belt and braces. They took charges over all the club’s assets and finally I had to give a personal guarantee. The paperwork was so arduous and detailed and the personal guarantee so comprehensive that, while I was signing everything I made an offhand remark to my long-term lawyer Jeff McGeachie, who had worked with me when I bought Palace in 2000. I remarked: ‘Could this be the deal that finally undoes me?’ I put it out of my mind as soon as I had said it, believing that I had signed a deal that funded the club. In fact, I had signed my own death warrant.

Not long after that I had another issue that would dramatically change my mind-set. Our media-hyped and potential superstar John Bostock had been developed for six years by my treasured youth academy. His stepfather had promised us faithfully that John would sign his first professional contract with us when he was legally able to at seventeen. But this promise meant nothing. After all the time and energy many others and me had put into this young man, he rejected our offer of a scholarship, which took him to his seventeenth birthday with a pro contract attached to it, and decided he was going to sign for Tottenham.

After failing to agree a reasonable fee with Tottenham we went to a tribunal which awarded us £700,000 for a player who at the time was widely considered to be one of the best in his age group. Players like Theo Walcott, who were only marginally older, were going for £11 million, and for seven years of dedicated development and support we got £700,000 and some far-off Mickey Mouse add-ons. That just wasn’t right. Yet again the system had not protected my club, my investment and hopes for our future success from the pillaging and lure of so-called bigger clubs. I found this insulting and demoralising: not only was the club haemorrhaging cash and I was having to borrow money, not only were the crowds diminishing but I couldn’t even get the benefit of keeping the young players I saw as my sanity and saving grace!

One of the things that always amused me in a kind of frustrated way was the unwritten rules surrounding football. Top of the pile was the one surrounding the inner sanctum of the dressing room, this mythical place where alchemy is conjured and troops are galvanised to put their lives on the line by fire-breathing call-to-action generals.

On the whole this is utter nonsense. I came to the conclusion that the reason it is called the inner sanctum, a place never to be entered besides by the chosen few, is because actually there is not a lot going on in there. I have been in the dressing area many times, most of the time spent in the room adjacent to it, the physio room, in order to hear what’s going on out of sight. And to be blunt I very rarely heard any supposed Churchill-like speeches. In fact, in my previous life I had heard more rousing speeches from my twenty-something area managers speaking to their salespeople.

My forays into the dressing room were a regular thing, as they are with most owners who have the presence of mind to actually steer their club and the confidence to ignore the ludicrous taboo perpetuated by the media of chairmen entering this inner sanctum. I went in there to see my charges, wish them luck and look into their eyes, as winning was everything to me, then departed, leaving the manager to prepare his troops, or not as the case may be. The only manager I heard who combined wit with steel and great leadership, the only manager who I remember thinking that this was someone I would play for if I was a footballer, was Neil Warnock. During my time I met a lot of managers, most of whom had been players and came up through the system. I have to say that there were very few who impressed me. The perception of players being selfish and disingenuous pales in comparison to a vast number of managers.

This leads me to players themselves. Often the public perception of players is one of two diametrically opposed types. Either they are selfish, unruly and as thick as two short planks or they are all-out role-model superstars. Of course, most players are neither. Most players now come through academies and youth development schemes and a very big part of their time is spent with the clubs providing significant academic support in order for these boys to ditch the stereotype of the ‘thick footballer’.

Let’s face it, football players are institutionalised: they live in a cosseted environment and are made to feel special, which does lead them into certain codes of outlook and behaviour. But to be frank, which one of us at twenty-one with £10,000, £20,000, or even £100,000 a week in our pocket and grown men chanting our names by the thousands in adoration would not be affected by that and lose perspective every now and then? Yes, there are terrible examples of bad behaviour but there are also great acts of kindness and generosity that never seem to get reported. I always found once players reached their late twenties they became much more rounded and aware of their privileged position. I remember writing an extremely disparaging commentary on Craig Bellamy only to bump into him a few years later, whereupon he marched up to me. Expecting the worst, I was taken aback to be told by Mr Bellamy that he had agreed with what I had written and how much he would love to play for a chairman like me.

When I first came into football, the ‘best chairmen’ were apparently the ones you never heard from, and anyone who dared describe football as a business was lambasted. Look at it now: people demand to know their clubs’ owners and want them to hear their views and woe betide you if you do not oblige. Also, managers were only deemed to be capable of being managers if they had been top footballers and could put their ‘caps on the table’. Tell that to José Mourinho or Arsène Wenger.

Despite finally having a manager who was totally with me, I felt after the Bostock tribunal decision in July 2008 that I had finally had enough. I had lost my enthusiasm and desire and I felt Palace should have an owner who had the same determination and freshness I had when I came in back in 2000. I made a formal announcement that I wanted to sell the club and I was prepared to listen to offers. I gave interviews, ensuring that my desire to sell was right in the public domain so it was not a secret, and engaged a firm of so-called experts to handle the club’s disposal. Of course wanting to sell a football club and being able to are two different things entirely. Football can be very easy to get into, but bloody hard to leave!

I decided to engage Seymour Pierce, and specifically Keith Harris, to sell Palace and went to meet him at the Carlton Tower hotel in London to discuss the mechanics. It may have seemed like a strange choice, given the acrimony that had existed between us when he was the Football League chairman during the ITV Digital affair as well as the strong words of dislike for me that he expressed at his departure from that role. But Harris had a reputation as somebody who was effective at selling clubs. With the experiences I had with him and Seymour Pierce it is difficult to understand where that reputation emanated from or what it was based on.

Harris dispelled any bad feelings over matters of the past saying that’s where they were: the past. He was keen to help sell Palace and said he had about ten parties around the world who would be interested in buying the club. He was adamant there would be no problems securing a sale and gave me an indication that he felt the price for Palace, debt free, which was not a problem as most of the debt was to me, and including the stadium, was circa £35 million.

This price surprised me but they based it upon a variety of calculations and that was their expert valuation. Before instructing Seymour Pierce I gave them one more set of parameters – that my ‘legacy was as important as my tenure’. I wanted legitimate buyers with genuine intentions for Palace and with that understood, in August 2008 I formally engaged them and set about giving them all the information they required to produce a glossy information pack and sales brochure for potential purchasers.

Neil Warnock was fully supportive, both privately and in the media, believing that I was entirely right to want to sell. Personally there was a level of disappointment seeing as we got on so well but he knew if I got the club sold it would be done with the club’s and his best interests at heart.

My modus operandi was business as usual so we set about preparing for the new season with the ambition, as always, to be successful. We sold one of our young players Tom Soares to Premier League-promoted Stoke City for £1.25 million and, rather than bank the money as most sensible people would have done, I backed my manager and allowed him to go out and spend nearly £2.5 million on players!

We brought in Paddy McCarthy for £500,000 to replace the club captain Mark Hudson, who left on a free transfer after contract negotiations broke down. I was told he deliberately made ridiculous demands because he never had any intention of signing a new deal once his existing one had run out. This was because when he had signed in 2004 Iain Dowie promised he would be our starting centre back in the Premier League, but nothing ever came of that promise. So I lost Hudson, who had originally cost us £500,000, for nothing to Charlton! On top of that Neil signed their centre half for £500,000! So Charlton managed to get some of the money back they had to pay in legal fees on Dowie’s behalf over the lost court case!

We also signed Alan Lee, a big centre forward from Ipswich, for £650,000. The most curious signing and one which Mr Warnock was entirely culpable for was Nick Carle, an Australian international. We paid £1 million to Bristol City to meet a release clause in his contract. Carle was sold to me as Bristol’s key player, a free-scoring midfielder according to my management team. I do remember him being mentioned as the player to stop when we played Bristol in the 1–1 draw in the controversial League game back in January.

So I sanctioned the investment and when he scored his first ever goal in English football for Crystal Palace early in the season it came as something of a surprise to me. He started with such promise but virtually disappeared and was nothing like the player I had been led to believe I was buying. His hefty salary aside, he was, shall we say, a bit of a disappointment and not one of Neil’s finest moments.

We also signed two other players and a raft of loan players from Premier League clubs, such was the belief I had in Neil. Unfortunately for this season it was to prove a little misplaced. Perhaps it was my announcement to sell that unsettled the club, or maybe it was a hangover from the disappointment from the play-offs last year, yet it was a surprise to me that we started the next campaign so poorly given that we had significantly strengthened our side. It took us five games to record our first win and at the end of August we were in the bottom three and had suffered an embarrassing 4–0 away defeat to then League One Leeds United in the Carling Cup. The performance at Elland Road was abject, and that’s being kind, which was surprising given how Neil, as a Sheffield fan, viewed Leeds.

Tragically in late August I lost my dear friend and publicist Aroon Maharajh. We had been working together for about eighteen months and had become very close. In one of life’s strange coincidences I had met his wife Teresa some twenty years earlier as she worked for Mark Goldberg and was responsible for my first ever computer contract. Aroon was one of those people who made a room light up. He had an infectious personality and a wicked sense of humour. He was thoroughly on my side, albeit frequently encouraging me to do things I never wanted to do! On my phone the first picture I have is Aroon in my house in Spain in March 2008, holding my six-week-old daughter Cameron. He died seven months later after suffering a massive heart attack. I gave a eulogy at the packed church for his funeral. He is still sorely missed. Shine on, you crazy diamond.

Throughout September we stayed in and around the bottom three. The only bright spot of any note was playing Charlton Athletic at home, where we got to achieve a long overdue win. Craig Beattie, a loan signing from West Brom, scored the winning goal in front of a euphoric Selhurst Park crowd. Beattie proved to be an inspired signing, and in October and November we started to fare better. By the end of November we were mid-table, still not where I had expected us to be!

By now the sales document from Seymour Pierce had been circulated to potential purchasers for Palace and, according to Keith Harris, we would start to see some interest very shortly.

The launch of Telstar in October at the London Film Festival was greeted with great critical acclaim and by now I had decided to use a leading film sales agent, Fortissimo, who had very high hopes of sales. They gave me three forecasts of what they were expecting internationally and in the UK market. The top-end forecast was just under $10 million, the most likely was $6.5 million and worst case was $4.5 million. What this told me was at best this film could make me over £4 million on my £2-million-plus investment, worst case maybe half a million. This was from one of the leading and most experienced internationally reputed big sales companies so it should have meant something. The fact the forecasts weren’t worth the paper they were written on emerged sometime later.

In the same month I was invited to co-host my favourite radio show on talkSPORT with the copper-headed one Adrian Durham. I always enjoyed being a guest on the show as I liked talking to the fans on the phone-ins, discussing any weighty issues of the time and regaling the world with my opinions. But this was a co-host slot and involved a different set of parameters. I had to try and be a proper radio presenter, which wasn’t that easy as I had no benchmark working alongside Durham.

But I enjoyed it. On the three shows I did I invited Lynval Golding and Terry Hall from The Specials to talk about football as well as the recent re-formation of the band and how and why it had come about. On the last show I invited Nick Moran on so we could shamelessly plug our film Telstar. Whilst I was discussing the film, and during a round of banter, Adrian asked me if I would consider the now actor and ex-footballer Vinnie Jones in any future film projects. My sarcastic comment in response was only in the event that the dialogue consisted of a series of Neanderthal-like grunts.

This was fed back to Mr Jones, who somehow got confused. Vinnie Jones had worked with Nick on the hit film Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and upon hearing this bit of mickey-taking he jumped to the conclusion that it was Nick and the producer of Lock Stock, Matthew Vaughn, who had made fun of him. Thus a bemused Matt Vaughn received a series of explosive phone calls from Jones, and Nick Moran, in fear of his life, phoned him to apologise. Oh well, all in a day’s work for me!

In autumn 2008 the world was gripped by the current financial crisis and I was becoming extremely exposed. Since 2001 I had used an overdraft to fund Palace’s trading. The long-standing reason for this was that in the unlikely event I was ever able to take money out of Palace, reducing an overdraft was seamless, whilst taking money out would inevitably lead to criticism from certain fans! The overdraft was fully supported and secured by my cash, which was put into an investment vehicle. The borrowings my cash supported were at £12 million but my portfolio was at circa £14.5 million so I had plenty of headroom, or so I thought. In three short months that portfolio was to lose in excess of £3 million as a result of market volatility.

The forecasts at the beginning of the season for Palace that had shown the £5 million hole, which I had plugged, were now proving to be wrong. The recession was biting into our attendances, and the team’s slow start didn’t help: for the fourth year in a row our crowds dropped substantially. This, coupled with a big downturn in corporate spending with the club, meant that our income was actually coming in at several hundred thousand per month less than anticipated.

On top of that I had several million invested in the Spanish property market, which by now had gone soft. I had bought twenty-three properties in 2003 and the developer had been late completing them. I had only managed to sell nine, and as the market worsened the potential of selling more receded; furthermore, twelve of these properties lost their planning permission – and I had invested a significant seven-figure sum in them. I had been suing the developer for nearly fifteen months to get my money back when the company, Fadesa, one of if not the biggest developer in Spain, went into administration with debts of €1.5 billion, which meant getting my money back became even more difficult.

To compound things further the Club Bar and Dining business was ailing and my relationship with the partner I had founded it with had now deteriorated. I was concerned at his lack of hands-on involvement, and it seemed that company funds had been misused. This business now had cash demands and the only place to get the money from was me!

Around this time I was due to go to America to look at the marketing opportunities and key sales of my film Telstar. As I was preparing for this my best friend in the world, someone whose judgement I trusted in unreservedly, came up with an investment opportunity. My lawyers and accountants looked at it, and the information we gleaned suggested it was a sound investment. It was based upon buying shares in a Nasdaq-listed company at a certain price which were going to move to the London AIM market. Going to another exchange meant that the shares would then increase in value – a huge opportunity for gain with seemingly no risk whatsoever! So with that I placed a seven-figure sum into this investment!

By November 2008 my liquidity was at its lowest in eight years and below the threshold I had said I would ever go under. I had just under £10 million in the bank but I remained asset rich. I had a football club supposedly worth £35 million that I was potentially about to sell, a film that wouldn’t only get my £2 million back but also generate a good return, a portfolio with £3 million excess cash in it against the borrowings I had for Palace and a house in Spain with £2 million in equity. Whilst slightly problematic, there was also a seven-figure sum claimable by me also in Spanish property and a lucrative investment with a close friend, plus sundry assets like boats and luxury cars. So all in all, whilst I had alarm bells ringing, I had the asset base and wherewithal to see out the problems I had. How wrong one person can be!

The team’s performance in December improved markedly and we troubled the top six for the first and only time that season, going to fifth in the league. Even the forgotten £2.5 million Shefki Kuqi was back in the team and scoring goals and despite the threats on the horizon, this gave me cause for optimism. Wrong again!

Each year I threw an annual Christmas party for the staff and players. And this year, irrespective of the financial pressures, was not different. These parties were big affairs with over 250 guests and most years were held at the Grosvenor House Hotel. We had top-drawer entertainment from comedians like Jimmy Carr and Bradley Walsh to music acts such as Lemar and the Sugababes. These parties cost me in excess of £100,000 a year, but were a great opportunity for me to show the staff how much I appreciated them for all their endeavours over the past twelve months. This year, my customary speech at the opening of the evening was touched with a tinge of sadness as, given the club was up for sale, it was likely to be the last one. Well, I had to get something right!

Despite being told in October and November that the sales document for Palace had been produced by Seymour Pierce, I finally saw in the New Year what was going to all the supposed interested parties in Palace. My faith was a little diminished as to date Seymour Pierce had proved to be all talk and no action, but there had been one interested party. They themselves were of course represented by a third party. In the third week of January, with the team two points off a play-off spot, I flew with Tom Sheldon, one of Keith Harris’s staff, to Paris for a meeting.

By now we had established that the interested party was a French–Israeli consortium. I met them and their representation in Charles de Gaulle airport for a two-hour meeting. They appeared knowledgeable about football and purported to be interested in owning the club solely for footballing reasons. After going through all aspects of the club they announced they would be making a bid of £25 million but both Seymour Pierce and I said the document had said we were looking for £35 million, which now seems a touch avaricious but no one takes the first offer. If I had done that back in 2000 for the sale of my mobile phone business I would have got £40 million less.

One of them, a Middle Eastern guy whose name escapes me now, asked to speak privately with me. He said he could make the offer £30 million but £5 million would need to be paid in cash as they wanted for their own reasons to book the sale at £25 million. This concerned me, as whilst the number was very acceptable the fact they wanted to pay in cash didn’t sound right. I stated that whilst he might not want to make such offers in front of his own representation I most certainly wanted mine to hear and called Sheldon over.

I expressed my discomfort at being paid a significant proportion in cash, mainly because it smacked of money laundering and could be a possible sting. We agreed to look at how we could work such a deal, bearing in mind taking £5 million in cash was not plausible, and Seymour Pierce would get back to them.

I was hoping these people were real and legitimate but I realised that if they were I would need to be careful as I had to acquire the stadium from Paul Kemsley’s HBOS-backed company. Even though I had signed a lease he had flatly refused to put a maximum buy price into the agreement and the last thing I wanted was for him to get me again! But I considered that was only worth worrying about when it was necessary to do so.

In early February I received, via Seymour Pierce, an offer of £30 million from the Israeli consortium, using their company United Mizrahi Financial Corporation Limited and supported by a letter from their bankers Mizrahi-Tefahot Bank Limited, an FSA-regulated UK-based bank, saying they were good for the £30 million. It was very encouraging but the correspondence was a little flaky and I was hopeful more than expectant. By the end of February my suspicions were confirmed when the consortium disappeared off the face of the earth. I looked to Seymour Pierce to up their game, which was fruitless and a complete waste of time.

With the offer falling away so too had the team’s performance. What had looked very promising at the end of December was now turning into a damp squib of a season. We had dropped down to fourteenth in the league with two thirds of the season gone. When I really needed Neil to push the team on and get us back into the play-offs or at least competing, the exact opposite happened and just compounded the ensuing problems.

The financial pressure was now increasing and by March there was a hole in the immediate cash flow of £2 million and growing. It would have been even worse if I had not sold one of our younger players in January. Ben Watson was in the last year of his contract and refused to sign a new one, so we took the commercially sensible decision to sell him to Wigan for £1.5 million. It is an irony that if Ben had scored that penalty we may well have been in the Premier League and not under these huge financial pressures, rather than transferring him to a Premier League Club at his request!

Clearly this season was going absolutely nowhere. I spoke to Neil in private about the enormous financial pressure building on me. He encouraged me to get out, but that was appearing unlikely as the only enquiries we were getting were from tyre kickers. In order to weather the impending storm that looked like it was going to batter me on all fronts, I needed to focus and couldn’t be distracted by the team’s performance, so I asked Neil to keep the team in the best position he could while my attentions were diverted.

What I now faced was the most difficult and harrowing period of my life. And as a seasoned gambler I was about to bet it all on red.