Can football clubs ever regain real contact with supporters?

Jamie Jackson in Zurich

Tuesday November 11 2008

Is the chairman of FC United right when he says that British football will lose its soul if it doesn't act immediately to re-engage with fans?

Andy Walsh is chairman of FC United of Manchester, the club founded in 2005 as a protest at the takeover of Manchester United by the Glazer family in a deal that saddled Old Trafford with a mammoth amount of debt. Yesterday, speaking in Zurich at the International Football Conference, a meeting of some of the game's movers and shakers, Walsh called for a 'readjustment' in the British game. He was talking about the need to lower ticket prices, a shift in the balance of power between fans and owners, a move, generally, to ensure the working supporter feels more included in their football club.

"When Peter Kenyon was at Manchester United before his move to Chelsea he was the one executive who actually wanted to listen," Walsh told an audience that featured Kenyon, former Arsenal vice-chairman David Dein and other football figures from around the world including Amit Bhatia, the Indian vice-chairman of QPR.

"I was with IMUSA - the Independent Manchester United Supporters Association - then and I invited Peter into the Stretford End for a match. And he came, and he didn't get abused, he didn't get berated. At half-time people, the fans, just wanted to talk with him. He listened, then he also came along to one of our meetings to hear what we had to say. Fair play to him, he was actually one of the executives who wanted to engage. But since then I have to say, being honest, Peter retreated and football executives have retreated now."

It sounded a familiar view - that clubs, particularly in the Premier League, have now lost real contact with the supporters who have always been their lifeblood. Walsh believes they have to act immediately to re-engage with fans, and understand their concerns, or, ultimately, football in Britain will lose its soul and a healthy, vibrant future. Even Dein, who was on the panel with Walsh, seemed to agree about this need to reconnect. "I'm sympathetic to that," he said of Walsh's comments. "We've got to protect the traditional fan."

Arsenal's top price ticket is £90, the Premier League's most expensive. And Dein, of course, made around £75m when selling his shares in the club last year to Red and White Holdings - owned by the Russian Alisher Usmanov and Farhad Moshiri, who is Iranian. Whether that "protected the traditional fan" is unclear. But as Walsh later told me, "the first thing a new owner or director says at a club is, 'I've always been a fan.' Then, they take absolutely no notice of us, saying they know better ... That doesn't make sense."

Walsh believes British football could end up with the Big Four of Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool and Manchester United being "like Wal-Mart and Tescos" - still alive, of course, but having gobbled up the smaller clubs. And, a whole lot more with them.