Exhaust Fumes

I'm going to say some things in this that are deeply unpopular and unbelievably controversial. To some zealots...

The last series of Top Gear wasn't as bad as some people make out.

The second incarnation of the second incarnation of Top Gear saw wholesale changes to the personnel both in front of, and behind, the camera. Jeremy Clarkson and former schoolchum Andy Wilman were for 178 episodes the driving force behind the concept, and both bailed out in what could be considered by a cynic to be a contrived stunt to leave the BBC with a hugely popular cake recipe but no ingredients to bake it with.

Clarkson and Wilman also took the other two Beatles with them, Hammond and May, and went off to the exceptional financial clout of Amazon for The Grand Tour. The 'new' Top Gear selected Chris Evans as host, with Matt LeBlanc alongside plus a selection of existing BBC contributors to bolster the ranks. Instead of three, we had six in total.

Evans was, quite frankly, a good idea on paper but crap in reality. His brash gameshow like hosting, the shouty persona he has developed on the various programmes his production company has made, was just plain wrong. Shouting as things go wrong on a 'challenge' is welcome. Shouting as you reach an exiting bit of a conversation in the studio is not.

LeBlanc was a surprise choice for many, and easily the surprise package also. It was no surprise that he was kept on and, indeed, will be the central face of the forthcoming series. His two new sidekicks, Rory Reid and Chris Harris, were bit part players in the reincarnation series but earned their spurs admirably with solid work and good chemistry with LeBlanc as the series wore on and stories of Evans' imminent departure surfaced.

The new Top Gear series starts on March 5th, a month after the first series of The Grand Tour ended. The new Clarkson. Hammond, May vehicle had one thing for definite - a fucking huge budget.

The opening scene, a sprawling desert landscape with the trio driving to the stage and touring tent along with dozens of rat rods and custom bikes, the Hothouse Flowers playing on the stage constructed in the middle of nowhere, and a myriad of helicopters, drones, and effects on display, probably wiped out a BBC episode budget in 90 seconds.

The problem is that, after watching all the episodes as they arrived on Amazon Prime, I don't have one stand out moment from the series beyond that opening shot. The two-parter in Namibia probably came closest, and I'd watch it again on Dave, but I've not once replayed any episode to relive the magnificence.

That opening shot was clearly a "Fuck You" to the BBC. It went above and beyond in laying out the sheer riches now at the hands of the creators of the show, and it laid out a gold plated marker for the series. The old Top Gear would struggle through with Heath Robinson solutions to problems that arose from buying clapped out cars and racing them around fields as part of a ridiculously British challenge. The new Grand Tour just threw money at it.

Machinery appeared on set to alleviate numerous problems that would have previously been cleverly worked around. A hand paint job on a car and a home made spoiler on a banger on Top Gear were replaced with several thousand pounds worth of mods and turbochargers on The Grand Tour.

It was almost like the script writer had given up trying now he had a house made of gold bricks.

The new Top Gear has to try. It has a damaged reputation to salvage, and a baying band of Clarkson worshippers that will only see the worst in the new entity.

I first tuned in to the relaunched and reformatted Top Gear back in 2002 as there wasn't much else to do on a Sunday night. It became, over time, the only TV programme I made time to watch at the time of broadcast, rather than wait for a catchup service.

On March 5th I'll tune in again. I hope I am not disappointed.

Allen Not The Key

National League side Eastleigh have made no secret of their desire to follow the likes of Fleetwood Town into the Football League by throwing money at the best players and managers.

However the club is now searching for its fourth manager of the season after dispensing with Martin Allen after just two wins, 14 matches, and 84 days. Experienced National League watchers have suggested that the contract Allen was on was so financially rewarding that the 51 year old may never need to work again after his dismissal.

Spitfires owner Stewart Donald, an insurance tycoon and admitted Oxford United fan (and part shareholder), has rebuilt the ground, funded a mass of expensive signings, and opened up matches to free admission to boost attendances for a side that has quadrupled its average attendance over the past five years.

The club say the final straw was the latest free admission game attracting just 2,345 supporters when they usually attracted nearly double that for past offers. Some have blamed Allen's football - a rather industrial affair - though his record of never having won a home match for the club probably also contributed.

Allen, for his part, has always been a Marmite character to football fans. Most at home at Barnet, where he has had four separate stints in charge, he has been variously accused of a variety of actions during nights out and on touchlines that would normally see a person in front of a court. Most of them he has vehemently denied, and his reputation is more the stuff of pub talk than actual fact - even if he retains his "Mad Dog" nickname.

Eastleigh, and Donald, are fast learning that - like Dale Vince at Forest Green - bought success isn't that easy in football. Allen saw 13 players arrive in his 84 days, and 19 leave. One of those, Eastleigh stalwart Michael Green, has returned to the club within hours of Allen's dismissal less than two weeks after his departure.

The idea that a fixed amount of money can buy a fixed amount of success is not something that applies to the football world.

Name Droppers

Darlington 1883 are the first reformed football club in a while to seek a reversion of their name to that of the original after five years of existence.

98% of the Supporters Group members voting called to drop the '1883' moniker that had been added to differentiate the new club from the original Darlington FC. '1883' refers to the formation date of the original club.

Their reformation is more unusual than most in that the new club bought some of the assets, and debts, of the old club, partially in a bid to retain the name. They are also one of the few to have had to add something to their name to differentiate rather than remove. Chester City became Chester FC, etc etc.

The club retained the original badge, website address, and even the sell-on rights to certain players sold by the original club. The major difference, technically, was that the company running the club changed and that was enough for the FA to demand a change of name.

News came through on Friday that the FA's Membership Committee had forwarded the application to change to the FA Council with a recommendation for approval, meaning the FA Council are likely to follow suit when they are asked to ratify the change.

For their part, the club rarely use the '1883' tag themselves. The website highlights "Welcome to Darlington Football Club' on the front page, lists the next fixture as 'vs Darlington', and barely mentions the number outside of the technical requirements of FA membership to publish ownership information where the ultimate holding company is Darlington 1883 Ltd.

The FA Council are set to meet in April to decide on the application.

How Much Is Too Much?

Wrexham AFC were relegated to the Conference Premier, now the National League, in 2008. Since then they have had six permanent managers and two caretakers. Only one manager has left at his own accord, with a change made every 18 months or so.

On paper, Dean Keates' record as a football manager so far isn't that impressive. Of eighteen games he has won six, drawn six, and lost six. Four of the wins have come in the last six matches, leaving his record up to the end of 2016 as two wins in eleven. It is his first managerial job, having previously been a player and coach at the club for the past six seasons. Wrexham fans say Keates inherited a poor squad and has done wonders to turn a relegation haunted side into one with a vague hope of a play-off spot.

Keates signed an eighteen month deal in late October. Barely four months later he has now signed a new three and a half year contract. Even Keates told the local press on his new deal: “It was a surprise when they first mentioned it to me."

And so it should be.

This isn't a club whose ownership is new to the game. It is a club who has sacked a series of managers, allowed those managers to issue unsustainable contracts to players, yet seemingly chooses to ignore the lessons of the past and hand out a contract to a manager that is ten times the length of his total experience in the role.

Sometimes you have to stop being a fan when being a Director of a football club, especially one whose owners saw at first hand, as supporters, that poor management can put a club into a financial tailspin.

Silence At The Spireites As The Bolton War Erupts

Club owner Dave Allen has apparently ceased communication with the Board at Chesterfield, leaving the club with a growing debt and an admittance that they have to sell players to continue.

Company Secretary Ashley Carson told the club's AGM that £1.3million has been added to the existing debt pile and that players would have to go to try and balance the books. Company debt is somewhere around £10million with the sizable amount of money owed to Allen, but he is looking for a £15million return after storming out in November.

“We look at where we are at the moment in terms of cash forecast and we know what sort of figures we’ve got to realise in the summer from the sale of a player to keep things going into another year.”

That was Carson's ominous comment to the AGM. That the club could not effectively continue without selling a player and, with the £1.3million loss similar to the previous season, it's likely that is the sort of figure they are looking for.

Current chairman Mike Warner, Allen's replacement, told the press of his 'reluctance' to take the job and admitted the administration of the club had been a 'shambles'. Warner says Allen is considering his options but, with such a large price tag on a club losing huge sums in League One and facing relegation, he may have few available.

Over at Bolton, the Supporters Trust has told members that it would need to raise up to £30million to rescue the club. The latest much delayed financial figures cast significant doubt on the future of the club with the current structure hemorrhaging money, forcing the sale of star forward Zach Clough for £2.5million to keep the club running.

Owners Ken Anderson and Dean Holdsworth are now in public warfare after statement and counter statement in the press. Both have threatened each other with legal action, and Holdsworth says he is speaking to the League over the club's ownership.

The Trotters are in the promotion hunt in League One, largely due to their near Premier League wage bill, but run the risk of financial meltdown without agreement between the two parties, with the club having to reach settlement with their stadium catering partner over a £120,000 unpaid bill that saw a winding up petition offered.

Anderson has met with the Supporters Trust in an 'open, frank and meaningful meeting', and the Trust plans a similar meeting with Holdsworth as it tries to wade through the broken down relationship and media posturing.

Our Friends In The North

When you lose your biggest asset life can be particularly difficult. A pair of National North sides are facing harsh futures due to their stadium problems.

At Worcester City, once non-league giants, their long standing stadium woes have reached crisis point. A circular was sent around clubs that was, in effect, offering their entire squad up for loan or transfer. First out the door was their prize asset - 40 year old goalscorer Lee Hughes. Whatever your thoughts on the player's personal behaviour he got the job done. 14 goals from 27 games in a side threatened with relegation saw him plucked by their relegation rivals Telford within a couple of hours of the notice being circulated.

Worcester's woes lie in an abysmal deal to sell their old St Georges Lane home signed nine years ago. The veteran stadium was tired, needed an overhaul, but was more viable as a building site for housing than a new stadium. A deal was struck, plans were drawn up, and a new edge-of-town stadium was scheduled to be built.

Only it never got built.

The contract selling St Georges Lane had a series of clauses about the build of a new stadium but missed a major one. It didn't obligate the building firm to complete the new stadium before it demolished the old one.

Worcester were given notice, St Georges Lane demolished, and the club have now spent the last four years as tenants at other grounds. Kidderminster first, and now Bromsgrove where the going is, at least, cheaper. The cash pile that they were left with has been eroded due to the costs of operating a National North side without large chunks of the commercial income usually associated with a club at that level, with attendances well down over the seasons.  An average of 665 have come through the gates this term, roughly the same as the last season at Kidderminster, but some 20% down on their St Georges Lane numbers.

Relegation seems likely this summer with the squad set for further exits. Caretaker boss John Snape admitted to the press: “The players are up for sale. This will be a horrible feeling for the players. But the survival of the club is important and maybe a new start is good for Worcester City.”

Snape hoped the players would still be paid by the club, a hint perhaps at the depth of the problems that they now face.

Meanwhile, at Gloucester City they have a stadium they can't use.

Meadow Park flooded 10 years ago, and was initially written off as a stadium site due to the cost of the rebuild, and the problems faced with potential future floods. New sites were sought but none were suitable so, eventually, the club focused their attention back to getting the rotting stadium rebuilt and safe from further flooding.

The Tigers have bounced around various grounds. Cirencester, Forest Green, and Cheltenham have all hosted them. Their next stop is outside Gloucestershire, much to the annoyance of supporters, with Evesham set to host for at least the next season as Cheltenham grow tired of their pitch being over used.

The problem now is similar to Worcester. Having had limited commercial income and a limited income, the club - or more accurately owner Eamon McGurk - is running out of money to get the stadium right having kept the club competitive in National North. In a lengthy local newspaper interview, McGurk blames bad past decisions on the club's current plight. Every crossroads in the club recent past seems to have seen the wrong choice made, from the decision to abandon Meadow Park to the moves around the County and even the selection of one potential Director over another.

McGurk admits he doesn't attend home games. He says he doesn't want to attend the matches while they're played at the grounds of other sides meaning he barely attends matches at all. Bizarrely, and unlike Worcester, their attendances have increased over their nomadic period by 45%, from 300 to this seasons 437, partly due to the increased away followings from sides like Stockport.

Both Worcester and Gloucester need help from people who have the reach to build new grounds but are currently not willing or able to assist.

Orient Depress

Ever since Barry Hearn sold Leyton Orient, the club has been on a slow train to nowhere.

Hearn took control of the club in 1995, for £5, and proceeded to redevelop the stadium whilst overseeing a steady rise of the football side. Brisbane Road was renamed the Matchroom Stadium, after Hearn's sporting empire, and redeveloped on all four sides in complicated deals with flats and offices attached.

On the pitch the club took 11 years under Hearn to win promotion to League One, but steadily established their position and come within a whisker of the Championship with a play-off final defeat to Peterborough in 2014.

Weeks after Wembley the club was sold to Italian Francesco Becchetti for a reported £4million and the decline started almost immediately.

The club had four managers within three months of Becchetti's arrival and ended up being relegated by the end of that first season. Hearn had seven managers in nearly 20 years. Becchetti, currently on ten in two and a half years, saw his last two out the door after just nine games each.

The current incumbent has been promoted from within, but whether it was an appointment out of necessity or ability is anyone's guess at this time. Daniel Webb was assistant to the Under 18's manager, Andy Edwards, 18 months ago. Two weeks ago he was appointed to replace Edwards as First Team manager.

Orient have lost every game so far in 2017, six so far, having last won on Boxing Day. Their latest loss, at home to Morecambe, saw five youth team products appear in the first XI. Not a problem usually, but two of them were just 17 and there were three more youngsters on the bench. There's been plenty of talk about the Premier League u23 sides being unable to cope with first team football against League Two sides - half of Orient's matchday squad were under 21 that night.

The owner has alienated supporters with a wall of silence over the goings-on at Brisbane Road, and the Leyton Orient Fans Trust (dodging the LOST acronym that would have come from the tradition reference as a Supporters Trust) are holding a Special General Meeting in March to discuss disaster planning and set up a 'fighting fund'.

Their call is for Becchetti to either leave, or implement a hands-off role and leave the business to be run by a competent CEO that talks to supporters and a football manager that knows the level they operate at and can be left alone to do his job.

Given the track record of Italians owning English football clubs, both options seem unlikely.

The Tragic Of The FA Cup

Last night, the second string of Premier League strugglers Leicester City took on the reserves of Championship promotion hopefuls Derby County. The game was televised on the most watched TV channel at prime viewing time.

The two between them changed 18 of the 22 starters from their League matches at the weekend.

What has the FA Cup become?

The winners of the FA Cup Final receive £1.8million in prize money. That figure is only around a third of what a Championship club receives each year in TV revenue. You are more richly rewarded for finishing 21st in the Championship, 41st in the overall football pyramid, than you are by winning the "World's premier cup competition".

Ten years ago, Manchester United and Arsenal were lambasted for fielding weakened sides in the competition with the riches of the Champions League more appealing. Now, with the ever increasing TV revenue in the domestic game, sides from the second and third tiers are fielding weakened sides in this once prestigious competition.

There have been many calls that the only way to halt the slide into indifference is to hand a Champions League place to the winners of the FA Cup. It seems debatable that the great and good of European football would want to risk such an option, since the riches involved in that competition rely on having the big drawing clubs in the competition.

The winners of the FA Cup have, primarily, been one of the major clubs. Man Utd, Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, and Man City have won 19 of the last 21 finals. The other two winners were the deeply unfashionable Wigan and Portsmouth - now both residing well outside the top flight. However it is often one of the unfashionable clubs that makes the final to meet the eventual winner.

In the last 15 years two clubs have reached the final from outside the Premier League. This season half of the Fifth Round qualifiers are from outside the Premier League. Every one is facing a Premier League side in that round. The Sixth Round may not even feature a top flight side, however the major guns of English football are still in the draw and are likely to progress despite fielding weak sides in prior rounds.

The cream rises to the top, but the milk is very much off.

Ticking The No Publicity Box

I can somewhat sympathise with Morecambe supporters after a third man claimed to be the owner of the Shrimps yesterday.

Graham Burnard described himself as a reluctant owner who never 'intended or wanted' to own the club. He says that the G50 Holding Ltd company he set up for original new owner Diego Lemos has reverted to his control as Lemos never paid him for the work done to transfer the shares to the disappearing Brazilian.

This news came after Lemos secured a court injunction against a sale of the club to Joseph Cala, with his former partner Abdulrahman Al-Hashemi paying the wage bill at the club yesterday. It was Al-Hashemi that sold the club, as the holding company, to Cala, and seems to be the only one of the three foreign investors that actually has a solid background.

As for Burnard, the legal report of a battle over a will suggests the man originally described as a tax advisor is twice bankrupt, in 1999 and 2013, but the family owned a number of sizable properties in the North East. He does not appear on the current Insolvency Service register, meaning the occurrences appear to be discharged.

How long he will hold ownership for is anyone's guess, but Burnard told the local press he is working on behalf of Al-Hashemi and that the club is 'not for sale' with Cala having been told he is not wanted at the Globe Arena by current club chairman Peter McGuigan, the former owner that started the current chain of events, after apparently offending the unpaid staff on his first day at the club.

Meanwhile, over at Bolton feuding owners are still to resolve the future of the club. Ken Anderson remains in discussions with Dean Holdsworth to secure the former striker's share of the club, with Anderson refusing to solely fund the ongoing losses at the club until he assumes full control.

Anderson says that striker Zach Clough was sold to cover debts, with Holdsworth refusing to put money in alongside Anderson. The pair have been feuding for four months now since originally agreeing a deal for Anderson to assume control of Holdsworth's 40% stake.

The Trotters have not won in 2017, earning three draws in six matches, leaving them to drop seven points behind the automatic promotion race in League One.

Just About Managing

The dangers of keeping a grip on reality at a football club are widespread. The latest case at Wrexham is a warning to all.

The National League club apparently allowed former manager Gary Mills to sign players to contracts that had trigger clauses extending them into the following season once a certain number of games were played by the player.

Every player had a set number of matches to start before their clause was triggered. Some of them already have been, but a crisis point had been reached with a string of players set to trigger their clauses and Mills' replacement nervously eyeing up his long terms plans.

These are generally players not necessarily in new manager Dean Keates' plans or capable of fitting into the future budget. Top scorer John Rooney sits on 29 starts and 11 goals, but has now found himself on the bench for the last two games as match number 30 triggers a new deal. Two further players have agreed terms to not trigger their clauses, and a few more are on the verge of triggering their extra year.

Managers have favourite players, or have a preference to a type of player. Often changing a manager is so much more than just him. His backroom staff tend to go out the door, and there is usually upheaval in the playing squad - and that comes at a cost.

At Newport, Graham Westley has all but frozen out a trio of players signed by a predecessor that he no longer wants. He's brought in 13 new players, and axed nine others, as well as having a clear out among the coaching staff. Even the club secretary departed, which was probably a first.

It's an expensive hobby sacking managers. Even the Chief Executive and Director of Football at Wrexham both left in November, a week after Mills' departure. Though the news about the clauses could be a potential reason why, we'll probably never know.

Spinning Globe

The farce at the Globe Arena seems to continue without resolution with the latest news being the announcement of Joseph Cala as the club's new owner.

Cala, an Italian-American who has previously been linked to a takeover of Portsmouth prior to their collapse in 2012. He had also spent a full 11 days as owner of Italian second tier side Salernitana the year before.

You can see why his tenure at that club was so brief. A debut interview with local Morecambe paper The Visitor talked of installing undersoil heating, overhauling the pitch, saving an eye watering £600,000 from franchising out the bars and catering at the Globe Arena, and listing the club on the American Stock Exchange alongside Manchester United - to bring in £1million of 'free' money each year.

Cala's company has a website - http://www.calacorp.com/ - written in poor English and naming a string of the world's top companies as partners in their developments. Their business? Building underwater holiday resorts. None appear to have actually been built, with a second website offering only mocked-up pictures and sample videos of what the views on offer could be.

Cala was dubbed the "Man from Atlantis" by Pompey fans.

Whether Cala is the owner of the club is still in the air though, despite his assertion that he paid a six figure sum for it. Diego Lemos, the disappearing Brazilian, resurfaced last week to reassert his ownership of the club and accuse people of attempting to stealing the ownership of the club from him.

Durham based tax consultant Graham Burnard is now the sole director of G50 Holdings Limited, the ultimate holding company of the club, replacing Lemos two weeks ago with the company address also moved to his registered address. Former Lemos partner Abdulraham Al-Hashemi has been speaking with current Club directors over the state of the finances, and appears to have had a hand in the transfer of ownership, but the club remains in a perilous state.

Wages have gone unpaid in January, with Cala saying he has the money once the Football League agrees to his takeover. The 3G complex at the Globe Arena, a separate company, has gone into Administration and made its staff redundant. Cala has called on the existing Club directors to step down before he puts any money in, but that he may retain some of them for a reformed board.

Ultimately, Lemos is likely to disappear back to the anonymity he came from, another football ownership mistake that the FA seem unable to stop. Whether Cala is the true saviour of the Shrimps remains a matter of debate.