THE BREAKDOWN: Does County Cricket Have a Future, ‘Small’ Clubs Are Outsmarting The Elite & Chelsea’s Alonso Move (E20)

23:52It would just be covering all the various things that you say about the show we did last week. Which is great, by the way. Thank you. Which is fantastic. And the more the better. And the more the better, which is why we're thinking about doing a separate show just covering this particular point. But we did discuss last week the topic of the top tennis players potentially going on strike. I've got it. It's the top of mine as well. It's brilliant. Go on. What did someone say to you? Well, they didn't say it to me. They said it about me. I'm very hurt. Do you want me to read it out? I think the background, the context to this is that I was sceptical about whether a strike by the top tennis players earning 20 million bucks a year was really appropriate.

24:32And Franzen1016 turned around and said, posh guy against strike action. Shocker. One of my all-time favourite comments, Franzen1016. Thank you for that. But Charlie then decided to get on the phone to me and actually push back against this statement because of a past life that he may have had, that you may all find very hard to believe. It's a matter of record. I'm not saying it's entirely my credit either. But the truth is, Franzen, if that is indeed your name, probably unlike most of us on this show and certainly many of our listeners to this show, I was actually for a long time a trade union shop steward who passed the last major strike balance on Fleet Street in the newspaper industry.

25:12so I am very much not a posh bloke who's against strike action I have actually had the privilege of being a trade union leader you're a picket line guy well do you know what picket line was only a few days away when the Telegraph caved I was working the Telegraph group at the time and before the strike actually happened the management called us in and we had a sensible discussion brilliant well there you go Franzen I mean you know actually think about it you're saying there you go Franzen And I think what you actually should be saying is there you go, Yannick. There you go, Yannick. Charlie's shown you the way.

25:47Just hold your nerve long enough and the big guys will bend. I completely agree. There were a couple of others that caught my eye recently just while we were on it. Alistair Wood commented last week with a brilliant addition. He said, fully on board for a spinoff show called The Drunk Down, referencing the couple of beers that may have snuck into the studio. We're recording this in the afternoon, not the evening, hence why it's back on the waters. But we did get a lot of love for it. Yeah, and there's a little bit of me that feels that we haven't been entirely true to ourselves, Charles. I know.

26:15What we said last week. Because it's not 10 a.m., is it? It's not 10 a.m. It's 3. It's actually 3 o 'clock. It's halfway through the afternoon, which I know for some people who work in respectable careers might be a little bit early to get on the beers. But referring to my previous journalistic career, if you hadn't had a pint by this time of the day, you weren't a proper journalist. I can tell you, let alone a serious podcast of these days. And what we actually said last week was that if it worked, then we would keep on drinking during podcasts. The show last week did our record numbers. It did.

26:44Yeah, it did. And yet we have not followed through. We've shown that sort of lack of consistency and lack of clarity in leadership that we so criticize in other sporting leaders. I just don't remember saying it. I probably, you know, I've had one too many. That's because it was me that said it. Anyway, no, the drunk down. I like it. and actually on your phone and the final one i'll bring up which i enjoyed greatly for one reason in particular it said i wonder if you two should try a radio phone in format i'm awful with names but the guy on the left can go on monologues to rival any lbc presenter now he's watching it right so that's our camera angle so the guy on the left is you i my favorite bit though about that is i'm awful with names but the guy on the left i mean the best thing about this show is you only need to remember one name so thomas johnson who sent that comment in it is the charlies it is charlie on the left charlie junior if if you want to refer to me is is how it's generally phrased reading through some of these it's brilliant to see you guys send it in honestly all seriousness you do um you contribute amazingly to it and we love it and we will absolutely look to speak more to you and answer more of the comments that you put across because there was even a call for us to cover cabaddy the other day well you say even i mean back in the 1990s cabaddy was the coming sport sorry cavity used to be on used to be on channel four so i'm super looking forward to getting back into that yeah brilliant absolutely fantastic um well charlie thank you for the show today well done no i joke because we actually have uh we have a great topic to to get into now um and one that i've been keen to do we've kind of you know moved around it a little bit in the past as we've talked about cricket and cricket in this country in particular in england but it's a particular relevance at the moment because there is both a broader issue across English County Cricket that's been far more historical.

28:32There's also a very kind of real-time example where we can bring some of the information out and give you some proper context to it. What I'm talking about is a disagreement. I don't really know. Again, you'll probably say I should put a stronger word on there, but a disagreement between - Furious row. A furious row between Lancashire County Cricket - Civil war. Between Lancashire County Cricket and its members or a rebel group. Well, you see, you've just made a false distinction there. You've said there's a row between Lancashire County Cricket Club and its members. But of course, Lancashire County Cricket Club is its members because it is a mutualized entity, which means that it is member owned.

29:09And effectively, it's a row between the members of Lancashire County Cricket Club and the executives and non-exectives who are employed and engaged to act on their behalf. And that makes it a proper civil war. Right. That's not like an owner of some club and his paid executives in some fight against the fan base. Right. This is the owners of the club fighting against the people who, in theory, they appoint. Quite quite an interesting situation. So Lancashire County Cricket Club, let's just just put a bit of context around this. There are three, maybe four giants of English county cricket. okay so that is Surrey who are the biggest county cricket club by revenue and by success in their history in the country they own the oval and have a great catchment area they're right in the centre of London and so on and so forth and they have been very successful in the last 10 years or so as well as having big revenues as well as updating the oval big success story sorry county cricket club very successful just because it's going to feed in on cricket very successful on non-cricket absolutely Warwickshire county cricket club Plays at Edgbaston, a real bear pit for England cricket, where it's probably one of the grounds with the biggest atmosphere.

30:27It's a really rowdy, loud place. Again, they make good money. Again, generally speaking, Warwickshire have been more or less successful in the last 10 to 15 years. Then you have Yorkshire, who play at Headingley. And Headingley is a historic test cricket ground of England, which is currently not being used very much by England, because it's in bad nick. Okay, and we'll come back on to that later on after discussing Lancashire. And then you've got Lancashire. Lancashire play at Old Trafford. And Old Trafford is another of the great historic test venues of English test cricket. But Warwickshire at Birmingham.

30:59You've got Surrey in London, albeit they share London with Middlesex, but they're much the bigger club within London. And then you've got Lancashire in Manchester, which would be the third biggest city in the country. And then you've got Yorkshire at Leeds, which would be one of the next contenders for the biggest cities in the country. So where do we start this? Langshire County Cricket Club, huge county cricket history, very successful in the past, particularly in one day cricket. Responsible for a lot of the most famous England cricketers, Andrew Flintoff, Mike Atherton, Jimmy Anderson. And these are quite recent superstars of English cricket.

31:40And also the home of a lot of very famous overseas players who have come to play here. People like Clive Lloyd, the West Indian great, so on and so forth. Right. This is a big, big club. And if you go to Old Trafford, you're very aware, wow, this is a big place. Right. This is a serious, serious place. But around the match of 2010, it effectively was facing bankruptcy. Old Trafford had lost test match status because it was deemed as a facility not to be up to holding test matches. It was crumbling, basically. And as a result of that, because when you're not hosting international cricket, when you are one of these big county cricket clubs, that places a lot of pressure on your finances because you're still financing a big arena, but you're not having the international matches that help you really do that.

32:23Whereas if you're a smaller county cricket club, your operating costs are much lower. All right, you don't get the England matches to bring that extra revenue in, but you might at least be able to just operate in a rather smaller type of way. But it's very important. I spoke to the chief executive of Surrey, Steve Elworthy, and he outlined that an international cricket match for Surrey is worth five to six million. And Surrey's total revenues are? 55 to 60. Right. So one single oval test match is 10 % of Surrey's total revenue, and they will quite often have two. Yeah. Right. So if you think about Surrey's revenue of 55 million quid, 10 million quid of that coming from a couple of test matches, but they also have one-day internationals and so on and so on, you might end up getting towards almost half of that annual total revenue coming from hosting England matches.

33:08It's big business. And that's where Lancashire or Trafford losing the status to host it, where revenue is still good, but not at 55 to 60 million is a big problem for them, and therefore required something to happen to change that. Right. So in 2012, in a terrible situation, they appoint a man called Daniel Gidney. and Daniel Gidney had previously been running the Rico Arena, which is Coventry City's stadium. But at the time, Coventry had lost control around that time of their own stadium and it was being run as a general leisure facility. They got a casino, they got a hotel. Yes, they also have a pitch, which I think maybe Wasps are playing there.

33:45And Coventry sometimes are playing there, sometimes not depending on what the deal currently was between Coventry City and the Rico Arena. But the Rico Arena was a significant size standalone venue without operating its own sports club. So Daniel Gidney was operating the Ricoh Arena as a sports business executive with no responsibility for playing matters. And then prior to that, he ran hospital catering services for Sodexo. Again, large-scale venues with lots of varying catering needs, etc. So these are quite complex jobs and where you operate under quite a lot of pressure and where the margins are thin.

34:26So Daniel Gidney arrives at Lancashire County Cricket Club having made a good job of what are difficult jobs, which is operating significant size leisure venues, having lost all of their England contracts, having a crumbling venue, not very well run club, going bankrupt, etc. So Daniel Gidney comes in, this is an important part of the story. Daniel Gidney comes into Lancashire Cricket Club with the club facing bankruptcy in the abyss in absolute total catastrophe, right? With the club very much acting as a county cricket club. Mutualised, owned and run by its members, but effectively in appointing a chief executive like him, they delegated authority past the parcel for turning the club's finances around.

35:13And it's hard to say that Daniel Kidney has not done a very, very, very good job of the job that he was appointed to do. So, 13 years later, that$9 million has turned into$35 million a year of revenue. They've regained their England status. Old Trafford has been effectively redeveloped. There are two hotels there, Conference Centre, and the whole thing is now not quite on the same level as the Oval, but getting there. It's a very serious... It's a great venue. I was there last summer for the England-India test match. It was great. What a great venue. Yeah. Right. But the problem is, when you have a brilliant thing happening at a club, at a cricket club at a sports entity, sorry, a sports team, and really the standout success that you have is the opening of a Hilton hotel in your tenure, you can see where there's going to be probably some tension.

36:01Right. So as a sports executive and a sports investor, I just want to give the beleaguered kidney a round of applause, right? What this guy has done in 13 years is going to have positive repercussions for Langshire County Cricket Club for 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, 40 years. So why has he just had to announce his retirement? Because the membership are very upset with the state of the cricket team. And most importantly, the traditional form of cricket, which is the four-day county cricket system and fans of language. Oh, they've been crap at one day as well. Yeah. Right. So it's not that they're very upset.

36:38It goes well beyond that. They've submitted a vote of no confidence. Yeah. Right. In the board. This is not just in Guidney. This is in the board as a whole. So these rebels aren't just some dusty members. This includes the aforementioned legends, right? So people like David Lloyd and Mike Atherton, the elite of the England cricket establishment. These are the people who played for England, coached England, who hold the biggest media jobs in the country. These most high-profile cricket people that there are in the whole world, who also happen to be legends and members of Langshire County Cricket Club, have submitted a vote of no confidence backed by thousands of the members in the board.

37:19That has effectively, in some way, shape or form, made Gidney's position untenable, and he has announced his retirement. But the board is still in place, and the board is trying to resist this. You can't even call it a takeover because they'd be taking over their own club. How do you describe it? it's like taking back control of their own club now what's the complaint charlie mentioned it really right which is that during those 13 years of business regeneration langshire county cricket club have been frankly speaking crap at cricket right during that time they have won one trophy it was a one-day trophy of some kind and they have been relegated from the first division of the championship right so if you think about lancashire's status within the game as being one of the big three or four clubs, that's kind of the equivalent of Tottenham going down.

38:06So Tottenham have gone down, and on top of that, all the former Tottenham legends have basically said, we don't think that there is anybody at this club who understands anything about football. I'm not saying that's just like Tottenham. That's just what Tottenham fans say. But the difference is that whereas Tottenham fans do not own Tottenham, Lancashire Crownie Cricket Club members do own Lancashire. But the board they have is resisting this and have basically started tweaking the rules around how such a no confidence motion might be treated. Didn't put it. There was no wet signature, wasn't that?

38:45So first of all, historically, they have allowed electronic voting. Now they've said you actually pretty much have to turn up with an ink and quill and literally sort of do this. And secondly, they decided to hold the AGM on a bank holiday Monday. So this is like North Korean levels of governance, right? This is sort of genius. It is a form of genius, you're right. So this is civil war. Now, there's something which I found interesting about this, having just applauded Daniel Gidney for his business acumen and what he's done from very difficult circumstances to turn around the financial fortunes of Lancashire County Cricket Club.

39:22There's another element to his legacy, which he is very proud of, and which the chairman of Lancashire County Cricket Club, Dame Sarah Story, the multi-gold gold medal winning Paralympian, she is also very proud of. So this is a quote from Dame Sarah Story on Daniel Gidney's resignation. In addition, brackets to turning the business around, Daniel has driven gender equity at both board and executive level, creating one of the most diverse leadership teams in UK elite sport. Beyond the financials, he has also been a passionate and influential advocate for gender equity. So this is regarded by the board as being a key part of Daniel Gidney's strength.

40:10What he's done is basically really focused on women's cricket, on pushing girls cricket, and on getting lots of people onto the board who either come from different communities or who are female, or whatever it might be. What the rebel leaders, including the former, the England legends are saying is, you don't have anyone on your board who understands anything about cricket. Yeah. Right? And the result of that is, is that we're crap at cricket. And the point of our club, because we're a non-profit making organization, is not to open hotels. The point of our club is to be good at cricket. Yeah.

40:46Right? So this is where the whole thing sort of really runs up against each other. And my experience of elite sport, having seen it through Formula One and horse racing and football is that... How can I put this without running foul of the cancellation police? I think I've probably already been cancelled. Charlie, I think you've been cancelled quite a few times. Long cancelled. That's why I have to come on a podcast. I should be on the BBC. I have to come on a podcast and say because basically I've been cancelled. Someone did actually say in the comments that last week that you were obviously very misunderstood on Sunderland Till I Die and he's delighted that you've come across in this manner.

41:20I don't know what he thought I'd come across like on Sunderland Till I Die. Anyhow, there we go. Now, elite sport, I'm just going to put this blandly, has no space for these bromides. Unfortunately, elite sport is brutal. You cannot afford to be box ticking when it comes to elite sport. Can you run a successful candy cricket club that encourages girls' sport? Absolutely, yes. Can you stuff your board full of people who are there to tick various diverse boxes? Yeah. No, no, you can't. Because if your competitors are stuffing their boards with people who are experts in elite cricket and you do not, then you are going to fail at cricket and then you're going to have problems.

42:04What's happened here is that the board of Langshire County Cricket Club have been marking their own homework. They've been saying, we've built two hotels and we've welcomed onto our board lots of people from diverse backgrounds. And the members of Langshire County Cricket Club are going, we don't give money. We don't care about the extra hotel, the second hotel. We don't care about how diverse your board is. We want to beat Yorkshire, right? And we are members of this cricket club because we want to be part of something which is successful in sporting terms. But they also want to exist. And that's the balance, right?

42:36That's the friction you were talking about. Well, I'm going to come on to that with Yorkshire. But can I just jump in there? Because on your point, Daniel Gidney's response to a lot of the attempts to remove him and the board have been interesting. And I have a Belgian football quote that he put out. Yeah, well, I'm glad he's... Very good, Charles. He said, ECB chairman Richard Thompson said, we want cricket to be the most inclusive sport, which is a big thing to say. Let's look at a vote of no confidence in our board. We've got some amazing people. We've got a number of women and we've got John Abrahams and Naveen Singh.

43:05And this feels a bit like I'm an old white entitled man that wants to get on the board of the club. And they don't like the fact that in our county partnership agreements, we have to have 40 % women on our board and 22 % representative of ethnic minority. They acknowledge that it is not legally binding, but they want to put pressure on the board to resign. Effectively, that is bullying and intimidatory behavior. Of course he has to resign after that because he's basically abusing his own employers, which is not viable. That's when they're going for the board. Yeah. My point, we have fans that want it all and we're all guilty of it.

43:43Yeah. There is an element here of, as a chief executive of a sports club, as you know, any decision that you make you have to appreciate the fans need to come on that with you in some way because the majority of the time if you're coming in to really shake something up it's probably not going to be in a way that the fans are used to experiencing their club or their sport so if you are going to try and save a club from bankruptcy and it's not going to be done by improving how they're playing on the pitch you need to make sure that that membership is absolutely integral to how you bring that club forward over the next 10 years, whatever it may be, even if some of it is completely pointless posturing, even if some of it doesn't have any influence on the outcome.

44:24This is a hearts and minds game at the top level as much as it is a delivery game. Totally agree. So yesterday I was listening to the radio in the car and they were interviewing the chief executive of Yorkshire County Cricket Club, a guy called Sanjay Patel. I'd never heard Sanjay Patel speak before, but I was very, very impressed. Why? Because Yorkshire County Cricket Club is in the middle of a controversy or a contretemps. It's not a civil war. It's not like that. But it's the board of Yorkshire County Career Club wants to demutualise Yorkshire County Career Club. That is to take it away from being a member-owned organisation to taking it into being a private limited company because that then gives it a structure which means it can attract external capital to come into the club to do what needs to be done with that club, chief of which is developing headingly.

45:11Because if you remember what we said is that Old Trafford had lost its test match status 10 years ago, 15 years ago. Headingley has not officially lost its test match status, but it's not due to hold a test match for the next two or three years, which is pretty dramatic for Headingley, right? And disastrous financially, as we discussed earlier on. And I'd say as a fan, I'm devastated by that because I think Headingley is an amazing place to have a test match. And Leeds is a great place to have a test match. It's just the history of the place is unbelievable. And the atmosphere, we're saying at Edgbaston earlier on, you know, the West Terrace at Headingley is, you know, serious, serious atmosphere.

45:43So there are many amongst the membership base who are in favour of this. And there are also many, as you might imagine, amongst the Yorkshire County Cricket Club membership base who are against this because they don't like the idea of private money coming into the club where it might, quote, expect a return because that's what investment is. That's the key, right? Right. So Sanjay Patel was being quizzed in some detail and quite forcefully by the radio interviewer who was putting the points very eloquently, actually, of the people who do not like this move. his riposte, which was delivered very calmly and in a very balanced way, was if we want Yorkshire County Cricket Club to be amongst the elite performers in cricket, and if we want to make sure that we offer young people from Yorkshire the opportunity to become what they need to be able to become, Headingley has to be able to become a world-class venue.

46:44the amount of capital that is required to do that is not achievable from within our membership base we can't simply put out a capital call to our members saying by the way we need 10 000 pounds from each of you therefore the money has to come from external sources we can't achieve it simply through bank lending and therefore it needs to be private capital private capital can't come into a charitable situation except as a donation if we could achieve a donation that would be lovely but no one's come forward and offered a donation. What we do know is that there are people with private capital who would be interested in taking an equity stake in Yorkshire County Cricket Club in return for putting money in, not to then control the cricket club because the structures we're looking at putting in place would not enable that, but to make sure that if Yorkshire County Cricket Club did become very much more successful and the commercial limited company bit of that therefore was perceived to become more valuable, that ultimately, of course, they could potentially sell their stake and get their investment back.

47:41Maybe even including a bit of a profit, maybe including a bit of a loss. But without that, how can we actually bring in the money to redevelop Headingley and get England cricket matches coming back to Leeds? Well, you can't. Right? So the answer is you can't. He could so easily have gone for the Yorkshire County Cricket Club members as Daniel Gidney did. He kept on resisting it. He kept on saying, if it is decided by the members that they want to stay fully mutualized, that is their right. It's their club. It's my job as chief executive to lay the facts out in front of them as to what the implications of that would be.

48:14They would have to accept that there will not be England matches here. They would have to accept that as a county cricket club, we would not be able to compete financially at the top of the county championship against the other big boys of English cricket. If everyone says that they are OK with that, then I too am OK with that. But I want to make sure that they fully understand the implications of it. I thought you handled it absolutely brilliantly. But he kept coming back to, sorry, the reason why I brought it up is that Sanjay Patel kept coming back to being successful at cricket. This was a continuing thread in the conversation is we want Yorkshire Cricket Club to be successful at cricket.

48:48And this, I think, is the thing that has provoked the massive divide at Lancashire is that if you read the quotes from Daniel Gidney and Sarah Storey, the chief executive and chairman of Lancashire County Cricket Club, not just now, but over a period of time, Their own priorities don't appear to be the same as the people who ultimately employ them. And that doesn't matter which business you're in, Charlie, that's a problem. So that's what I meant by communication. If Gidney's great in one thing, right, and he's smashing it out of the park, it doesn't really matter if he's not bringing the fans along with him.

49:17But would you not need then a chairman who did represent? You would. Right? And the problem here is they've doubled down on two people who come from exactly the same point of view. And Sarah's story and Daniel Gidney's point of view is not the same as the members' point of view. Next, Yorkshire have a chairman called Colin Graves, who used to be the ECB. Mr. Cricket. He's brilliant. Mr. Cricket. And actually, I think he'll be leading the meeting with the shareholders very soon to decide on this. And the demutualization piece is an interesting one right now because English cricket has just had significant investment.

49:49People will know about the 100. Interestingly, Yorkshire were the only team to sell 100 % of their franchise. So they have gone from the Northern Superchargers to Sunrisers Leeds, one of the IPL groups. and they sold it for about it was about 100 million and this money was very uh very carefully segmented in certain ways so the clubs couldn't just use it to offset yeah running losses running losses basically it had to be used for projects so when you're looking at this kind of double thing of demutualization plus selling the stake having a very specific purpose to go and create long-term value bring test matches back that's an investable model so if i was looking at demutualization right now, I go, as an outside investor, I could actually attract something.

50:30I'm making my cricket, my county cricket team very investable, which they haven't been for a very long time. Well, I'm sorry, they have been literally uninvestable. Well, uninvestable. As a mutualized business, you are literally uninvestable. To be really clear, and as we were going through this, I just took a slightly broader look at some of the numbers. Leonard Curtis last year did a very comprehensive financial study conducted on English domestic cricket. The total revenue of all 18 counties was 306 million. to put that into context Aston Villa's last year was 378 million so all 18 counties made 306 million eight of the 18 counties ran at a loss in their financial report like that yeah I actually thought it'd be more than that yeah but without ECB support and 100 income you know it's very questionable whether some of the counties would survive and that came through when looking at the percentage of revenue that was reliant on ECB funding so Surrey for example we've mentioned 55-ish million in revenue, 6 % of that revenue is from ECB funding.

51:26You look at Northamptonshire at the bottom end, 71 % of their revenue is ECB funding. Yeah, so you're looking at ECB funding basically being about 3 million per club, but that 3 million at Surrey is 5%, whereas the 3 million at Northampton, whose total revenues are 5.5? Yeah, 5.5 % is that. It's 70%. Revenue ratio 12 to 1, really, between Surrey there. You've got the big three, Surrey, Lancashire, and Warwickshire, right at the top generated 44 % of all county cricket revenue between them so and going back to the Yorkshire point it will be a dagger through the heart of Yorkshiremen to hear the big three being described as Warwickshire Lancashire and Surrey which is Sanjay Patel's point which is that the two big historic power bases of English cricket have been Yorkshire and Surrey now Warwickshire and Lancashire absolutely in the next tiny little next tier but Yorkshire and Surrey are the ones who won the most county championships they're the ones who provide most English legends and have had two of the stadiums that have always been test venues, have always been some of those famous test venues.

52:24And this is a challenge, though, to the members and the fans as well, right? We've talked about this a few times. No club, no sports team in this day and age has a right to survive. You have to support it. And the numbers, so interestingly, the ECB actually stopped reporting county championship figures after COVID. But what they have been able to see is that in 2018, it was around 600 ,000 and that dropped to about 545 in 21. and then 22, their guess is around 410 and it's gone to 390 since then. So you've had a 35 % decline in county championship. They've also switched the calendar, which is not helpful to county championship cricket.

52:57It used to be played at various moments throughout the summer, but the advent of the 100 and the prevalence of T20 cricket has meant that county championship matches have been shunted to the first part of the season and the back end of the season when really county championship cricket is the type of thing that needs to be watched on a nice sunny day because you want to be there all day. But also, Charlie, T20 blast matches regularly exceed 15 ,000, 100 has been touching 20. So prioritizing in a calendar based on the interest of the fan. You know, if there is this absolute determination to establish these county teams as four-day teams, they need to start making that county championship match viable.

53:33Well, I think that's a story for another day because that goes back into a discussion we had when we started doing this podcast about the relative importance of test and one-day cricket and the importance of English cricket prioritizing the development of test players over necessarily 2020 players. Because ultimately that's where the general public in this country views the success of the England cricket team primarily through the lens of are we beating India or Australia at test matches. So there are lots of complications in that. Brendan McCollum, the shift in narrative as part of retaining the services of McCollum has been that they were going to pay far more attention to county cricket in some of that selection, even though he may not be attending a lot of it, as we know.

54:11Well, you say a lot of it. Any of it. Why? Well, because he's on holiday. still yeah still but just to be quite clear we said we said about two to three months ago by the way do you know the England cricket coach is going to be on holiday at the start of the English cricket season really yeah apparently he's still on holiday now crikey Riley nice work if you can get it to wrap up I just want to say one thing which very sadly this weekend an absolute legend of cricket died Mr Mike Smith MJK Smith as he was known he was 92 I'm saying he's the grandfather of one of my best friends. He played over 50 tests for England.

54:50He played for Warwickshire for 19 years, scored 39 ,800 runs and 637 matches. Also, Charles, the last person to play cricket and rugby for England. Exactly. What a legend. And that's what I was going to say. What a legend. Yeah, I remember seeing pictures of him playing in his specs. And it was interesting, reading a very affectionate article about him in the papers this morning by Jeff Boycott. Really affectionate. I mean, you don't hear Jeff speaking generously about that many people that often. It was like an absolute hagiography. It was almost a tear-in-the-eye job where Boycott was saying, in the early stages of my career, this guy basically was part of the reason why I ended up making it.

55:26He was my captain. I'll always call him my captain. And it was a sort of remarkable tribute to the power that that style of leadership can have, because he was never the greatest batsman. But his ability to get the best out of the very best players like Boycott is why actually his captaincy was a success. Yeah, a great man. a really great cricketer and in the county game in particular of Warwickshire you know one of the most influential figures in the game 39 ,800 I think he went on to become chairman of Warwickshire anyhow on to our final topic we're heading back to the sport of football this topic derives from a detailed observation made by one of our listeners Robert Kramer now unlike Mr Jansen earlier on who made some certain assumptions which turned out to be Jansen sorry Franson Franson Franson 10-16 You used his full name, please, 1016 in there as well.

56:18Unlike Mr. Franson, who made certain assumptions, which turned out to be incorrect, this was an absolute belter of a post for all the right reasons, which is some stuff that we've been discussing a bit on and off here or there, but really adding detail and context to it and then serving it up to us and saying, guys, I want to hear you discuss this. Do you know why it is? I think it's because it's very easy to overlook. We get caught up so much in looking at the successes, the big successes in football and the big failures. Who won this trophy? Who won that trophy? Who's having an absolute disaster?

56:50Who's been fired? Which player's been amazing? And in a lot of sports conversations, that's what drives it. In our sports conversations, we can't just get sucked into this. And some of these stories across Europe this year, as we'll just touch on now, are absolutely incredible of small teams outperforming some of the bigger ones. And we're not just talking about, you know, okay, look, Aston Villa doing really well, but there's still, you know, 378 million in revenue with the sixth biggest wage budget. Former European cup winner. Yeah, exactly. What we're talking about here is FC Tun in Switzerland getting promoted last year, a budget of 4 million euros, pretty much bankrupt three years ago, being saved by a businessman, a local CEO injecting 3 million into the club.

57:30They then get promoted and they've now won the Swiss League and will be back in the Champions League. I say back in it because they were actually in it 20 years ago playing the likes of Arsenal. Dennis Bergkamp, 90th minute winner in that in 2005. but basically from that moment they got about 20 million in revenue champions league revenue and they just couldn't handle it and it was a disaster for the club and they've had a real challenge ever since now they've come back into the league and it's the first ever team even leicester couldn't didn't do this the first team in switzerland but only kaiserslautern and nottingham forest i think had done it before where they've got promoted and won the league the year after these stories are actually cropping up a lot more we've had bodo glimps doing unbelievably well in the champions League, the Norwegian team, who play very far north of Norway on a 4G pitch.

58:13I hadn't made the link with your Norwegian background, Charles. No, none of my family in there, because they're all footballers. Oh, because it probably is a ski-jumping part of Norway, isn't it? It's very snowy up there. Norway's very snowy. I wonder if it's difficult for them at academy level to try and work out which of their kids are going to be better footballers and which of them are going to be ski-jumpers. Very easy, as we know. But look, as I said... I actually know somebody who used to be the technical director at Berdo Glimt, so I'm going to ask him that question. I do, yeah. Ask him on the selection process.

58:39Either way, it was a very small town. I haven't got that data in front of me directly. I think it's about 50 ,000. Grounds 8 ,000. Make it to the last 16 of the Champions League. Yeah. These stories have been far more frequent. And in the Premier League, there are still incredible moments this year where you've looked at Bournemouth and Brighton and Brentford all competing now. Not moments. What's the current EPL table below the top five? I haven't got it in front of me. I'm going to go Bournemouth. Yeah. Brentford. Keep going. Brighton keep going Sunderland by the way that's pretty good Charles Bournemouth Brighton Brentford Sunderland with the exception of getting Brighton and Brentford the one way round you were spot on there well done and then Chelsea Chelsea bottom half yeah I'm 10th oh so still top half okay let's see what happens well after tonight obviously so Bournemouth Brighton Brentford and Sunderland this year in the EPL have outperformed Chelsea and Spurs and that's quite interesting because in the case of Bournemouth, Brighton and Brentford, that's not a one-off.

59:40They have consistently been pushing towards the top half of the Premier League. And these are all clubs in the relatively recent past have been in the bottom two leagues in England. And not there on an occasional basis. They're on a semi-permanent basis. I mean, when I was young, Bournemouth were always in the bottom division. They almost went out the whole league. Brentford were a sort of perennial League One, so Tier 3 type team. And Brighton, well, I remember seeing them in the bottom division as well. But they were. I mean, they were literally a game from more or a half from going out of the football league, weren't they?

1:00:07I thought it was Bournemouth, but anyhow. But maybe Brighton as well. Anyway, look, but I actually want to get on to, let's talk about the other countries. So in Denmark, AGK, Aarhus are the champions. Not one of the very smallest clubs, but absolutely not FC Copenhagen or Bronby, right? So not one of those really famous big clubs you rarely see in European football. Michelin is kind of the area. Michelin is second. And they're also a small club, fundamentally. Viking in Norway, coming after Bodo Glimt winning four of the last five seasons. Viking this season. Mjölbi in Sweden. They're the Swedish champions for 2025.

1:00:42Again, a small to medium-sized club. Hearts in Scotland, obviously just failed to beat Celtic. We didn't mention that, did we? I mean, how did we not? Devastating. Yeah, unfortunate. We'd require an entire episode. Lask in Austria. Again, you know, we've got some big, big clubs in Austria. Domestic double there. you know again we're talking about some much more famous clubs Rapid Vienna and Salzburg and these types of clubs Tun in Switzerland you've mentioned you know again Grasshoppers of Zurich and Basel and these types of clubs Young Boys again forget it Tun with their 5 million euro budget Como in Italy 5th in Serie A ahead of Juventus ahead of Juventus with a budget of 35 million do you know even Villarreal I looked at Villarreal ahead of Atletico Madrid 3rd place Villarreal is also on my list 3rd in La Liga would very much be regarded in their own region as being the minnows compared to Valencia, let alone compared to Atletico Madrid and so on.

1:01:36And they're third in La Liga. And he's seen third. I think Ajax having a terrible year. I think their wage bill is 8.75 million euros. And in France, we've had a slightly closer fight for the title this year. It does look like PSG have done it. They have actually done it. Against Lens, who they've been fighting toe-to-toe with all year. Now, I just had a look at this, because we discussed Thun being on 4 or 5 million, and that being sort of, you know, maybe 20%. Lens' budget is 30 million euros. Right? So to give you some sort of 26 million pounds, that's sort of roughly what a mid-table championship side in England would spend.

1:02:17They're up against PSG, arguably the best, one of the most expensive club sides in the world, 200 million euros. Right? So PSG are spending seven times what Lens are spending, and yet at domestic level, they're almost on a level pegging. And then we've got, even in Italy, we've got Atalanta, who have been outstanding in the last few seasons. Not having a good year this year. I know, it's not a good year this year, but I think sometimes with these clubs, having to also play European football can end up catching up with them after a little bit of a while, just the sheer number of games and the required squad depth becomes a bit of a problem.

1:02:53Which again has happened a bit to Bodo Glimt as well this year. You talked about squad depth and how PSG have actually come out on top and how difficult it is to compete. They have pretty much, if you look at the statistics this year for their players, they have been so comfortable in this league over the last years that Dembele started nine games in the league this year. Marquinhos is something similar. They've just been after the Champions League. And the strength of this team is that they can rest their players to that extent and still win the league. But I think it's nonetheless worth pointing out that Lens have been able to come second in a league where even if you take PSG out of it, you've got clubs like Lyon and Marseille who would be spending much more money than Lens would be spending.

1:03:35Lille as well, which would be a more local competitor to Lens. So it's part of a pattern of, I'm not going to say small clubs, except maybe for Tun. I'm going to say kind of like ambitious mid-sized clubs it appears in the last five to ten years have gained an ability to be able to be if they are very well run and we'll come on to what that means in a moment to be highly competitive at the top of European football even with budgets that you would think and certainly most fans would think you wouldn't be able to achieve that with So yeah and the why right is the interesting question I was just trying to put it thematically and I didn't want to tell you beforehand but as someone that again is operated in these environments and knows how this works I wanted to see your thoughts on on thinking about it thematically so just to lay out a few of them that I put in you know some of them will be obvious data and analytics and the leveraging of that identity over individuals sell smart reinvest smarter financial discipline as a strategic advantage most importantly and finally coaching clarity but I thought the coaching clarity in there was one I'd like to throw in because I know of your opinions of coaching.

1:04:45Well, I think it's very important. I want to ask about the first one there, which is, what did I say? I said data and analytics. You said something to me yesterday, which really interested me when we always hold Brighton and Brentford up as this incredible case study of how to find a model that beats the established. You then turn around to me and you said, yeah, but you know, kind of necessity is the mother of invention, they're not going to be making the money that Manchester City and Arsenal and Liverpool are in the same ways, i.e. through massive match day revenue, through big commercial deals.

1:05:21So they have to go and find different ways to do it. And player trading is the way that they've decided to elevate their position. And they've done it incredibly well. What's the influence of that in these stories? Okay, so I think the phrase data analytics has become a bit of a sort of a bit of thing right in that a lot of people say it and it's become popular parlance even amongst the fan bases and the football media but when i ask a lot of people who talk about it have you actually ever seen what it what this looks like what it actually means right and all it basically is it's like sort of you know the gathering of evidence and then effectively putting it through rather than just saying well here's some facts which is relatively easy to do is saying, well, how can we then put those through various sort of analytical models, which then make sense of those things and ends up with calls to action decisions, which a club can then make, which are smarter than the decision they might've made if they hadn't been able to use that evidence in that way.

1:06:18What does this mean? What this means is, is that prior to the availability of electronic data about players in lots of different parts of the world, for Brighton to start recruiting players from Ecuador, they would need to have a massive global scouting operation, right? Which again is very expensive, where they will get disintermediated by the very biggest clubs who have the ability to employ more scouts effectively, okay? And they would then have to sort of work out from that scouting operation, okay, we found this really interesting player in Ecuador, but how does he compare to another player we found in Cameroon?

1:06:58I have no idea. Now, what's happened, for instance, is the use of data is that the ability to compare different leagues around the world has very significantly improved. So in other words, all the players who get transferred out of all the various different leagues and what their subsequent performances go on to demonstrate gets fed into the mix and it gets spat out that there's a sort of ranking list of leagues. So you can say, OK, if a player is performing to this level in the ecuadorian top division at this age that roughly equates to over here okay what that then means is once that player has been highlighted in ecuador brighton can then put a scout on a plane to go to ecuador to watch caicedo play right and then the whole thing can work from there so it's it's cut out an area which previously would have been unbelievably expensive and difficult for a medium sized club to compete against a larger club and enabled them a smarter, cheaper, better way to access this talent from around the world.

1:07:58Now, the next thing is, is that the various different geographies of the rest of the world have become much more accessible for all sorts of different reasons. But chiefly of which is that the football development patterns in these other countries have improved. So whereas previously, quite often, even if there was significant, quote, talent in a particular country. By the time that a player of that talent had reached the age of 18, 19, they were so far behind technically that actually getting them to translate from there into the English top division or the French top division or the German top division was just a really, really big jump.

1:08:34They pretty much had to be a genius, right? To be able to bridge that gap in technical and physical preparation. FIFA over the last 20, 30 years has been investing large amounts of money in all of these geographies. This is how FIFA presidents get re-elected. What mostly happens is they put a lot of money into development systems and facilities in all of these parts of the world. And I've known this through working the Caribbean, right? FIFA is ploughing a lot of money into football facilities in the Caribbean to enable young Caribbean talent to be competitive, more competitive, so they don't get left too far behind.

1:09:06So at the age of 17, 18, they've still got a chance of making on the global stage. So you've got a higher underlying level of football development. Then digitally, you've got the ability to assess at an early stage where that talent is. And then through a much more developed understanding of how the visa systems work through the various different geographies, you've now got people at these football clubs working out how are we actually going to move that player within the existing visa rules from here to here to here to here. So why aren't all the top clubs just… You've already answered it. Necessity is the mother of invention, right?

1:09:40which is that once you know that you cannot sign a fully matured super elite talent, once you know that, then you come to the opinion, well, we're going to have to find one which the market has not yet worked out is that. But we think he will be in two or three years' time. And therefore, we're going to get two advantages from this signing, we believe. One of which is we're going to get the benefit of his playing services for the next year or two. And then at the end of it, one of these very biggest clubs is going to buy him fully formed off us there. So interesting. If you look at Chelsea, just take your club as an example of why I think it's easier said than done for the very biggest clubs to do this, right?

1:10:19Which is that what you need is for that player who is being signed as a development prospect to then be given consistent game time. Because the only way in which they are realistically going to end up being what they need to be is if they play. The problem with the very biggest clubs is that the expectation is on a week-to-week basis is that they compete at the very top of their leagues. And this produces produces a sort of unfortunate vortex, because it basically means that you need ready-made, finished products to come in. That's very expensive on the one hand, makes it very difficult to make a profit out of them on the other hand, because they were already fully priced.

1:10:52So unless they do something really spectacular with you, then probably going to be worth less rather than more at the end of their contracts, they'll be older. These mid-sized clubs are sourcing these players aged 19, 20, 21, 22. They're then getting a couple of their best years out of them. They're then selling them at the peak of their powers for the massive amounts of money to the very biggest clubs who then get maybe the last couple of years of their peak years out of them before they start to set off and they get sold at a loss. So it's quite a big call, I think, for one of the very biggest clubs to say, right, even though we can afford to buy these fully formed players, actually it's bad practice.

1:11:27We don't want to do it, right? So what we're going to do instead is we're going to bite the bullet of explaining to our fan base that even though we could afford to buy£60 million players, we're actually going to start buying a whole bunch of£15 million players. Yeah, that's not good. Well, it's kind of what Chelsea's done. I know they're not all£15 million, they're more like£20,£30 million. Yeah, but they do drip feed it in with£100 million Enzo Fernandes. That's true. Which I'm just saying as a fan, like placates you. Right, this is the point. That placation is the point, right? Which is all the clubs we're looking at here have no need of placation because their fans are not expecting to win the league.

1:12:04Their fans are happy to see their clubs just be competitive. And even if they have a season where they're not that competitive, oh, well, we're not that big a club, so it doesn't matter. That takes the pressure off the executives and the board, which means they can pursue a medium-term strategy without constantly having to go out of the stadium with the coats over their heads, trying to make sure they don't get bombarded. If we look at the Premier League, the six then that you have at the top, they're all playing the same game. It's highly likely that a couple of them may screw that up. That leaves an opportunity for the clubs operating like Brighton, Brentford, Bournemouth to come up and compete at a high level with a really successful execution.

1:12:36I mean, I was looking at Bodo Glimt. They've averaged kind of a transfer budget of about 6 million euros. The squad value total is 53.4 million euros or has been. Now, the Champions League run has done an amazing job for them. Some of those players will go for a significantly more than that. But that squad value alone, I just had a look on transfer market. There are 122 individual players in European football valued higher than 53.4 million euros. And that's their total squad value, playing in a Champions League last 16. So this speaks to another point you mentioned right at the start, which we need to come back to.

1:13:06So we've mentioned data analytics and the way in which it's provided, obviously I'm not saying it's easy, the development of these systems to do it at the very highest level, which is what Brighton and Brentford owners have done, is extremely difficult. Otherwise everyone would do it. So just to make that clear, and there are other clubs within this group in Europe who are also quite far forward in the use of those systems. But the next bit, which is actually a more common theme without this group, is the extent to which football is a team game. And I think this is the bit which is often underestimated by fans and by new owners.

1:13:39OK, so if you think about Chelsea's new owners strategy of garaging 30, 40, 50, 60 top young players and hoping that somehow if you throw all these ingredients into the mix, that a quality team will emerge from out of that mix. what you're looking at a lot of these other clubs is realistic playing squads which are more like 2021 players in total who have got any chance of playing and where every single spot in that squad is very carefully chosen for what which bit of the jigsaw is this player solving for me this is what i terms identity over individual yeah yeah and that's super important yeah um now the consistency of the coaching position is very important to that because what you're doing is every transfer window you're working out which little bit of the jigsaw isn't quite right you're removing that piece and replacing it with one piece or two pieces it's small tweaks small changes and then this is another thing which i think that mid-sized clubs find it easier to maintain a consistent coaching setup because again the pressure on instant success is lower so you don't get those sackings which happen almost not by mistake but happen almost as a sacrificial lamb to placate the fan base because we've been through a bad patch.

1:14:46Of the mid-sized clubs, you're more able to say, hey, yeah, we've been through a bit of a tough patch, but I think we're going to come through it. Hey, everyone, it's fine. We've got this type thing. And again, you're not having to grow a fake moustache and try and flee the country if you say that. You can still walk around the town in one piece. As you know, my view on the difference that an individual head coach or manager makes, it's 5 % or 10 % here or there. But by the way, 5 % or 10 % is quite a big difference. Because it's often probably that final 5 % or 10%. Absolutely. My argument is not that 5 % or 10 % is a small number.

1:15:14I think it's quite a big number. It's just not 50%, which is what a lot of fans think. A lot of fans think our players basically are really good. If we chuck out the current clown in the dugout and replace him with a genius, then everything will be fine. I don't think that really works. But yeah, so just looking through these different clubs and the currents or levels of achievement, I don't think it's as simple as saying, if you are the owner or on the board of a mid-sized club, we're going to do the same as Tun. We want to have a budget of 4.5 million. There will be all sorts of particularities to their particular situation and the Swiss League as a whole and the immigration system operating within Switzerland.

1:15:52But I think what is interesting is one conclusion that can be drawn is that the amount of money being spent as a cause of success is significantly overestimated. I think we can say that, right? I think the level of success across this number of leagues with massive differences compared to what you would expect if it was causation rather than correlation. There's clearly correlation, but not causation, I think. because if you look at, for instance, Bournemouth, Brighton, Brentford, Sunderland, what would you say their wage budgets are? I think it's like between 40 and 60, isn't it? There's 70. About 70 million.

1:16:30What is Spurs' plane budget? We've done that to 240. No, 160. And they're accused of underspending. Yeah, yeah. They're accused of underspending by only, quotation marks, spending 160. So if you were to say to a Spurs fan, do you know what your problem actually is? You're spending too much because effectively, even though you're comparing your spending levels against another club who's spending 180, and you're going, we should be spending an extra 20 million. Actually, the issue here is that your culture is not to be smart. Your culture is simply to say, we've got a lot of money to spend. We'll go out in the sweet shop.

1:17:06All the other big boys will be in the sweet shop, and we'll try and get the same sweeties as them, but we'll spend a little bit less than them, so we'll get slightly less good sweeties. Whereas these other clubs are saying, we can't afford to go in the sweet shop. we have to go and find the suite factory. We have to go and find these suites before they get in the suite shop. So if you're a club like Spurs and you're caught in between, neither able to sign the really marquee player who is absolutely proven and who absolutely is going to deliver, nor thinking smartly about, well, yeah, but how are we going to find the one that hasn't been discovered yet?

1:17:38They end up somewhere in between and they are signing very expensive players who are actually probably no more proven than some of these other. Now, that is what Chelsea have been doing. That's not me being critical. That is exactly where they've been, right? They've been signing these players for 100 plus. I mean, Enzo Fernandes played six months at Benfica before joining Chelsea and he had a great World Cup. That's not proven, right? He's had a good period of a short amount of time. So really what you're saying is if we go back to that necessity mother invention through the way that football has developed, some of these smaller clubs have been forced to think differently.

1:18:09The way that they've been able to identify value is looking at a lot of the playing side of the game by identifying where top players can come from. that has helped them massively on the pitch shock horror right and it was still about playing but what it's been able to do is create a really exciting group of players across all of these different squads capable of competing with the top ones who may lack some of those core things that we've talked about whether it's the cultural fit to the organization they're just a great brand or great global name those things are actually not as important as it is having 21 to 26 players in there specifically put together for a reason very nicely put charlie so mr kramer thank you mr kramer thank you for that this is the type of topic which i'll be really interested in readers and listeners views on it because look we don't have monopoly on wisdom a lot of what we're saying there is observations based on some facts with some presumptions and some assumptions that are made alongside that but there will be individual instances within these clubs which we are not necessarily aware of.

1:19:10Now, I'm not aware of what LASK in Austria's particular strategy has been when they were winning the domestic double. I am somewhat aware of what's happening in Como. There'll be others who are more aware than me. So any thoughts and details that people have out there? I'd be really interested to hear on those topics. Absolutely. And thank you for putting that in. I also like the fact that it's kind of a positive take. I think it's very easy to get caught up in the clubs that are doing things wrong or getting all negative. So looking at these clubs that are doing great things is quite refreshing to our conversation.

1:19:40It also offers hope to everyone, right? It does. It means that even if you're not a glory hunting Chelsea fan who only follows the club because when you were young they won everything, even if you aren't that person, you can still dream of success for your local club, which is what you should be supporting in the first place. You know, it kind of was my local club. No, your local club's full of them. I know. I just, I supported them because I love John Terry. Charlie. He's not waiting. On that note. On that note, we're off for a beer. Thank you very much, guys. We'll see you next week. Thanks, John.

1:20:10Thanks a lot. Add to all of this the Spygate drama, and it's been some week in the sporting world. County Cricket is a fascinating case study in the right to survive discussion in sport. Huge heritage and legacy, but not converting that to present-day relevance in a way that can support the business moving forward. So how do you fix it? I think there's a few interesting things we discussed in there today, but we'd love to hear your thoughts. if you're a super fan and one of those still turning up for long-form domestic games. As always, we're so grateful for your support and we'll see you next week.

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