The toughest Championship season ever? - The Sports Agents

0:02Liam Scully:This is a global production. We are at the mercy of billionaires and big business and broadcast companies and look, we work for them as well. So again, there's a hypocrisy here, right? Just don't take the piss out of us.

0:19Gabby Mark:My reticence and my feeling that this is just taking it all too far is actually nostalgia. It's romanticism. Football has already sold out.

0:27Liam Scully:To think that sport belongs to fans now is harder and harder to explain. You can't say that. I pay your wages.

0:35Gabby Mark:A fan looks different now. A fan is somebody who can be commoditized, can be sold to, can increase revenue. Fans across the world are there to be exploited. If it ever gets to a point, especially domestically, where the price of tickets is too high, then we'll start to see the stadiums becoming more and more empty.

1:02Gabby Mark:Hello and welcome to the Sports Agents. Hello, Mark. Hello, Nadam. Very lovely to see your faces. Hi, Gabby. Three of us back together. Who would have thought? I thought it was going to happen again. Oh, it hasn't been that long. I've been listening to you.

1:15Liam Scully:I've been listening. What's it been? Two weeks? Yeah. Is it only two? Is it two weeks since then? Hang on. I've actually opened my diary to try and work out when the World Cup final was.

1:25Gabby Mark:I think it's four sports agents. Two and a half. Yeah, because the Monday after the final, we had our final debrief, didn't we? I was on a rooftop in New York. Do you remember that one? It's not that long ago. You see, the world of sport moves at such intensity and fast paced. You know, I was dying to listen to the podcast the other day thinking this will be the end of Gianni Infantino. No, it wasn't. It turns out he lives to fight another day, you know. So, yeah, I've been an avid listener, avid listener over the last couple of weeks. It's been lovely.

1:56Liam Scully:Newcastle have a new manager since you were both last on.

1:59Gabby Mark:I know. It's exciting. The biggest number of new managers in the Premier League ever at the start of a season.

2:06Liam Scully:Well, do you know what? On that last pod, the last pod that I do, I was on my own. I was saying that my biggest challenge at the start of a new season, particularly um when you do saturday afternoons and you're doing all the goals and around the ground zone and so forth my biggest challenge is trying to remember what grounds are called because they invariably will have a new and and i often a new sponsor and i often go back to the old grounds because i just cannot be bothered trying to learn you know the latest whatever it is but this time premier league managers will be pushing round renaming numbers i genuinely think

2:46Gabby Mark:Especially as quite a few are not particularly proven at the highest level. Haven't been on our radar, Naden, would you say? There's a couple that are interlopers. Yeah, I would totally agree with that. And it's going to be very interesting because I don't think from the top half of the table, we've seen this many changes in terms of management. You know, like you've got the longstanding ones in terms of like Arteta, Unai Emery and so on. But all these other coaches behind are like relatively new. Will they do a good job? Will they not? but I've got to reveal something as well about myself to be honest when it comes down to football in the summer transfers I do not keep track of them until like the week before the season starts and I've started to look recently I'm like oh when did that happen they were there and I'm supposed to be the expert on this I'm like oh yeah of course that saga yes I remember that one very well yeah sure I'm going to be black in these first few weeks I apologise in advance

3:35Liam Scully:so when when when will you go through all the transfers then when will you find out that Erling Haaland has left City when did he leave sorry sorry yeah to be honest I'm basically being led by say the the major like notifications that pop up on my phone and like Tonali for 100 million is a significant one you know yeah Gimmarish all that stuff the collapse of Newcastle United you just do top line I'm getting lots of clicks on my phone yeah I do I'm so basic I do top line and then essentially from there everything else is like oh that's interesting okay cool this should do alright yeah yeah do you know what Nodem

4:11Gabby Mark:I think that's probably year and 99 % of people across the nation, actually, because there is so much going on in the world of sport and the world of football. But today we're going to be talking about who football really belongs to. First up, though, Lincoln City, whose rise from non-league football to the championship is often called a fairy tale, but it's not. It was all part of a plan put in place 10 years ago after an extraordinary FA Cup run. Joining us is Lincoln City CEO Liam Scully. Liam, welcome to the Sports Asians. thank you very much thank you for having me

4:42Liam Scully:can I just jump in before Gabby or Nader ask you a question and we were just talking about grounds being renamed ahead of the new season do you still have the same sponsor do you have a new ground name it's all for research yeah we are the Pro-AMPAC stadium which is a new stadium naming rights deal sorry just run that by us again

5:02Gabby Mark:say it again the Pro-AMPAC the what?

5:09Gabby Mark:your sponsor by the way will be thrilled that's three mentions in the first minute of the podcast so the sponsor has got their bit done or you'll be like here you go we've done it it's on a podcast um yeah do you have to think you have to think long and hard about that one liam show me the money thank you i know it well but uh yeah pronunciation before we get into lincoln city's rise i tell you where i want to start liam is your rise because you were 16 years old on a kind of an old, back in the day, when kids didn't want to do A-levels and they went on kind of apprenticeships and they went and worked and learnt kind of life and industry.

5:48Gabby Mark:That's how you got into football. Tell us a bit about that and where you started. Yeah, it was indeed.

5:54Liam Scully:And sadly now looking at the grey hair and unfortunately when you work in professional sport, they catalogue all the images. So the grey hair and the wrinkles are certainly here now from 25 years in the industry. But yeah, I was very fortunate, didn't quite make the grade as a player and quite honestly was lost. And if it wasn't for the PFA and an apprenticeship in the non-sporting side of the business, who knows what I would have ended up doing. So I was very thankful to be given that opportunity as a young man and spent 16 years in various different roles at Doncaster Rovers and the Club Doncaster Group before heading over to Lincoln City 10 seasons ago now.

6:32Liam Scully:Were there any of your peers who did something similar? And is it also something that you keep an eye on now with your young players, academy players? Yeah, most definitely. I do think I probably have a natural bias. And one of the things of Lincoln City, and a lot of modern football clubs, in fact, all modern football clubs now, really care about the person first before the player. But it's a brutal industry. I think equally we have to be clear that the success at Lincoln City has really taken a village. It's taken lots of people in order to contribute this at various different times, all with the mentality that we are the temporary custodians of an institution that is nearly 150 years old.

7:17Liam Scully:And I think when you apply that mindset to whatever and you're respectful of history, you're respectful of what you're trying to achieve. We talk about understanding alignment, commitment without sounding really corny, understanding the journey that we're going on, the role that we're trying to play, getting real alignment between the business, the sporting side, all facets of the club. And then it's about being wholly committed to that. And I think that's the approach that we've taken over the decade. it's you know some of the recipes changed to some degree some of the things that we're trying to and the way that we're going about it to change but the underlying principles have always been the same how do we get a group of people across a whole football club absolutely aligned and all working towards a singular north star and if maybe that's the one thing that you know I and we've been able to do is just constantly you know retain that focus that's helped us on our way Yeah, but that's quite unusual in a results-orientated business, isn't it?

8:12Liam Scully:Which sport more often than not is. So when things don't go right and you are in the championship, and I am guessing you will have the smallest budget of anybody in the championship without knowing your budget or everybody else's budget, but a rough guess, you'll certainly be in the bottom three or four, I would imagine. and yet you went up as League One champions. The pressure comes, doesn't it, on the chief exec if results aren't going the right way. So how do you balance the people side of things, I suppose, sometimes with that demand of, well, this isn't going how it should do, do we need to move people on?

9:00Liam Scully:Yeah, I think people have heard me say this many times, but I'm probably the most boringly consistent human being in the world and we're the most boringly consistent football club. We're never too high, never too low, never get ahead of ourselves. Of course, this season is going to be incredibly difficult on the pitch, but if our behaviour changes at 5pm on a Saturday because of a shot hitting the inside of the post or the outside of the post, or if the way that our demeanour is is all results-based, I think you can end up in a lot of trouble. And if I may say so, I think you look at a lot of football clubs in the past that have ended up with long-term and systemic kind of issues.

9:38Liam Scully:It's because, you know, their ability to kind of flip-flop between philosophies and strategies or to abandon principles quite, quite quickly. I think the one thing that we have, many other football clubs, I think have done it brilliantly. You know, Brentford, I think are a phenomenal example of that. Brighton are a great example of that is, you know, you really beat up a strategy in its design and then you live by that and you commit to it, you know, wholly and almost unconditionally. Now, that's not saying you don't reflect and review, But, you know, as Needham will know from a playing point of view, you know, if you have a manager that, you know, one minute is playing a certain style, the next minute is playing another, you know, you lack belief and confidence in leadership in terms of what you're trying to achieve.

10:18Liam Scully:So I think if you were to say what has been the singular biggest success at Lincoln City, it's probably been how boringly consistent that we've been. It's great to have you on, Liam, because now all of a sudden some of the answers has brought me back to, say, for example, playing in the championship and seeing some of those teams that came up from League One and some of the difficulties that some of them had. to a point where come the back end of the season, there were a few teams, for example, I think, I don't want to speak out of turn, but I think MK Dons decided they'd be better off in League One than it would be in the Championship due to the costs and so on.

10:46We've mentioned something in your answers there, which I want to dig into a little bit, is what is the North Star for Lincoln? Because we've talked about, say, the 17th biggest budget. There'll be tons of people listening now saying, well, what difference does that make in a league when you're just playing football anyway? Like, what is Lincoln's North Star and how did it lead to firstly being in the championship? And does that North Star change its position now that you're here to try and compete?

11:10Liam Scully:Yeah, no, like, you know, really clearly, we want to be an established, innovative and well-respected championship football club. Now, we understand that you can't take that, you know, as one step forward. And that mission has been the same mission since the days that we entered, you know, the EFL and in League Two. That's not changed. We've constantly remained on that course. We spent seven years in League One and at times we were being challenged by the fans and other stakeholders saying, you tell us you want to be a championship football club, but it's seven years that you've been in League One.

11:43Liam Scully:How are you progressing? We just knew that we constantly had to have the building blocks in place in order to do that. examples in the past of when we've sold players or managers and staff have left us for positive levels of compensation. We take the approach that we build something. It never goes into the playing budget to just go and invest in the next cycle. It's always been, how do we invest in the infrastructure? So you open this by talking about the FA Cup run. The FA Cup run in 2017 paid for and invested into our elite performance centre, the training ground. The profits of that was invested into a training ground, that the intention was that it sets the club up for decades and possibly centuries into the future.

12:26Liam Scully:So Liam then, when you get compensation for Michael Scobali, your manager who got you promotion out of League One, he goes to Bristol City this summer. The reports are it's a seven figure compensation. What do you do with that money then? What has that gone into? Yeah, it's gone into infrastructure. It's gone into, you know, we have a whole range of things across the football club that we talk about and we have oven ready for the next time we sell, the next time we realise some investment, we will... So you don't buy a player with it? No, no, no, no. And I think that part of that is the succession planning, obviously the appointment of Chris Cohen and Tom Shaw.

13:04Liam Scully:We, again, really boring, but we believe in systems and processes. We don't believe in the one person is the unicorn that is the entire success or failure of the football club. That includes myself, that includes our sporting director, Jez George, across all elements. Working for Lincoln City, the one thing that we do ask for is a little bit by painting by numbers. We have a philosophy, we have a strategy, and then we ask our practitioners to go out and operate within that.

13:32Gabby Mark:I've mentioned before on the podcast, I'm good friends with the owners of Bolton Wanderers and I've had conversations with them over the years about it's that kind of moment where they were almost standing back going, do we actually want this? We want it, of course, for the club, but it's going to mean such a different strategy for us financially. It's going to cost so much more for us to be in that league and where are we going to get that extra revenue from? So what have you found has been the biggest challenge financially from your kind of League One status to championship in terms of the overheads for what you're going to have to kind of, I don't know, maybe forego that another championship club will already have because you're playing against the likes of West Ham next season who have a very different income stream.

14:17Liam Scully:Yeah. And I think sometimes we forget in English football how lucky we are. You know, the championship is the seventh best league in world football. You know, the Premier League is the best league in world football.

14:31Gabby Mark:What are the metrics of that?

14:34Liam Scully:Of sporting talent, of the quality of the league, you overlay that to attendances, the commerciality, the broadcast value. You know, it is, you know, in pretty much any other country other than the UK, it is the best league, you know, in that country. And you then look at the League One where we've come from and, you know, it's the top 40 league in world football. So, you know, overall, you know, the pyramid in England is a wonderful pyramid. But, you know, the leap that we're making isn't one division. It's, you know, it's 40 odd leagues that we're growing and that's across, you know, all aspects.

15:11Liam Scully:I think when you're a club like Lincoln City, the flip that I'll give you is it's almost liberating because we have to make choices. So another, you know, something that we talk about quite often is we talk about changing the game until we find when we can win. And I know that's another corny phrase that I'm throwing out of you, but it's liberating when you don't have the resources. You have to make choices. And sometimes they're either or choices. And we're constantly challenging ourselves to how do we get the best results. So it's liberating because we don't have a choice. And I think that's where I think it actually can help you and give you real clarity of vision.

15:48Going back to my playing head again, you were talking about risk and you were talking about decisions like that. So how do you come across two head coaches? Because I feel like that in some ways is the elephant in the room because I can't even imagine what that would be like on a day-to-day basis. I don't know if for me from the outside it feels like two assistant coaches or whether it can be two heads. Can you explain how that is possible and how it will work?

16:10Liam Scully:Yeah, really fair question. And I think when we were working through, as Michael was leaving us and we still have a great relationship with Michael and we certainly wish him all the best. He's been a huge part of our success and, you know, he deserves every success in his career going forward. You know, we had a structure in place at the football club. Michael was a big component of it, but he wasn't the single point of success and failure, as I've mentioned before. And with Chris and Tom, Chris Cohen and Tom Shaw and his assistant, we think we have two outstanding practitioners. And when we were looking at the solution and how we put this together and they did go up and interview against more traditional head coaches.

16:50Liam Scully:And, you know, the thing that we felt that we wanted for the players and for the group was consistency. And, you know, if we change the shareholder so it was a 51-49 % and one of them became the head coach and one is the assistant, we felt that the dynamic would have shifted and changed from what the players had been used to in the year previous. We know it's not convention and we know it's not the norm in football. And we didn't set out to do this because we thought, oh, we'll be really quirky and make a name for ourselves by doing something different. but what I will say is once we landed on the solution and we believe and time will tell whether that's the right decision or not but once we believe that it was the right solution what we didn't want to do is then say well nobody else does it in football so we won't but there's real clarity in the building I think you're right the most important people that have clarity are the players in this making sure that they know exactly where the red lines are who to speak to at certain times the moments of tension But we have that.

17:49Liam Scully:These aren't two people that have been put together overnight. It's not like, I don't know, Roy Evans, Gerard Houllier, who didn't know each other. You know, these are people that have, you know, they are almost brothers in their nature, their football philosophy alliance. Are their interpersonal skills very different? Yeah, no, they're very different personalities. I won't tell you who's the funny one because that might get me in there. come on i think they're both but no they're very different people but where they are aligned is their is their football philosophy um and partly that that's because that's the lincoln city way as well so there's an element of the modern phrases game model isn't it but the the game but the game model belongs to the club you know we are asking them to coach and work within that and and we've done that for a number of years with them you know tom's been a product um of our coaching structure you know tom um actually joined us as as a youth team coach many years ago and and he has been on this journey with as well for a decade and we've invested in tom over time as well so this isn't romantic we're not doing this because of that but we do feel like we know tom and we both get a head coach's wage does it cost you more yeah yeah their agents uh we had we had I'm trying to work that out with the agents.

19:07Liam Scully:That was for sure. Did they interview together? And then you think, and then did you think, oh, actually, they could work here as, or did they interview individually and then you come to the conclusion they might work? It's a bit like Simon Cowell putting One Direction together. Yeah, definitely not Simon in that regard. So there was an independent process, and then there was a point where we ended up bringing it back together and testing and saying, okay, right, we've had this conversation independently. Quite honestly, there was reticent from their point of view to who's the 51 % shareholder as well.

19:45Liam Scully:And that's when, you know, I'll be honest, Jez George and I, our sporting director, we had a night one evening in the summer just talking about whether we were crazy enough and daft enough to go against convention. But we just felt that it's the right thing for the players and the right thing for Lincoln City.