blades blog BT's Dance Macabre

Posted: January 14th 2008
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Like an episode of Jonathan Creek, the James Beattie transfer is shrouded in a cloud of mysterious illusion, subterfuge and red herrings. But at the end of this particular episode, I assure you that we will scrape the frost off the transfer window and see that there was indeed reason at its heart and that reason should strike fear into all our hearts. . . .

I’ve always thought that someone writes a blog to offer another perspective, to add a different dimension to the mundane and samely media reporting of an issue. In my musings on the Blades I’ve always tried to give you, the reader, that consideration.

But my kneejerk reaction to the news of BT’s transfer from the seven hills of steel to the six towns of pottery kind of lost the plot a little, going something like: “Beattie . . . Stoke . . . £2.5m . . . possibly £3.5m . . . . bought him for £4m . . .  scored in every other game he’s played . . .fourth in the Champs . . .possible play-offs . . .only striker worth his salt . . . what the bloody hell’s going on . . . aaaaaaaaarrrrgh”

Then I realised that the fine art of football blogging, or flogging or blogballing, as it perhaps ought to be known, should always defer to the sentiments of my opening paragraph and I mused over the issue rather in the way Holmes would pace the room, play the violin or abuse the odd substance, much to Watson’s dismay. Sure enough as the sun set on BT’s South Yorkshire sojourn, I donned the sheepskin carpet slippers, poured myself a flagon of frothy ale and considered the matter in an altogether more holistic manner. In all honesty I’m more often on the bog when moments of purified reasoning filter through my thicker membrane into the decanter of clarity – perhaps it’s something to do with the strain, I don’t know.

Forums are great places at times like this in a club’s season. You have to bear in mind that BT’s transfer news, although wholly expected since the beginning of last summer, nevertheless came as a surprise in terms of its timing. And so the Blades forums are full of bilious tub thumping, ill-informed ranting, libellous and vindictive, revenge-seeking hatred. There’s genuine feeling out there from true supporters who are entitled to vent their spleen, but it’s always more interesting to elbow your way past the raw emotion and look beyond the obvious.

I don’t want to bore you but you need to take on board a few salient facts:

• Beattie was bought for £4m from Everton
• He scored 34 goals in 18 months
• He was sold for £2.5m to Stoke City
• The Chairman says his sale begins a “re-profiling” of the squad
• This is a squad which will be competitive in “the Championship”
• Beattie’s earnings represented 35% of next year’s wage bill budget

The Beattie script is one of the most repeated in football drama. It goes something like this:

Prem player suffers loss of form and can’t get a regular game – in the face of career collapse he takes a massive gamble and steps down a div to prove his form – an aspiring club agrees to pay his high wages – the club takes a massive gamble that they lose everything on their investment if he leaves on a free to Rochdale but he might take them back up to the prem – player proves he can still score goals – prem club comes back in for him and pays above original fee – player’s happy – club’s happy – supporters are disappointed but new imports soften the blow – life goes on.

You’ll notice immediately that United strayed from the usual script in one fundamental way and this is what has angered season ticket holders. Letting him go as a mid/low-table team already resigned to another season of mediocrity would have been sad but inevitable. Selling him at a time when it looks like we may well be there or thereabouts come season’s end, is bad enough, but to sell him at a loss smacks of desperation and tells the wider story of the financial climate in which this deal has been done. However, fellow Bladesmen, let’s make no mistake that the minute Beattie arrived the only honest question for the board was at what point they should offload him in order to try and recoup a maximum amount of the sum spent on him. This is business. This is credit crunch. This is financial reality. This is ‘the club’s bigger than the player’.  

Beattie wasn’t a personal favourite of mine. At the City Ground recently, as United sat on a 1-0 lead, I player-watched and focussed on Beattie for almost half an hour and it’s a fascinating exercise. When he’s not in the right place at exactly the right time, scoring free-kicks and penalties, he’s lolly-gagging around the pitch like George Dawes in his pink romper throwing his arms up in over dramatised disbelief at the fact that he wasn’t the target for a through ball or a cross. He looks more athletic than many men of his size, but he’s constantly barking at others, constantly talking and expanding vast amounts of energy chasing lost causes. Having said all that you can forgive any frontman a variety of sins as long as does the business. I will personally forgive him everything for the second-half free-kick which he curved over a wendy wall to bring us back level at 2-2 at Bramall Lane in the derby game last year. The silenced wendies were a sight to behold – they’d been rampant but thrown away a 2-0 lead. It was a sublime moment.

So the nub of this transfer is money and boardroom consideration of impending doomsday scenarios. Some have expected the financial downturn to result in falling attendances and clubs going into administration, dropping like high-street flies, like the failing businesses some of them really are. And there’s nothing to say that that won’t actually happen, but it’s far more likely that deals like BT’s will be the order of the day. Prudency will be paramount, and probably wise, yet it will only serve to confuse loyal supporters whose passion blinds them to the need to balance the books.

To be fair, BT probably told the board that if they failed to go back up the first year he’d be off as soon as he got a sniff from a Prem club.

If I’m disappointed in the deal it’s for a couple of reasons, one of which is a simple annoyance and the other which strikes a more sinister note which is pertinent to us all. The annoyance is with BT’s destination. I can quite understand Leroy Lita’s refusal to play for us, even though the Reading board agreed a fee, since we’ve now proved we’re selling to make ends meet and we’re reasonably “happy” with failing to get promotion provided we can be in the mix again next year and have our heads above water as a club. But if I were BT I’d be looking for a far better deal than Stoke, and I don’t mean any disrespect whatsoever. But like Jagielka and Michael Brown before them I’d expect half decent players leaving the Lane to opt for a mid-table Prem club with a better-than-average chance of staying up.

The more sinister note was sounded by Chairman McCabe when he described the ongoing machinations as a “re-profiling” of the squad, and so coined yet another in a long line of euphemisms all of which boil down to pretty much the same thing – redundancies. BT was expensive and redundant in a team which has evidently been “re-profiled” financially as a Championship squad. I’ve had a good deal of experience in writing corporate statements and speeches and McCabe’s missive from the club lacks ambition and hints at further “profiling” measures. What else can you make of:

“The club is not immune to circumstances and needs to have a robust business plan. . . . the loss of parachute payments will correspond with a worldwide recession . . .  this difficult decision was made in the knowledge that we will not be offering new contracts until the end of the season . . .”

And finally:

“The club is setting its stall out to assist the manager with a competitive squad and with an expenditure which will be realistic but does not put the club at risk. Our ambitions are the same but we are not immune from financial circumstances.”

And all this from a club which reputedly has a relatively small and manageable debt and is sitting in a healthy league position with one of the best average crowd figures in the division!

But of course the Board can’t win. I would be the first to pronounce on a failing club and ask deep and meaningful questions about “where the money was spent” should the figures not add up at the season’s end. So our criticisms should be tempered with a sensible dollop of financial realism.

Everything in life is a balance, a compromise – that much I have learned. But if Leigh Bromby’s return to the club from Watford, which I wholly welcome, is not as stated, cover for Ugo Ehiogu (out for the season) but cover for a potential sale of young Kyle Naughton, believed by many to be one of the finest and most exciting prospects at the club in half a century, then the BT factor kicks in and the balance will have tipped too far. Financial expediency will have won over ambition and passion and the very real but insidious effect of the credit crunch will have taken its toll. Nothing turns a young crowd away more effectively than a lack of ambition in a world accustomed to instant gratification.

BT’s sale was the result of a company assessing its ageing stock as it slims down for lean times. No illusion, nothing sinister – just business, devoid of a soul.