Cod Almighty | Diary

Who does it pay to obscure how much was paid?

10 February 2017

Retro Diary writes: For those inhabiting football's privileged inner circle, the avalanche of stupid opinions pouring forth from the armchair managers and keyboard pundits of Britain (yes OK, like me) must be horribly annoying. There's always one nutcase who'll say something like "Tired? Tired? I'd play with two broken legs for £10,000 a week". You feel like saying "Go on then. We can all chip in to watch that".

Today there was another little flurry of some oft-expressed opinions following a new stadium titbit in the Telegraph. Extreme Leisure met with councillors, apparently, and got us to a point that I foolishly thought we were at already. Unless we know what was actually said, this information is, of course, no use to us. We can console ourselves, however, with the assurance that we've "clarified some opportunities". Needless to say, the artist's impression still shows the Bernabeu (which we would like), rather than the Keepmoat (which we will get).

More wilfully evasive is that modern piece of obfuscation, the 'undisclosed' transfer fee. This isn't a dig at Town, who were at it themselves last week; literally everybody does it now. But why? And why is it even allowed?

Even I would stop short of asking a player to tell me what was in his wage packet. I wouldn't ask you what you earned; it's not the British way. And I wouldn't expect you to ask me, although it might give you a laugh. We know some footballers earn too much, and I fail to see how levels of irritation would be lowered if we knew how much too much. But such disclosure would highlight incongruities and wreck dressing room harmony, in much the same way as it would wreck the harmony of your workplace and mine. I think it's fair enough. You shouldn't go through life worrying about what other people earn; it's not the way to happiness. So why even bother to find out?

But what’s wrong with telling the world what a football club has paid out on a transfer fee? From my outer circle, I've canvased as widely as I can on this and all the answers I've received are weak. The most compelling is rather similar to the wages argument: that it doesn't help the mental state of the player, or morale of the team. If I was a professional footballer (which is quite a stretch of the imagination), I'm sure my wild slices would go a yard closer to the corner flag for every ten grand I was supposed to be worth. They're only human after all and, on top of that, mostly quite young.

What most of my respondents suspected (and I got further into the inner circle than I ever imagined) is that in the greed-fuelled world of transfer negotiations, nobody wants anybody else to know how much they've got to spend, or the sorts of fees they've paid or received for other players, so that they can't be used to bump up the ante in new negotiations. Secrecy, on the other hand, allows market value to find its level through a sort of passive ecological process, without being forced up by spurious comparisons. Basically, it's a safeguard against taking the piss. But surely the answer is not to insult every fan and his dog by keeping it a secret, but merely to stand firm and refuse to pay more than proper market value. Just say "no".

The bottom line is that there are only two reasons for fees not to be disclosed: either because one team doesn't want people to think they've paid too much, or the other that they've sold for too little. It's hassle avoidance - flak deflection one suspects, as much as anything - to circumvent the barrage of brash and uncomprehending opinion from the great punter on the sofa.

Clubs aren't actually forced to declare the exact amount of transfer fees, or at least there are ways round it. They have to declare the sale of assets, but players are employees, not assets – that would be slavery otherwise. Technically, the secret should be able to survive only as long as the next AGM, but it would take a brave shareholder to ask, and braver journalist to report it. That's if anyone still cared after all that time. Journalists can usually find out the fee if they try hard enough, and may hide behind the handy "thought to be in the region of". When they really can't find out, they’ve been known to guess. But if they happen to guess right, that gives both clubs a problem. The whole thing is deeply uncomfortable.

But more sinister than all these things is that non-disclosure completely disguises the amount paid to the anonymous middle-men: agents and deal-makers. That they should be exempted from even the most superficial scrutiny makes one - perhaps unreasonably - suspect the worst.

Of course, for a transfer fee to remain undisclosed, both teams must collude, and sometimes they don't. This happened most famously in the case of Marouane Fellaini's move from Everton to Manchester United, which United wanted to keep secret (because they paid too much), but Everton blabbed (because they were pleased with themselves). In a rather similar way, it took me no time at all with a bit of digging to find out from Solihull what Town paid for Omar. It doesn't matter now, especially as the amount is dwarfed by the sell-on, but I get the distinct impression that it wasn't, for them at least, that much of a secret. What all the cloak and dagger stuff from our end was all about, I don’t know.

Maybe I'm unusual, but it wouldn't occur to me to question the amount. I just assume that both parties go at it hammer and tongs and thrash something out which, like all the best deals, is not what either really wanted, but both can live with. I'm entirely happy with this.

It is widely held (you could argue against it but nobody does) that Omar's transfer fee came out of the Operation Promotion pot. For me, this is a brilliant example of things going beautifully to plan. To my knowledge, at least three other clubs tried to crowdfund like us, but nobody had remotely the same success. So firstly, well done to us. Also, I'm congratulating myself for chucking my couple of notes in. The club did well for spending it on Omar; Omar did well for banging in the goals; and the club did well again for turning a gigantic profit on my meagre investment. Amazing, the whole thing.

Now I don't want to overstate it - I’m not seething or anything - but this is one instance where not using the frosted bathroom glass of non-disclosure might have been a nice touch. It is quite clear that a lot of fans up and down the land feel similarly excluded, and a petition to government to ban undisclosed transfer fees in football was set up recently, but rejected because it was deemed to be "outside the responsibility of government". Only the football authorities can make the clubs confess. The change must surely come.

Back to the old bag of wind, and last Saturday’s game against Luton was the most enjoyable, in a purist's sense, for a long time. Omar's presence was missed, but that horrible gap between the midfield and attack had finally closed, and a couple of bits of right old penalty box mayhem were the result. The hilarity of the last minute was only rivalled by the last minute of the Huddersfield-Leeds game the next day. Football is flippin' great, isn’t it?

Tomorrow it's Crewe, who looked an extremely tidy outfit at Blundell Park, but haven't won a damn thing since. They find themselves perilously close to the trap door of hell, and under normal circumstances I would want this principled old club to pull away and deposit Cheltenham in the doodoo. If you could just give it a week, Crewe please? Ta. Rather wonderfully, new Alex manager David Artell has done our team talk for us: "We’ve got better players then Grimsby", he squeaked to Radio Stoke while fumbling with his change.

I've never been to the Railwaymens' Gresty Road home, because the one time I did set off to go there, in September 1990, rather ironically all the trains were late and I was still in Manchester, and facing further delays, at twenty to three. I went to Old Trafford instead - just to tick off another ground you understand - and Town won 2-1 in my absence. Superstition dictates I must now stay away, but, I'm relieved to say, doesn't go quite as far as saying I have to watch Man Utd every week.

For us, James Berrett, Luke Maxwell and Dom Vose are out.

For information, the Donny game on 1 April has been shifted to a 1pm kick off. It's those pesky football fans again y'know. They can't be trusted.

UTM