Southampton FC, Martin Samuel, and Financial Fair Play (Part 1)

In a couple of recent columns (here and here)    Martin Samuel managed the not too difficult task of riling up Southampton fans by making a bunch of possibly accurate factual assertions in as condescending fashion as possible.  I have decided to jump into this somewhat pointless dispute because there are three aspects of it that interest me.  The first is Samuel’s claim that he actually likes Southampton and was not gratuitously criticizing the club:

Why would I have any grudge against Southampton? I’m from London. Growing up, I didn’t know any Southampton fans. They were not rivals, just another club that came to Upton Park. Frankly, far from disliking Southampton, I would love it if they won the league, or if any team from outside the established Champions League elite won the league, even finished top four. I remain outraged that FFP gives Southampton very little option but to positively manage the break-up of their squad. Any challenge to the elite excites me. That’s what I like about Manchester City. They’re new. They’re outsiders. They’re not supposed to be there. I hate the loan system, but I would still have secretly loved it if Romelu Lukaku had propelled Everton into the top four last season. Monday’s article was full of credit for Southampton. But I’ve been paying close attention for over 30 years now and have seen what happens when a board thinks selling and rebuilding a team is a game that can be played regularly with success. It rarely pans out that way.

This leads into the second interesting aspect of the dispute—Samuel’s belief that under Financial Fair Play Southampton is doomed to constantly have to break up its team with no real chance of improving enough to challenge the elite of the BPL, much less Europe.  Or, to put it another way, starting with Football Manager (FM) 2014, the game has become a lot less fun for anyone who wants to take their small home town team to the Champions League and win it.

Samuel’s view of how Financial Fair Play must affect Southampton leads to the third interesting aspect of the dispute which is Samuel’s contention that no reasonable Southampton fan should have been bothered by his article because it was supportive of the Southampton fan, if not the club itself.  As Samuel put it:

You might think writing that it would not be a good idea for Southampton to continue selling their best players, would find favour with the fans. You might think pointing out that this way a mighty fall lies and the board should not get any big ideas just because Ronald Koeman has made it work this time, was hardly a controversial stance. And that is where you’d be wrong.

I cannot read Samuel’s mind so I do not know what he was actually thinking.  However, upon first, second, and third reading of the article I did not get the slightest sense of support for my team.  Instead, I got a strong sense of superiority based upon a belief that Southampton’s Board and fans were stupid—albeit in different ways.   On the Saintsweb Fan Forum I characterized Samuel’s article as warning the Southampton Board not to run with scissors.  However, someone who posts on the Saintsweb forum as “KingdomCome” captured the flavor of Samuel’s column much better than I:

"A bit of advice for you son, don't shoot yourself in the foot"
"But, I wasn't going to"
"Well just remember, son, it's a bad idea"
"I wasn't go..."
"Just heed this advice son, I'm only looking out for you"

2 years later
"See son, aren't you glad you didn't shoot yourself in the foot?"
"Whatever, dad"
"No need to thank me, son"

[Digression about metaphors and gun safety in the USA omitted.]

No rational person would believe that the Southampton board would actually want to sell five important players every year.  This year, for example, it seems very unlikely that the board actually wanted to sell anyone other than Luke Shaw.  Whether the board could or should have drawn a line earlier than they did is certainly a debatable question.  However, even in real time, the transfers were nearly all defensible.  Lambert was getting old enough that he needed to be replaced and should be allowed his dream move as a reward for five years of great service.  Shaw—good as he was—was less valuable to the club than 30 million pounds.  Lallana could not be kept around given his desire to go and his status as team captain.  Also, the new manager had apparently identified an adequate replacement.  The board and manager wanted to keep Lovren.  However, as it turned out he could not be kept given his attitude and the club’s ability to replace him for less money—albeit with some risk.  The Chambers move is less explicable, but Chambers is the only one who is clearly better off at his new team.  He might barely have gotten off the bench for Southampton but at Arsenal he has practically been a first team regular.

Under such circumstances, what was the point of Samuel’s advice to the board that they should try not to do this every year?  They wouldn’t want to.

Of course, this does not mean that it won’t happen.  Nathaniel Clyne's contract expires in 2016.   If he won’t sign a new one next summer, he will have to be sold.  The same is true for Jay Rodriguez.  We don’t know what was said to keep Schneiderlin on board,  but it might have involved a promise to sell him next summer—at least under some circumstances.  Alderweireld is here on some kind of weird loan deal that may make it impossible to keep him even if we want to.    Right there that is four important players that might leave next summer even if no one at Southampton wants them to go.  If Samuel was telling the board, “Try not to let that happen,”  on behalf of the board, I respond “Well, duh.”  Moreover, given the experiences of this summer, there is good reason to believe that Southampton's scouting department is already at work trying to identify replacements for each of these players.  No one can be certain that they will succeed, but there is good reason for cautious optimism.

I can't help but think that Samuel is just setting himself up here to succeed.  If Southampton is relegated under current management, he will be able to point to some transfer that was "one player too many."  On the other hand, every season we don't get relegated, we will have followed his advice not to sell too many players.  Even if we sell five players next summer, if things work out, we just didn't sell "one player too many."

Samuel claimed that he had nothing against Southampton.  Again, I can’t read his mind so this might be true, but there is evidence that would allow someone, in good faith, to question this claim.  Having only been a Southampton fan for four years, I am not aware of the extensive history of grudges and rivalries, both real and imagined, that exist in and around English football.  However, even I could tell that the media frenzy surrounding the inevitable sale of all of Southampton’s good players this past spring and summer was unprecedented.  Maybe everything single reporter was accurately reporting in good faith information he or she had received from a completely reliable source.  However, much of the information contradicted itself and was wrong.  Very likely there was a lot of lies spread by people with their own agenda being published as legitimate news.  Certainly, something weird was happening.

Samuels did not claim to the contrary.  He merely asserted that he himself had nothing against Southampton.  The problem with this claim is that Samuel does have a motive to dislike Southampton.  Rupert Lowe, when he was chairman of Southampton, sued The Times and won 250,000 pounds for libel damages based upon a column written by Samuel.    

[Digression about free speech USA style versus free speech UK style omitted.]

This lawsuit and its result would permit a reasonable person to infer that Samuel could have a grudge against Southampton.  Or he might not.  After all, nine years have gone by. The club ownership and management is completely different.  Samuel is working for a different newspaper.  It could all be water under the bridge.

The real reason it feels, to Southampton fans, that Samuels is hostile to our club is the tone of his articles.  In his response to Southampton fans he pointed to his column of 17 January 2014 which, unlike most commentary at the time, did not assert that Southampton was falling apart because our genius leader Nicola Cortese had just left the team.  Instead, Samuel suggested that Cortese had gotten a big head, overstepped his bounds, and failed to understand that he worked for Katharina Liebherr, not the other way around.  According to Samuel:

The day it was published I got a very nice email from people working for Katharina Liebherr saying some very complimentary things. It wasn’t exactly a party invitation, but the offer to stay in touch was there. Trouble is, I’ve never sought to be in anybody’s gang, establishment or otherwise. So I keep my distance.

Alas, at that moment in time most Southampton fans weren’t ready to hear criticism of Cortese so this article, which doesn’t seem too bad to us now, sounded like just another attack.  A perception which was supported by the casual aside suggesting that it would be impossible for Southampton to progress any further under any leadership.  His most recent article, while complimentary in some ways, certainly implied that we have just been lucky.  Well, we have been lucky.  We were bought by Markus Liebherr instead of some rich jerk.  We were lucky his daughter was not the evil mastermind many people believed.  We were lucky our board turned out to be competent.  But given those preexisting facts, the results of this summer were due to design, not luck.

[Digression about Sir Alex Ferguson omitted.]

[Digression about Neil Ashton omitted.]

I have no real idea whether or not Samuel is biased against Southampton.  I do know that his style is such that we probably won’t even notice when he is on our side.  For me, the real test is whether he is right about the inevitable negative effects of Financial Fair Play on Southampton.  Alas, that subject is too complex to be addressed in this already overly long article.  I will try to post Part Two in the next day or two.