Invisible Man must step from shadows
SEARCH Google for Paul Suen and you’ll find plenty of financial stories. Click images and you won’t find a bean. The Birmingham City owner guards his privacy with fanatical zeal and is immensely proud that not a single photograph exists in the public domain.
Unusual? Yes, but hardly the end of the world. For Blues fans, memories of Carson Yeung are painfully fresh and an invisible owner is still better than an incarcerated one. Especially if he pays the bills.
Folk at St Andrews can live without seeing Suen’s mug. What they can’t abide is the boardroom incompetence that makes him look like one.
Forget the dismissal of Gary Rowett. Disastrous it undoubtedly was, but Suen and Co have been beaten with that stick so often it has splintered to pieces. Even Bluenoses are sick of hearing about it.
Far worse is the apparent lack of direction, strategy and accountability in the 16 months since that fateful decision.
Take the pick ‘n’ mix approach to managers. Rowett, an unglamorous pragmatist, was replaced by Gianfranco Zola, a global icon who promised – and failed – to bring sunshine football to Small Heath.
Next came Harry Redknapp, a domestic doyen who’d spent the best part of two decades in the Premier League.
When his £30m summer splurge bought only disjointed defeats, Birmingham’s owners turned to Steve Cotterill, a lower-league firefighter with a reputation for ‘needs-must’ football.
Now we have Garry Monk, 39, an up-and-comer with a possession-centric philosophy and unshakeable tactical principles.
See the pattern? No, because there isn’t one. It’s like a toddler who grows bored with a toy after two minutes and grabs something else.
Managerial stability isn’t everything, as Watford have consistently proved.
But, to make a hire-em-fireem strategy work, you need solidity somewhere. A settled playing squad. A business plan. City have neither.
Players have been signed on reputation, not to suit a tactical blueprint. Currently, Birmingham have one left-back and six strikers. That imbalance is also financial, with a destabilising mix of stalwarts on £5,000 a week and newer recruits on eight times that. Such disparity is invariably a recipe for disaster.
Overseen
Upstairs, too, disharmony is rife. Initially, Panos Pavlakis ran the show. He stepped down in May and was replaced as CEO by Xuandong Ren, the man responsible for the appointments of Redknapp, Cotterill and Monk.
In the background, recruitment was overseen by agent Darren Dein, a consultant appointed by Suen on an eye-watering £25,000a-month retainer, and Jeff Vetere, a scout who previously worked for Real Madrid.
Dubbed the ‘Axis of Incompetence’ by Blues fans, the trio clashed in spectacular fashion last month, with Ren allegedly blaming Dein and Vetere for the collapse of several January deals.
Chinabased Blues chairman Wenqing Zhao – another ingredient in this confusing leadership soup – sided with Ren and it is now reported that Vetere and Dein have quietly been put out to pasture. Confused? So are Blues fans. As Paul Simon said, it’s all incidents and accidents, hints and allegations. Nobody – not Suen, not Zhao, not Ren – communicates with supporters. None has given an interview to local media. Ren’s last twitter post came in October 2017. Last week, supporters’ group the Blues Trust, met with club ‘representatives’ at St Andrews to ask a series of perfectly reasonable questions. Who controls transfers? Is the manager free to pick who he wants? What are the roles of various board members? They were fobbed off with fudges, protocol and empty drivel. Questions about heavy losses and potential Financial Fair Play (FFP) sanctions were left off the agenda. Asked if Suen had responded to a request for fans to join a share scheme, they were told there was “no answer yet, and we are unsure of the reason for not having an answer”. Farcical. Monk is a good manager, but he is not a miracle worker. He can organise a back four, but he cannot unite a club that is fractured on so many levels. Only Suen can do that. His deputies have failed. It is time for the Blues owner to step from the shadows, witness the mess and appoint a board who know how to run a club. Because right now, the lunatics are running the asylum.