Simon Jordan comments in the Observer

[Sir Alan LCSugar]

Untouchables need a short, sharp shock

Simon Jordan

Sunday November 27, 2005

The Observer

There are two things you don't do with a player who you think is about to lose it in public. One, you don't interview him on your in-house corporate TV station. Two, if you mess up point one, you don't then try to suppress his comments, bury the tape and convince yourself it won't be leaked, or that the player will love you for it.

United's handling of Roy Keane nine days ago was, however you look at it, painful - a PR disaster, the loss of their captain for no fee, a compensation deal, an exposed manager left more exposed, angry fans left more galvanised. Trying to call it all 'mutual consent' as an after-thought was a nice touch. What must really hurt, though, is knowing that it wasn't just the PR that United messed up. The ultimate responsibility for Keane's behaviour lies with them too.

Why? The bulk of Keane's headline 'outbursts' over the years have been valid - prawn sandwiches, hitting back with conviction at Mick McCarthy in Saipan. But if you want to know the man, more revealing is his book: 'I'd waited long enough for Alf Inge Haaland. I fucking hit him hard - take that, you cunt'. Brilliant player, but isn't he just another man-child who can't take criticism? Someone who lives as an untouchable, working without boundaries, without restraint. And it's United, with their reverence, who made him that way.

When I arrived at Palace five years ago, the place was flooded with the same attitude. Players had no respect, no one to answer to, no framework. They weren't making big headlines, but they were doing a lot worse than criticising the club on subscription TV. They lived and worked by the playschool ethic: how many liberties can you take?

Palace's liberty culture before I took over and just after was almost mesmerising. One player nicked the club's training kit and sold it on. Neil Ruddock took the team out and got them wasted when we were fighting relegation. A married player on £6,000 a week put his extra-marital condoms on club expenses. We signed one player on £10,000 a week who claimed conveyancing expenses of £8,000 and used it to have a house in London he already owned made over. Players taking the piss left right and centre because that was the culture: do what you like, you're a footballer. And it's that attitude that is the source of 99 per cent of football indiscipline, big incidents and small. It creates and sustains problem players.

Craig Bellamy is the best recent example of the top end of liberty culture. I was asked at the time how I'd handle a player doing what he did to Newcastle, behaving as he did towards his manager, and I said what I honestly felt: I'd strangle him with his own tongue. But he was behaving that way purely because, with respect to Bobby Robson, he'd been allowed to turn into this imbecilic little gobshite over a period of four years. It took a strong man manager, Graeme Souness, to stand up to him and bring things to a head.

But the Bellamy case also illustrates the problem chairmen face with player discipline. Bellamy wasn't sacked, he was fined, frozen out, loaned out, then sold. I'm sure Freddy Shepherd would love to have just sacrificed him with a blunt knife and sod the consequences, but can you do that to a £5m asset on £40,000 a week who is protected by the size of his contract, by his compensation clause? Football doesn't recognise compensation-free 'gross misconduct'.

Three years ago I sacked our midfielder Jamie Pollock for being overweight. We signed him on a good contract at one weight, then he settled on another. He was called in for weigh-ins every week, and every time he wasn't on target he was fined. We constituted those as verbal warnings. He got three of them, then a written one, then he was dismissed. And that's when the PFA stepped in, and a tribunal reinstated him twice. It ended up with us having to pay someone who had committed gross misconduct to leave. Real-world employers must look on open-mouthed.

The problem isn't just sitting there untouched - clubs are working on a system of legally tight rules that define your rights as an employer - but unless those rules are standardised by the FA it's a legal nonsense. And sometimes clubs don't help either. Chelsea sacked Adrian Mutu for gross misconduct - great. Then they demanded £9m for him.

The wider issue, though, is addressing the source of the problem: the over-protection of players through weak management and nannying.

Last April a Fulham player liaison officer told the papers about some of his tasks. He said he'd been called out to Alain Goma's house because 'Goma's goldfish was swimming in the wrong direction'. He'd been called to rescue a player lost on the London Underground ('he was helpless'). He'd been called out by Fabrice Fernandes who kept waking up in the morning with a wet head, and discovered the player had been 'sleeping by an open window'.

Yes, Palace look after our players, in that we help with language coaching, relocation and, if required, financial management for young players on big salaries. But we don't mollycoddle them, change their pants or sort out bent goldfish.

We're talking about adults here. How is it helping grown men to treat them in the way so many clubs still do? It's hammered into them from the start. I've heard academy directors using the phrase 'a child's life is like an open book - you write a new page every day'. That says it all. Kids don't learn from spoon-feeding, hand-holding. Christ, they're not even allowed to clean boots now by the PFA unless they're wearing Marigolds. How do clubs think they're helping by raising boys like this, then letting them behave like spoilt toddlers or individual world super-powers once they're 'grown up'?

But it's important to point out what can be achieved once you've acknowledged the problem. I'm not saying Palace is perfect, but the squad we have now is the best I've worked with in terms of dedication, commitment and discipline. The reason is simple: we've worked on building a different culture, and I now have a first-rate manager with staff who demand, deserve and get total respect.

How much have things changed? In October 2000 I put Clinton Morrison and two others on the transfer list over their attitude and behaviour. He's subsequently become one of the best pros I've employed. I was delighted to re-sign him. He still hangs on his rude-boy image - when he leaves the room you know he's left the room - but he's a great trainer, a good influence, a good ambassador. Andrew Johnson, Emmerson Boyce, Tony Popovic and others are real examples to our academy kids, as is Aki Riihilahti, a ridiculous person in the best possible way - committed, brilliant work ethic, bit bonkers and totally engaging. They respect their club, their colleagues and their responsibilities.

So what is the future - more Bellamys or more Akis? It depends on who's producing them. Ours is one of the academies that takes education seriously. I'm proud we have some of the best GCSE results of any academy in the country, and that we prepare these boys for life. We want to produce rounded men, players with the drive to match Keane and Bellamy technically, but players who understand obligations, can take criticism, can see the bigger picture.

A football club - every level of it - is built on four things: discipline, hard work, ambition and respect. What United did in giving up on Keane, what Newcastle did in ditching Bellamy, was acknowledge, belatedly, that formula. Without those ingredients - and Keane once had all four - individual talent counts for nothing.

Simon Jordan's fee for his Observer articles will be given to the Christopher's Children's Hospice, Guildford, Surrey

Cracked mirror

A footnote. The Mirror said last week I'm not talking to Iain Dowie any more, we've had a row, he's off to Portsmouth. Someone else said I'd been blanking Iain's wife. OK. Let's take this slowly. Why haven't Iain and I been seen together lately? Because I've been in Los Angeles and Spain for several weeks. Does Iain want to go to Portsmouth? You know the answer to that. And Mrs Dowie? Perhaps the papers should have asked Debbie while she and Iain were spending the weekend on my yacht last summer. They're a lovely family. So cracking scoop, chaps - well done.

Edited November 27, 2005 by lie_cheat_steal