Charlton legend Mervyn Day talks about problems with football as big business and clubs treating “fans” as “customers”

BY CALUM FRASER calum@slpmedia.co.uk

Mervyn Day has spent his life in and around the top level of football either playing, coaching or scouting and he has witnessed massive changes in that time.

He believes that Sky and the big TV deals catapulted football from a sport with deep roots in the area, to global big business.

He said: “Clubs probably view fans more as customers than as fans these days. They are interested in customer experience, but that can be different to a fan’s experience.

“Fans are focused on the football side of the club and are not too worried about the rest of it like the corporate side, the shop side and all that.

“The fan really wants to see the money spent on the pitch, rather than everything that goes around, making it a nice customer experience. There’s always a slight disconnect in that sense.”

Sky secured an exclusive deal to screen top flight English football when the Premier League was established in 1992.

The contracts agreed between the league and BSkyB in 1992 and 1997 were worth £191.5million and £670million. That has now rocketed up to more than £5billion paid by Sky to broadcast a selection of Premier League games this year.

Mr Day said: “Sky are the catalysts behind everything. All of a sudden it became big business.
A business where clubs could make a lot of money, and if you did it wrong, they could lose a lot of money.

“Many Premier League clubs are in foreign ownership. It’s had an affect on the links between clubs, fans and the areas they are in.”

Charlton fans have experienced their own frustrations with foreign ownership.

There have been a number of protests directed against owner Roland Duchatelet, from plastic pigs thrown on the pitch, to a mock funeral down Floyd Road as a figurative mourning for the club’s past.

Mr Day, who is now head of scouting at Bristol City has paid a number of visits to the Valley in the past four years.

He said: “The atmosphere has been fairly toxic at times. Which can’t be a good thing. It’s against the ownership and not the players.

“Maybe the problem that the people in charge have, is that they haven’t really realised the background of how much the fans are involved in the club.

The history of Charlton is unique in football. “If you disregard that, then that is a massive slap in the face for people where the club has basically been their lives. And it is sad.

“In terms of coaching, I had the best eight years of my life there. Working with really good people and people who had the club at heart. Everything that was done while we were there was for the benefit of the club.

“Maybe it’s the contrast for what it was and what it is now, that makes it look so much worse.”

Mr Day joined Charlton as Alan Curbishley’s number two in 1998 the week after they had won promotion to the Premiership.

He stayed there for eight years before leaving with Curbishley in 2006.

He said: “Almost straight away, within a few months of me being there, there was the Back to the Valley dinner. Then we had fan representation on the board as well.

“I have to admit I didn’t have a huge amount of contact with the fan rep, but I knew they had full voting rights on the board and they were on it so that the fans had a voice.

“It worked very well. There was a interaction between the football club and supporters.”

The supporters’ director position was disbanded in 2008 and the Mercury is calling for this position to be brought back.

Whether the Australian consortium complete the takeover or not, we argue that this will be a step in the right direction, strengthening the links between the club’s upper echelons and the fans.

Mr Day said: “I think there is still scope for the more community-run club, taking the focus away from the club as a big business.

But, if you make it into the Premier League, then bam, you’re handed £100million.

That’s an awful lot of money and you need structures to be able to deal with that.

“The momentum of a smaller club can work though. Take Huddersfield. They got a great German manager. He recruited well from the Bundesliga 2.

“In reality they were a Charlton-sized club in the Championship. The owner is a rich man by general standards, but he’s not an Abramovich or a Glazier.

“The trick for the likes of Huddersfield and Charlton is being able to sustain momentum.

That close knit type club who can fight adversity because they’re all in it together.

It’s fresh and exciting.”