Is This the Year of the Owner?

Unless you have been out of the country for the past year, you will have realised the change that is looming over the football landscape.

No longer are we being managed by managers but by hierarchies put in place to do a traditional manager's job. As The Guardian—as recently as today—alluded to, they often operate in a mascot's role.

As a Spurs fan, the arrival of Juande Ramos was seen as nothing but bringing in the best pedigree to propel a team, that in our chairman Daniel Levy's eyes was incapable under Martin Jol to record a victory.

And hallelujah, one year later, we are stuck in the same sterile opening of the season curse, lacking the ability to pull together a win.

Spurs are a selling club, as passionate as you can be a Yiddo there is no denying, Spurs are stuck in their ways in terms of developing then releasing a talent. Proven goalscorers in Robbie Keane, Dimitar Berbatov, and Jermain Defoe have been let go and tired players, plying their trade at the end of their domestic season have been brought in to strengthen positions already ultimately filled, to pry up a position weakened for players sold to make a profit.

As I have intimated before, Daniel Levy is different, because as alluded to by Alex Ferguson only a few weeks ago he is in the football business to support himself and no other.

Hell if Spurs fans wake up on Monday morning with another loss looming over the club, will the fans be calling for Ramos' head? Yes!

It is pure and simple in football terms that if a club is losing, it is inevitable that the fans will blame the manager, but how can this be just in the modern football climate? Look at Curbishley's departure from West Ham—his acrimonious decision to part because of Magnusson's decision to sell two decent squad players, forced Curbishley to decide that his tenure at West Ham was up, because he no longer had his contracted decisions set in stone.

He lost his needed ability as a manager to buy and sell players he thought of as essential to the team and he believed, lost his position as manager and was purely operating as a first-team coach.

Then we look at Keegan's tenure at Newcastle. Can one man make a city? Yes. Fans paraded Keegan as a champion of the city and honoured him as the one true man who knew what Newcastle was about.

They questioned how a crew of Cockney hounds could ever manager a North East club with the passion that a local superstar, in the mould of Keegan, Beardsley, or Shearer could handle such a prestigious club.

The fans, voted recently in a poll as the most deluded club in terms of attained silverware, could argue, that their club is huge and that only a local Adonis could fathom players that would excite and replicate the close-to title winning run of the era of the Ginola's and Shearer's which Keegan was a vocal point of.

Fans are starting to wake up and smell the stench adorning from boardrooms across the country. No longer are their blames firmly fixated on the manager of the club but the hierarchy invoked through the current financial obligations of a club to produce a profit.

Clubs like Newcastle, Spurs, and Villa are no longer operated purely to win and develop, but to make a financial return for the investors at the head of the road. Even if you want to sack the board you can't—it is much easier to call for a manager's head because the owner's won't lose money, because they will strengthen the consistency of the fans support and ultimately be in touch in grab more money from loyal, unbinding and naive supporters.

Ashley is selling the club for 480 million pounds, double his initial investment in the North East club and to his amazement no one is interested at Newcastle for the price. It was rumoured Sheikh Mohammed considered Newcastle prior to his purchase of Manchester City, but Ashley was unwilling to sell for less that his considered amount and Sheikh believed that Newcastle was unmarketable in the Asian market.

The fans, let alone Ashley, will be stuck with each other for a while longer, and as with Spurs, ENIC will hold full control over their every actions. It is shocking that only Glasgow Rangers in 1996 are to resit the control of an outside investment, ironically by ENIC, because of what it would do to the club.

Managers will never have the power they once did—because football is for the playground of the rich, or should I say for the profit of the rich!