Running a business is hard work. I don’t mean coming up with the initial business ideas or making the shiny adverts, I mean running the business – the day to day slog of dealing with the staff, the premises, managing the business plan and ensuring people are focussed on the agreed end goals, talking to the bank or the electricity company or the local media. And if you get it right… you get no praise at all. And if you make a mistake, no one will ever let you forget it. It’s a bit like being a goalkeeper.
When Steve Davison joined the club we were a mess in this fundamental regard. Methven, like Bain before him, viewed the role more like a striker, placing themselves in the limelight far too often and leaving isolated parts of the club to run themselves without trying to harmonise anything. It’s easy to get nothing wrong if you don’t do anything.
Davison’s appointment was fascinating. It was effectively a joint appointment between the old and the new and, generally, that doesn’t end well. For well over a year his job was to try to keep harmony and focus on one direction when the old owners still had too much of a say and Davison the peacemaker was kept far too busy. Davison the engineer could then take over.
He came from an engineering background so the focus was always going to be on structure more than show. And it’s exactly what we needed as a club at that time – a focus on the big parts of the club (away from the pitch) that needed work. The new pitch was one (ironically when I’ve just said away from the pitch but you know what I mean) which has been a noticeable improvement on the ten years or so before he arrived. Structural issues with the stadium and academy have also been improved, financial responsibility throughout the club, bringing back concerts… look - my point is, off the pitch, the club is in a far better position than it was when he arrived. And he deserves credit for that. But most fans don’t see that. Because, as I said earlier, all the good you do, all the right decisions and positive moves forward are ignored if anything off the field goes wrong.
And things have gone wrong.
The way the story goes you’d think Davison, black and white scarf round his neck, took his personal collection of Mag memorabilia to the Black Cats Bar. You’d think he’d gone around scruffing up the stadium, tearing flags a little and deliberately preventing people from buying kids shirts and tickets… While this is obviously nonsense, Davison is in charge of off field activity and he’d accept that the buck stops with the man at (or near) the top and mistakes have been made. The issues all impact on ‘fan experience’ and more ‘media humiliation’ than actual errors and he was never going to excel in these areas.
It is interesting that the obvious successor is David Bruce who has worked in American sport, which focusses massively on fan experience and media image. As we move up the football pyramid these areas become more and more important and our shortcomings there have been highlighted particularly in recent months. If he is taking over I’d like to see someone recruited to look after the nuts and bolts of the business leaving Bruce to do the shop front image role. If we get this wrong we run the risk of being back to Bain all over again.
The timing of the announcement isn’t difficult to understand. In a season falling apart, a 5–1 loss at home, no manager, no operating strikers, a midtable finish guaranteed and ongoing problems with the retail side of the club, even someone with David Bruce’s pedigree was going to struggle to sell season tickets. The announcements about stadium improvement (which wouldn’t have happened without Davison’s work by the way) hasn’t worked. My ‘personal’ email from Luke O’Nien didn’t touch the sides. The club needs supporters to sign up for next year and they need to show next season will be different. The announcement of Davison leaving is the next step in that process.
Of course, only two things will get that ticket money in. One is the appointment of a manager who genuinely excites the fans and the other is the signing of strikers who we think will put the ball in the back of the net. Both these jobs sit on the to do list of Kristjaan Speakman. If the board are prepared to let Davison be the fall guy for off field failures, disregarding his successes, then Speakman must be looking over his shoulder. Many of his signings have worked well but surely the pressure to sell tickets might see Speakman shown the door if his next two actions aren’t incredibly positive in terms of results and fan expectation, especially as the summer will almost certainly see his greatest signing achievements leaving the club.
There’s a lot to do before August and if the club really want the fans to step up and commit to next year, we need to see their commitment to making it a season to remember on the pitch, not just rearranging chairs in the board room.
