The Premiership Years: Worst-Run Club

Newcastle maybe not even top ten for me here, astonishingly

has to be leeds i suppose

Portsmouth got even closer to dissolution than Leeds I guess and without the Champions' League run to show for it so they get my vote.

Oh hang on, Wimbledon no longer exist. Lemme think about this a while.

Except that Leeds did well for most of the 90's and were principally felled by little more than two or three seasons of spectacular gambling under Risdale and then quickly sputtered into relegation as players were sold off left and right by necessity.

Portsmouth certainly deserve a place in the running and Newcastle.

God, Swindon are up there too. Are we only counting the Premiership years or the last couple of decades in general?

liverpool ffs

ah no it is leeds, i know they did well in bots and bobs but they were legit big club and were completely soap opera fcked withing 2 years. beats the likes of the slow decline of smaller clubs giving in to inevitability

newcastle consistently good value for money here, as indeed are spurs over the time period imo

Let's look back at this in a few years and see where Liverpool and Man U are, financially.

Wouldn't argue that Leeds weren't a big club but they'd already come down a few pegs since the Revie era including spells in Division 2 as was. More of an up and down side by the Premiership era whose peaks and troughs just got exaggerated by the new inflation.

Man City had been every bit as fucked as Leeds over the same period for example.

hadn't ever gone as high again as leeds did in early and then late 90's tho

If we reflect on the years of harmless public hilarity they've provided, I don't think anybody could call Newcastle badly run.

Leeds are the first club that spring to mind. I forget the details, but I'm pretty sure Sheffield Wednesday have been fucked over for a while. I suppose it also depends if you mean badly run from the fans' perspective or in a business sense: from the supporters' point of view it couldn't get much worse than Wimbledon, but in terms of running a business they've probably done alright.

I think Portsmouth are the winners, though. Bigger debts than Leeds, with half the support and never a sniff of Champions League football. A succession of owners, some who didn't want the club or denied being the owner or were front men for extremely dodgy people; players unpaid; emergency Premier League meetings to try to give Pompey the following season's cash just so they could complete their fixtures for the ongoing season; skin-of-the-teeth escapes from liquidation.

I feel like Palace should be contenders, and Bradford must've been a shambles to end up in Division Four though I can't remember any details except pinning their hopes on Benito Carbone.

I'm going to go with City though for mostly the reasons as nbs said for Portsmouth - that City got away with it somehow makes it worse.

Don't really think they're contenders but how bad were things about to get at Chelsea until they were taken over by someone who didn't mind losing vast sums of money? Did Bates have them on the brink of total collapse or were they always going to be okay with or without Roman?

Derby underrated imo. Worst points total while spending a ridiculous amount of money on wages for the likes of Villa (lol who?) and Savage = worst Premiership season. Overall I'd say... West Ham? Nearly went bankrupt a couple of times, gone down, sold their best players (6 won the CL right?) instead of having a home grown golden generation, treated their best managers as scum, treated a Nazi as God...

Financially speaking, how badly run were Man City over most of this time? I mean, they were obviously a bit useless on the field hence the relegations but they'd have to be pretty well run to claw all that back. Compared to, say, Sheffield Wednesday who were more successful in the early days and sank without trace.

The answer to this is obviously Wimbledon. Leeds and Portsmouth may have been complete disasters but Wimbledon is the only club to have been taken out of existence.

Is there an argument for Wigan being the best run? I mean, they have no fans and they will probably get relegated but they're the only club here to have been bottom of the entire football league within the Premiership era. That's a hell of a climb.

Wimbledon had at least two administrations before going out of existence too. Otoh, Newcastle paid them £7m for Carl Cort

They also went through their entire Premiership existence without a ground. It's a no-brainer.

None of the ever-present Premiership clubs should even be in contention here.

We'll only find out how well-run Wigan are when they get relegated imo. If they have a viable future as something other than a making-up-the-numbers franchise, then fair play to them.

Bradford must've been a shambles to end up in Division Four

Thought about Bradford last night but if you look at their history the spell in the top flight was more of an anomaly than the subsequent slide down. On the other hand they get absolutely huge gates for a League 2 side and I do remember some financial shit hitting the fan before they left the Prem so god knows how they've been run since tbh.

Otoh, Newcastle paid them £7m for Carl Cort

― Ismael Klata, Thursday, 20 January 2011 10:59 (5 hours ago) Bookmark

otoh wimbledon also spent £7m on john hartson

both sound investments per cwt

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Guardian weighing in on the big debate with a nicely-balanced lead-in to their poll:

'Football is worst governed sport in UK'
Poll: Is football the UK's worst-governed sport?

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Can't disagree with those results