Will Hull Be Next?

It has emerged that Hull City may be the next football club forced into Administration. This comes after Chairman Adam Pearson slammed his predecessor Paul Duffen over his running of the club.

 Hull played Aston Villa on Wednesday night, when Pearson launched his scathing attack on Duffen in his programme notes before the game.

Pearson wrote: ‘The prospect of relegation should not need to be the doomsday scenario that everyone currently discusses and worries about. The financial planning just needed a bit of classic strategy and common sense applying to it back in the summer of 2008 and even more so when they survived on the last day of the season in 2009.

‘In my opinion the decisions made by Mr Duffen at that point were extremely short-sighted and lacking in business sense and specific football knowledge. He seems, albeit with the advantage of hindsight, to have had no understanding of the industry, Hull City or the city of Hull itself.

‘The problems which were apparent throughout 2009 should have been at the forefront of the summer transfer and business dealings.

‘Instead the wage bill was increased even further.  The safety value of pragmatic realism was cut off and the club under Mr Duffen spent money it didn’t have. This is not ambition or “giving it a go” or “living the dream”, it is, in my personal view poor business sense and a lack of moral responsibility.

‘Just under £6m spent on agents fees in two years and the deal breakdown and size of agent payments is morally abhorrent.  The strategy was non-existent in my opinion and the implementation of football deals extremely flawed from a commercial perspective.’

Pearson recently took over the running of the club for the second time after previously overseeing their steady rise through the tiers of English football, however it was Duffen who, after taking the reins in 2007 guided them into the Premier League before make a series of commercial decisions that look increasingly likely to come back to haunt them.

In a season that has seen the first ever Premier League club to enter administration, it would be thought that clubs would take that into account in their decisions, however Duffen continuously raised the wage bill with the signings of seasoned professional who have been there and done in the top flight.

The added knowhow of players such as Jimmy Bullard, George Boeteng and Brazilian Geovanni were meant to aid Hull in maintaining top flight status.  However, with relegation looking an ever more likely proposition and these players having no relegation clause in their contracts, the club is plummeting into quite a shortfall should the club go down.

With that in mind, relegation will almost certainly force Hull City to appoint Administrators in the very near future.

Unfortunately, Paul Duffen seems to be following a very popular trend in football at the moment, where very good, experienced and knowledgeable businessmen suddenly lose all sight of what is commercially viable when running a football club.

Duffen has previously worked huge companies such as Catalyst Media Group, Proctor & Gamble and P J Holloway, however once he went into football, the will to reach the top echelons of the game has led him the making poor business decisions.

Posted at 11:38AM Apr 23, 2010 by Marc Stenton in Insolvency  |  Comments[0]