Limp leadership has left United’s support in fear of ‘Armageddon’
Things must change on the pitch and in the boardroom
ACHAIRMAN who dare not exit via the front door. At least not while the mob are shaking the windows and rattling the walls in protest. Hastily arranged meetings, raised voices and the undisguisable note of defeat — a hollow sound, as if the speaker has been emptied of all spirit and fight — in words that have slipped from defiance to dead-eyed resignation.
If Dundee United were just a bad football team, their fans wouldn’t be so worried. The fact that United now resemble nothing so much as a broken club, an organisation bereft of any leadership, inspiration and ideas, is what terrifies many.
When the chairman of the main supporters’ group starts throwing around words like ‘Armageddon’, it is prompted by genuine fear that United’s finances — even allowing for repeated sales of the team’s very best players — may not survive the now inevitable plunge into the Championship.
Fan disaffection with the board, and Stephen Thompson in particular, has reached new heights — or depths — in a season of utter misery, spent scraping around the unfashionable reaches of the Premiership.
And it’s not just fans longing for past days of largesse, when dear old Eddie Thompson would provide funds aplenty. They take on board Thompson Jr’s declaration that United have the third highest football budget in the top flight.
They clearly recognise that a club which posted losses of £800,000 last year has very little room for manoeuvre. Perhaps that’s what makes them so desperate.
Because their protests on Sunday, while most definitely encompassing unrest over Mixu Paatelainen’s performance since his arrival as manager in October, targeted Thompson for a reason.
They see him as being guilty of squandering both public goodwill and natural footballing resources.
It’s obvious that there is something wrong in the mix at Tannadice. Running even a mediocre football club requires a formula blended to total perfection, with even a drop too much of this or that spoiling the whole pot.
Thompson’s mid-season ‘intervention’ in the running of the team — publicly lambasting the ‘abysmal’ players for ‘failing miserably’ under Jackie McNamara and then his successor — was akin to pouring vinegar into milk.
As a general rule, football folk don’t tend to be overly precious about much. You can cuss them out, question their ability, cast aspersions on their suitability for the job. But teams stick together.
By opening unfriendly fire on his own men — and footballers are more than just employees — Thompson put himself on the wrong side of a divide.
If the chairman doesn’t have your back, what’s the point, right?
Whatever the immediate and short-term effect of that outburst, even the man himself would have to admit that history will not look kindly upon his fit of public pique.
Hindsight is also making fools of all who thought Paatelainen would do a good job. His arrival, if you remember, was generally regarded as a decent appointment. The experienced Finn was a safe pair of hands, put in place early enough to turn around their ailing season.
Yet Mixu added to the mistakes of Jackie, never more so in the area of identifying and signing talent. Name one of his players who has genuinely worked out.
Guy Demel has become the epitome of everything that has gone wrong. At least Gavin Gunning picked up the ball and walked off the pitch. Demel is continuing to take a weekly wage, plus additional appearance money, for his lacklustre efforts.
Florent Sinama Pongolle, anyone? Or how about Japanese goalkeeper Eiji Kawashima, at fault for at least one of Hamilton’s goals in Sunday’s lifeless, listless, hopeless home humbling — the final straw for many supporters?
Paatelainen himself looks as if he knows his race is run. While he talks about rebuilding in the summer, the chances of him being left in situ — especially if his departure can ease some of the pressure on the board — are slim to negligible.
Whatever the directors do next, from replacing the manager to purging so much of the expensive deadwood dragging the club down, they must know that fans won’t be entirely satisfied.
Warning that the current storm isn’t likely to abate any time soon, Arab Trust chairman Gavin Muir told Sportsmail: ‘There has to be change — both on the pitch and in the boardroom.
‘The board of directors have overseen a strategy where we’ve had unprecedented transfer income over the past few years. That money should have given the club some financial security.
‘But we had operating losses of just under £800,000 last year and I think they’re projected to be even higher this year. How can fans have confidence, if they’ve got us into this position, that they should be trusted to get us out of it?
‘The chairman has come in and given it a good go. But it’s time for him and the board to move on.’
Muir, who admits that the Trust have no ‘white knight’ ready to buy Thompson out, described the prospect of administration as akin to ‘Armageddon’, explaining: ‘The penalties are so harsh, the club have to pay the administrators — and that takes money out of the business. We have to make sure that doesn’t happen.
‘We’ll do everything we can to facilitate orderly change in the boardroom. While we would like more influence, we don’t have the kind of money needed to buy the club. We’ve just got to do what we can to maybe flush out some people who are lurking in the background.’
Hanging around in the background of a disaster in the making? Sounds like some in the United first team. For the fans’ sake, it is to be hoped that any would-be saviours out there aren’t so slow off the mark.