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Posted by: ChrisVillan
on Wednesday, April 26, 2006 - 02:09 PM
Villa Chairman Doug Ellis features in a survey of football’s highest earning directors.
David Conn of The Guardian has today published a list of the top earning directors in English football. Aside from the ludicrous earnings of Peter Kenyon (over £2.5 million) and the presence of Rupert Lowe despite Southampton’s relegation to The Championship, there are two particular members of this exclusive club which will interest Aston Villa fans specifically.
1. Peter Kenyon Chelsea Chief Executive
2. David Gill Manchester United Chief Executive
3. Keith Edelman Arsenal Managing Director
4. Richard Scudamore Premier League Chief Executive
5. Gordon Taylor PFA Chief Executive
6. Rick Parry Liverpool Chief Executive
7. Freddy Shepherd Newcastle United Executive Chairman
8. Daniel Levy Tottenham Hotspur Chairman
9. Bruce Langham Former Aston Villa Chief Executive
10. Douglas Hall Newcastle United Director
11. Ken Friar Arsenal Director
12. Michael Cunnah Wembley Chief Executive
13. Allan Duckworth Bolton Wanderers Director
14. Doug Ellis Aston Villa Chairman
15. John Williams Blackburn Rovers Chairman
16. Rupert Lowe Southampton Chairman
17. David Dein Arsenal Vice-Chairman
18. Phil Gartside Bolton Wanderers Chairman
19. Karren Brady Birmingham City Managing Director
Aston Villa is a club which has reportedly been unable to finance a loan extension for a player from Leeds United this season. We have spent instead over £800,000 on salary payments to two directors. Bruce Langham, who resigned from his Villa post as Chief Executive, has a contract pay-off of £145,000 included in his earnings of £518,976. I’m no expert, but for a club unable to incur the necessary costs of progressing – or even surviving – on the field, that is an awful lot of money to be paying out on one man.
The salient point for me, and it would seem many other Villa fans, is as usual one Doug Ellis. He may not be the highest earner of them all, but do any of them do a worse job? I’d argue that perhaps only Rupert Lowe does less to justify his earnings than Mr Ellis. Our Chairman’s salary is listed as £296,555, which according to Conn is a 12.3% increase on last year. Meanwhile, attendances have fallen and the team is still mathematically in a relegation battle with just six points to play for.
How exactly can this possibly be justified? These are cold, hard figures. Mr Ellis has seen his salary go up while the primary product of his board has been in shocking decline. According to David Conn, Mr Ellis “has always been paid handsomely by Aston Villa plc”. Why, then, has Ellis’ position been under little pressure despite the stagnation of the business over which he presides? Maybe it’s time the Chairman was put under more pressure due to the obvious failings he has.
The team is performing poorly and is staring relegation in the face unless the much-touted root and branch change occurs. The training facility development is in doubt. In short, the business is in decline, and yet the shareholders and the supporters allow an incompetent Chairman to not only sit on the board, but earn similar amounts to some of the best among his counterparts.
Nothing has changed. Doug Ellis must go, and in an ideal world it would be the Villa fans that eventually force him out.
ChrisVillan
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