For older supporters, what is the truth about Clay? Was he an asset stripper? Did he have any interest in the club? Were Fulham in debt then (when a lot of good players were sold off)? Was he trying to save the club? Did he want to build flats on the thames to make millions?
I tried researching it a bit but could not find anything of value. I recall Fulham had very decent 2nd div. team back then.
He sold the club to asset stripping property developers. That's a fact.
For years prior to that he'd been trying to develop the ground incorporating flats. God knows what that would have ended up looking like but a capacity of 15,000 was being bandied about.
In his early years he seemed a dynamic Ken Bates type. He brought in Moore, Mullery, Best, Marsh etc. Something seemed to change around 1980 when he lost interest in football and wanted to maximise the profit from the club which essentially meant building on the ground.
May he rot in hell.
Thanks guys. I know a lot of bad things were said about him. Is he stiill alive?
Clay tried to make money with Rugby League at the Cottage . He was a business man who thought football could make him richer if he sold the ground. When his las efforts to have planning permission granted he sold us to a property developer. David Bulstrode then became Chairman and like all good developers lied and lied and lied and then announced we were no longer going to be Fulham. Happy times.
...Clay was responsible for so many aspects of Fulham's demise from the time he became a director back in the mid 60's and Trinder just became a puppet chairman. He was instrumental in sacking Buckingham (no bad thing) and bringing in Bobby Robson (good thing) but Sir Bobby was given lot's of promises of backing but these did not materialise in a war chest. Needless to say Sir Bobby was ousted from Fulham in a disgraceful manner, made the scapegoat but went on to prove himself as one of the finest managers the game ever saw.
In the late seventies Clay and his sons ousted the old guard and took over. The MacDonald/Harford period and the lost chance of promotion due to the Derby fiasco was the catalyst in the bullying Clay to flog the club to Marler Estates and Bulstrode and Dein and we so very nearly became Fulham PR.
Now please excuse my having a quiet shudder...
Fulham following a familiar path down by the riverside
by Patrick Barclay
Published: 8:00PM BST 06 Apr 2002
A good walk spoiled: the phrase immortalised as Mark Twain's view of golf has become, once again, an equally good description of how it is to follow Fulham. Having amazed those who take the riverside stroll to Craven Cottage with nearly six years of steadily mounting achievement, the club have suddenly reverted to type by trading a dream of Europe for a battle against relegation. Oh - and just to prove you never really know where you are with this lot - an FA Cup semi-final too.
It is, I suppose, a fitting farewell to the Cottage as we know it. There are only two home matches in the Premiership before the place, a lovely old anachronism with its Archibald Leitch stand and standing terraces, closes to be prepared for replacement with a bowl more appropriate to Fulham's new aspirations. In the meantime the club will spend next season as paying guests of Queens Park Rangers. But will the visitors still include Arsenal and Manchester United? Or will Gillingham and Watford be among the attractions? In order to avert the latter, Fulham must halt an alarming slide and a point or three at Newcastle tomorrow would be a handy start.
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Marlet bags last-four spot for Fulham That they should be entering the domain of a former Fulham favourite is hardly surprising. Although Bobby Robson is among the more notable - he had two spells as a player and one, brief and bitter, as manager - so many personalities have passed through the Cottage. Those who spring to mind are the incomparably gifted Johnny Haynes and compelling Jimmy Hill. Some had to leave to be fully appreciated - Rodney Marsh, Malcolm Macdonald - while others, such as Bobby Moore and George Best, came on the way down. But when you try to make a list it seems endless. Even fans of other clubs often cherish memories of the place. Being an erstwhile resident of Greswell Street, little more than a long throw away, I have a few.
It is said, incidentally, that in the actual cottage itself - that quaint thing in the corner, rebuilt after a fire in the late 19th century - Lord Lytton wrote The Last Days Of Pompeii. Well, I remember the last days of Ian Branfoot and, for some reason, the recollection that still brings a dew to the eye is of two fans, a father who wore corduroy and looked a bit like Michael Palin and generally suggested he might be a Guardian reader, and his son; they were walking to a match against Hartlepool which began, and ended, with Fulham rated 91st in the League. But what got me was that the boy carried a scrapbook. My, how it must be bulging now that (in order of appearance) Mickey Adams, Mohammed Fayed, Kevin Keegan and Jean Tigana have brought such joy. And, my, how dad and lad deserve it. A clipping from a toenail of either would be worth more than a million belching yobs.
We had a barbecue after an Easter match against Rochdale and, through a friend who reckoned he knew the players, issued a general invitation. We hardly even considered the prospect of acceptance. And the party was running out of fuel when the doorbell rang. Through frosted glass I could recognise Glen Cockerill and Simon Morgan. If it is true that a man's calibre may be judged by his response to crisis, the sheer panic of that moment marked me out as something less than officer material. I opened the door. There were players, wives, children, babies in buggies. After they had been ushered through to the garden, which looked as if it had been visited by a plague of beer-swilling locusts, I heard a housemate hiss: "There's another two coming - and they've got a kitchen sink."
If they had all made excuses and left, who could have blamed them? Instead, led by Cockerill and Morgan, a group slipped out to the off-licence and were soon quietly stuffing the fridge with beers and cokes. The day was saved, continued until dusk and carried my respect for footballers to a new level.
Perhaps the teams of the Fifties and Sixties, though, more accurately defined Fulham. For years there were only two sure things in the sporting life of their handsome stretch of Thames: the Boat Race would be won by Oxford or Cambridge; and Fulham would toy with the notion of a drop in status. Not on purpose, of course. But their consistency was remarkable. In the eight years leading to demotion from the top division in 1968, they were perpetually endangered, several times avoiding the fall by just one rung. The ensuing parties were said to be lavish.
For all Fulham's charm, however, the Cottage has housed some of the most unpleasant figures to inhabit any boardroom. The prime riverside site attracted them. Sir Eric Miller shot himself in 1977 while a property company was being investigated and later Bobby Robson, not normally a vindictive man, remarked: "Shows how he reacted to pressure, didn't it?" There was Ernie Clay, who walked out on a desperately poor club with £5 million in 1986. The following year, David Bulstrode tried to effect a merger with QPR, which prompted a popular uprising in the Fulham tradition: 2,000 fans sat on the centre-circle, benignly observed by police and featuring offspring, sheepishly accompanied. Aided by the return of Jimmy Hill, Fulham pulled through.
Who knows how Al-Fayed will be remembered? Although he is everybody's friend at the moment, Punch would confirm that he gets bored. But it is spring, Fulham need points and there are those two precious matches, against Bolton on April 23 and Leicester City four days later, in which the old Cottage can work its influence. What better, for its very last trick, than survival?
Thanks Fernhurst. I recall the rugby league thing. Due to the fact, when the rugby team finally left the cottage, they took over our stadium pitch in Chiswick. The one that my team played on. We had to move to an outfield pitch, so lost our stadium status. However, truth is, the outfield pitch had a better playing surface. The stadium pitch was always a bit hard. (it was by the river too, strange.)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/2395783/Fulham-pushed-out-Hill.html
Fulham pushed out Hill
By Mihir Bose
Published: 12:01AM GMT 07 Feb 2003
The questions surrounding Mohamed Fayed's intentions over Craven Cottage remain unresolved, but one Fulham mystery can now be cleared up: why, just before Fayed took over as the club's chairman in 1997, did Jimmy Hill and Tom Wilson - both former players - leave the board?
The only public reference to this came in a programme note by Bill Muddyman, a director and part-owner of the club, in which he said Wilson and Hill had resigned voluntarily. However, they did not - they were pushed.
Wilson, who after his playing days became prominent in property, helped former Fulham owner Ernie Clay acquire the freehold of Craven Cottage from the Church Commissioner. Clay then sold the club and all assets - including the freehold - to Marler Estates, who also owned Queens Park Rangers and Loftus Road.
There were fears that Marler would merge Fulham with QPR and sell Craven Cottage for redevelopment. Marler priced Fulham at £500,000 and this was raised - £250,000 in cash, the rest by selling Paul Parker to QPR.
Some time afterwards Marler were sold to Cabra. The Royal Bank of Scotland had financed Cabra and got the first mortgage of Craven Cottage.
Wilson and Hill had several meetings with RBS and, in 1993, the bank agreed to grant a new lease of Craven Cottage to Fulham on the basis that, in the early part of the lease, little or no rent was to be paid but Fulham had an obligation to obtain planning permission for partial development of the ground so as to add value to it. Associated with this new lease was an option in favour of Fulham which would allow the club to buy the freehold interest from the bank for £7.5 million.
Wilson and Hill now began negotiations with Hammersmith and Fulham Borough Council to get planning permission for partial development and, in February 1996, consent was given for 142 flats and three new all-seat stands.
News of the prospective partial redevelopment brought numerous developers to the club and, as negotiations took so long, the bank extended the time during which the club were to pay no rent.
Although the option to purchase the freehold for £7.5 million still had some time to run, the bank were anxious for the club to buy it and Wilson and Hill got the bank to agree a 10 per cent reduction in the option price, bringing it down to £6.75 million.
But suddenly one of the Muddyman Group's offshore companies stepped in and bought the freehold for £6.75 million. Immediately following this Wilson and Hill were asked to resign from the board without delay. However, with only a few games remaining in what proved to be a triumphant promotion season for Fulham, it was considered bad public relations to announce that the two directors, including the chairman (Hill), were leaving.
Wilson and Hill say that when they were asked to step down they suspected Muddyman was negotiating the sale of the club but were surprised to learn the buyer was Fayed.
http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/football/news-and-comment/bull-elephants-battle-eclipses-james-v-faldo-feud-709418.html
Bull elephants battle eclipses James v Faldo feud
By Graham Kelly
Monday, 17 July 2000
It's quite startling that the gentlemanly game of golf has been set alight by the dispute between Nick Faldo and Mark James following the Ryder Cup captain's comments about six-times major winner Faldo in his autobiography.
It's quite startling that the gentlemanly game of golf has been set alight by the dispute between Nick Faldo and Mark James following the Ryder Cup captain's comments about six-times major winner Faldo in his autobiography.
Having worked in football for more than thirty years I have some experience of feuding sportspeople.
When the Football League Management Committee agreed to sell league football to Michael Grade's London Weekend Television in 1978, Jimmy Hill, then doubling as Coventry City's managing director and BBC TV Match of the Day pundit, publicly accused the League of the worst sort of football hooliganism by secretly concluding a contract with LWT at the same time as negotiations were supposed to be proceeding with the joint BBC/ITV team.
The management committee all commenced legal proceedings against Hill for defamation, which he stoutly resisted. Eventually the committee members all died off, to leave one, president Jack Dunnett, holding the baby and the dispute fizzled out.
Round about the same time, one of the protagonists, Bob Lord, the chairman of Burnley Football Club and vice-president of the League, was fighting another battle of a similar nature. He had become entwined in a bitter personality clash with the chairman of Fulham and long-time tilter at windmills Ernie Clay. Clay had got up the League's nose a decade or so earlier, when he had financed George Eastham's fight against the football establishment which led to the abolition of the maximum wage. Clay v Lord was like two mighty bull elephants locking horns; both had the memory of an elephant. Lord was a big man with a ruddy face and a centre parting. Clay was an equally large chap with a sandy crewcut.
Clay had a quixotic turn of phrase and, during the course of this smouldering row, he went on radio and called Lord and FA Chairman Sir Harold Thompson two "screws!" Presumably be meant they were bent and therefore unqualified to sit in judgment on Fulham, who had exceeded permitted payments by installing George Best in a luxury flat on his return from the North American Soccer League.
When Fulham travelled to play at Turf Moor, Clay was spoiling for a fight. At half- time he paused at the top of the steps leading from the directors box and made some disparaging comments about the referee along the lines of "Poor sod can't win in front of the chairman of the referees committee." Lord, for whom the word "autocratic" seems massively inadequate, had the comments immediately reported to him just as Clay had planned and the Burnley butcher walked straight into the trap calling Clay a liar in front of other guests and throwing him out of the boardroom.
Clay boarded a train back to London, but not before regaling all the reporters present with the story to the severe embarrassment of Lord, whom the Fulham chairman then subjected to a formal complaint. Needless to relate, the complaint was dismissed by the League.
Bob Lord was an old-style football club director, one of the local businessmen made good who so widely featured in the administration of English football before the advent of the more astute city financial type.
Not only did he chair the referees committee, he also ran the Lancashire County Football Association and various other influential committees. When Jimmy Hill, not unreasonably, proposed that the FA release their restrictions on directors' pay, Lord voted against his fellow League chairmen and it was darkly suggested he couldn't afford to give up all his expenses for a regular fee.
A somewhat similar throwback is Charlie Dempsey, the erstwhile Oceania president whose abstention in Zurich sent World Cup 2006 back to Germany. Some years ago, relations between Dempsey and the Australian Soccer Federation were so strained that ASF president Dave Hill labelled Dempsey "Steptoe" thus provoking a fierce complaint. Hill gleefully refused to apologise.
The cardinal rule of sporting feuds is never to be caught in the middle of them. You won't get any thanks and you run the risk of exacerbating an already fraught situation.
This was demonstrated to me graphically in the case of Venables v Sugar, whose argument made the row between Clay and Lord seem like a playground spat. It seemed to me that my pleas for settlement were taken by Alan Sugar as partiality by the Football Association on behalf of its England coach.
Similarly, the lesson was reinforced by the flare-up between Ian Wright and Peter Schmeichel. No amount of persuasion would force the Dane to make anything like a concession to what, had he been proven to have uttered a racist epithet, amounted to criminal conduct. The best that could be done was to issue a weak statement in which both players gave assurances there was no feud between them.
The dispute between Faldo and James seems quite tame in comparison.
http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/football/football-league/fulhams--march-to-the-land-of-riches-681494.html
Fulham's march to the land of riches
West Londoners complete journey to Fayed's promised land as Tigana's modern tactics point way to the Premiership
By Steve Tongue
Monday, 16 April 2001
They are the most modern of clubs and the most old-fashioned; the most loveable and least likeable. Fulham have been an enigma for as long as most football followers can remember and now, four years after playing in the bottom division, they are about to enter the land of milk and money that is the Premier League. It would be comforting to think that the spirit of Tommy Trinder and Tosh Chamberlain, Jimmy Hill in all his guises and Johnny Haynes, George Best and Rodney Marsh, will survive the transition, but there is no guarantee of it.
They are the most modern of clubs and the most old-fashioned; the most loveable and least likeable. Fulham have been an enigma for as long as most football followers can remember and now, four years after playing in the bottom division, they are about to enter the land of milk and money that is the Premier League. It would be comforting to think that the spirit of Tommy Trinder and Tosh Chamberlain, Jimmy Hill in all his guises and Johnny Haynes, George Best and Rodney Marsh, will survive the transition, but there is no guarantee of it.
For most of their existence, since being founded in 1879 as the Sunday School team of St Andrew's church, Fulham have been a middling, muddling sort of club. Of those 122 years, only two brief periods have been spent at the English game's highest level, from 1949-52 and then for a decade after the Haynes-Hill-Chamberlain team won promotion in 1959, with the magisterial Haynes an England regular while still in the old Second Division and then made the country's first £100-a-week player by the comedian-chairman Trinder.
By 1968, when a new, young manager called Bobby Robson was trying to sort out the old lags in the dressing-room, Haynes had to be dropped and Fulham were relegated, even though Allan Clarke scored 20 goals before his British record-breaking transfer (for £150,000) to Leicester City. The following season they dropped straight through the Second Division after sacking Robson, leaving him with bitter memories of the period, and the role played by the director Sir Eric Miller, who later committed suicide.
Miller was one of the club's less loveable figures and so was Ernie Clay, the bluff Yorkshire chairman ("don't get angry, get even") who brought rugby league to London SW6, then got even with the local council for thwarting his redevelopment plans by making a fortune on the freehold of Craven Cottage and clearing off. Worse, he sold out, in 1987, to David Bulstrode's Marler Estates, the owners of Stamford Bridge and Queen's Park Rangers, whose intention was to merge QPR and Fulham, selling the Cottage and playing at Loftus Road. Bulstrode became the new villain, Hill the new hero, as he rode his white charger into Hammersmith Town Hall (or would have done, except that he was on crutches at the time) to promise a meeting of Fulham supporters that the club would not die.
Hill's subsequent 10-year reign as chairman of Fulham (1987) Ltd was a difficult period, with the best of intentions to create a democratic and successful football club forever being undermined by a lack of cash and the uncertainty over the future of the ground. At one stage he reluctantly accepted the need to leave and was intent on sharing Stamford Bridge, but would not meet Chelsea's punitive terms. Then, one day in 1997, Hill read in the Independent on Sunday that Mohamed Al Fayed was interested in taking over the club...
The new chapter, and the new chairman, began in May that year, just as the hugely popular Micky Adams was leading Fulham out of the Third Division, in which they had reached the lowest point in their history, demotion to the Conference looking a serious possibility. Players and coaches were soon recruited on fabulous contracts, and expected to deliver, and the story since then is of an exciting upward spiral, interspersed with uncomfortable pauses in which the likes of Adams, then Ray Wilkins, then Paul Bracewell, were all thrown over the side, each after only one season in charge, and more high-profile figures brought in. None had a higher profile, of course, than Kevin Keegan, who began his re-acclimatisation to management with an away game at Wigan but found his country calling after the Second Division championship had been won two years ago.
Keegan's assistant Bracewell, given one season to reach the Premiership, failed to and was soon off to Halifax Town. Fayed fancied Eric Cantona as a successor, but settled for Jean Tigana on whose advice has never been made clear which has proved an inspired choice. The Frenchman has triumphantly proved his conviction that pure, passing football can succeed; "kick-and- rush is finished" he insisted, and sat back chewing his tooth-picks while his lieutenant out on the pitch, John Collins, ensured the philosophy was not forgotten amid the hurly-burly of 90 minutes in the Nationwide. When standards have, very occasionally slipped, as in the recent stumbling goalless draw at home to West Bromwich Albion, there has been no hurling of tea-cups (or the preferred isotonic drinks). "He doesn't rant and rave" Fulham's midfielder Lee Clark confirmed after that game.
Yet this post-modern football, backed up by the most up-to-date thinking about diet and preparation, is played at a stadium in which home supporters still stand on the sort of huge banked terrace that should have gone out with the Taylor Report, while the visiting contingent pay for the privilege of huddling in the rain at the open end, being told "you'll never play us again". It is hardly surprising that for many lower division supporters, whether or not they have had fistfuls of fivers waved at them in Loadsamoney style, Fulham are not the most popular of clubs.
Those gestures say something about the new era, as did Keegan's absurdly overblown title of "Chief Operating Officer", and Fayed's prediliction for doing a lap of honour before every home game, waving a black-and-white scarf, as if to remind everyone just who they have to thank for all this.
The season after next they still have one year's grace before converting to an all-seat stadium the chairman must find a new ground to parade around while Craven Cottage is finally rebuilt. With Stamford Bridge, Selhurst Park and Twickenham all apparently ruled out, the unlikely possibilities of Millwall and Reading are regarded as favourite, though the thought of 15,000 regulars plus glory-hunters making their way in the evening rush-hour either from south-west to south-east London or down the M4 is a terrifying thought.
European football at the Den in 2002? Friends of Fulham must hope they do not lose their heart and soul along the way.
FROM MALI TO CRAVEN COTTAGE: THE CAREER OF JEAN TIGANA
1956: Born Bamako, Mali, 23 June
1982: Starred in pulsating end-to-end World Cup semi-final with West Germany in Spain. His prowess, alongside Marius Tresor, Michel Platini and Alain Giresse, helped them to draw 3-3 after extra-time but the Germans won on penalties.
1984: Helped France win European Championships.
1986: At World Cup in Mexico, his midfield mastery helped France to a quarter-final victory over Brazil albeit on penalties before they lost to West Germany in the semi-finals.
1993: After impressive career taking in Toulon, Lyon, Bordeaux and Marseille and 60 international caps joined Lyon as coach.
1995: Turned down coaching job at Bordeaux for Monaco.
1996: Monaco finish third in French First Division.
1997: Monaco champions of French League.
1998: March: David Trezeguet's goal gives Monaco a 1-1 draw at Manchester United in the Champions' League a result which ends United's interest in the competition.
2000: April: Agrees to take over as Fulham manager in July, with Karlheinz Riedle and Roy Evans continuing at the helm in the meantime.
October: Fulham set a new record by winning their first 11 games of the season before being held to a draw at Wolves.
2001: January: Fulham give Manchester United a fright before going down 2-1 in the third round of the FA Cup.
April: A last-minute goal gives 10-man Fulham a 2-1 victory over their nearest challengers Blackburn Rovers. Four days later, their promotion to the Premiership is confirmed with a 2-1 win over Huddersfield at the McAlpine Stadium.
I remember just prior to the Clays leaving Fulham, LBC were interviewing one of Clsys sons and I can remember the rage I felt when he blandly said "all my dad wants is some of the money that he has put into Fulham", when asked, how much did he put in, He could'nt answer. How on earth did Fulham get involved with that lot? Not that it matters now but it did cause a lot of hurt. Finally, was it Clay that got rid of Alec Stock?
http://www.wsc.co.uk/content/view/3497/29/
Shallow end
WSC 167 Jan 01
The three smaller west London clubs have more in common than antipathy towards Chelsea. They even share some fans, says Anthony Hobbs
In footballing terms, the citizens of west London have had plenty to moan about over the years. A good number of them have become pretty adept at it, to the point of weary cynicism. With my own club, Queens Park Rangers, currently bouncing around at the bottom of the First Division and playing some staggeringly uninspiring football, this latent negativity does not need much persuading to come out into the open.
True, some of the neighbours seem to be doing all right at the moment, but for how long? Back in 1982-83, the newly arrived Ken Bates was interviewed on Football Focus. Asked how he reacted to the fact that Fulham and QPR were riding high at the top of the Second Division while his own "fashionable" behemoth thrashed around at the bottom, he retorted that "they're entitled to their brief moment of glory". While the remark summed up a patronising attitude from Chelsea which guarantees contempt for them from other west London fans, it has to be admitted that history has proved him correct.
In recent years, while Rangers have gone from European contenders to First Division strugglers, Brentford have been up and down to say the least and Fulham have only just started to enjoy themselves after years of decline. This is an area of London that has rarely been short of sizeable egos and large boasts, with Bates, Ron Noades and Mohammed Fayed currently more than living up to the standards set by Jim Gregory at Rangers and the unlamented Ernie Clay at Fulham, but too often the rhetoric has been far more impressive than the football.
One of west London's problems is that none of its three smaller clubs has established itself over a long period of time as the most credible alternative to Chelsea. While each has a solid hard core of support, they cannot rely on the loyalty of a huge following like, say, Manchester City, who can call on 25,000 stalwarts even in the depths of the Second Division. QPR, Fulham, Brentford and even Chelsea themselves have had to maintain success on the field in order to get bodies through the turnstiles, but none has been able to do so consistently. As Noades charmlessly remarked to Brentford fans recently: "Because we're not winning every week and playing attractive football, the gates go down to 4,000 even when we are at home to the league leaders."
Perhaps that is hardly surprising, since Brentford have been largely eclipsed by their neighbours since their First Division heyday in the late 1930s. Similarly, Fulham failed to capitalise on their last spell in the First Division in the Sixties and QPR could not sustain the success of the late Seventies and early Eighties. Whether it is a cause or an effect of such short bursts of prominence, it seems that a larger than average proportion of the local population professes a general interest in football with a leaning towards one of the local sides, rather than a fanatical devotion to a particular club. Indeed, rivalries shift around here, to the point where they can start to appear a little contrived.
From a QPR standpoint, for example, the view of the neighbours goes something like this: way back in the mists of time when we were in the Third Division South, many cited Brentford as our local rivals. As we progressed up the divisions while the Bees stayed where they were, we strove to develop a rivalry with Chelsea who, being bigger and more successful, were largely indifferent. By the Eighties, we were regularly finishing above Chelsea, which perhaps led to a little more interest on their part. Fulham might have liked a rivalry with us at that time, but we couldn't really be bothered. Now, while you still hear the odd anti-Chelsea chant at Loftus Road, it's a little bit half hearted. We've briefly enjoyed a bit of banter with Fulham as we have passed them on our travels in opposite directions through the divisions, but now they seem to be turning their attention towards next season's revived confrontation with Chelsea.
With support meandering from one club to another and teams yo-yoing up and down the divisions, each of the clubs has had a real struggle to maintain support and interest in their times of crises. Rangers' support, for example, already 3,000 down on recent years and still falling, would undoubtedly drop further should we slip into the Second Division.
One wonders whether this floating support is bigger than any of the clubs is prepared to admit. Perhaps the vehement reaction to the ill-fated "Fulham Park Rangers" scheme of the mid-Eighties persuaded them that the loyal following of each club was larger than it really is. Whatever the reason, none of the people in charge appears to have reacted by attempting to root their club properly in the local community, thereby building a solid enough base to ride out the bad times, preferring instead the rocky road of relying on rich benefactors.
I don't want to begrudge Fulham their spot in the sunshine. After all, their hardcore of support has suffered its fair share of misery over the years. But I can't help wondering whether the success they are enjoying is sustainable. Fayed has got a bottomless pit of cash, but if for any reason he loses interest, there seems little indication that anyone has thought of a Plan B. On a larger scale, free spending Chelsea don't look a bad bet to be the first big name to slip off the back of the Premiership gravy train. One wonders what may become of them if they do.
In not too many years' time, it would be no surprise to me to find talk of mergers and ground shares starting up again. At the moment, it is QPR and Brentford, as current paupers of the area, who appear to have the shortest odds on being involved. But in an area of shifting sands and shifting loyalties, a few short years could make a very big difference.
From WSC 167 January 2001.
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/sport/article-2002353-dont-buy-into-this-share-deal.do
Don't buy into this share deal
By Michael Hart, Evening Standard Last updated at 00:00am on 12.11.02
Chelsea and Fulham first discussed the advantages of ground sharing as long ago as 1905. Almost a century later, they're still at the discussion stage.
Chelsea still play at Stamford Bridge and Fulham still own Craven Cottage and, over the years, both clubs have come to recognise one inescapable truth. Size matters.
In this respect, Chelsea come out on top because from the start it was the ambition of Gus Mears, one of the club's founding fathers, to turn Stamford Bridge into London's biggest and best football ground.
For a century, Fulham have lived in the shadow of their west London neighbours. A former chairman, Tommy Trinder, even turned them into a music hall joke. But not everyone shared his cheery acceptance of their junior status.
It was Ernie Clay, a blunt, uncompromising Fulham chairman for 10 years, who perhaps best summed up the feelings of those who love the club and all it stands for.
"Fulham without the Cottage," Clay once growled, "would be like Laurel without Hardy." That was 20 years ago and he was right. In Fulham's case, the relationship between club and ground is unique.
The club's official history claims that the symbiotic partnership between club and ground was forged when the first match was played in what was once Anne Boleyn's hunting grounds in 1896.
"More than almost any other club, Fulham has become synonymous with its home and the battle to stay there has been a dominant feature of club affairs on numerous occasions," says the club history.
Resting on the banks of the Thames, Craven Cottage is without doubt the most attractive professional football ground in a nation now full of huge, characterless, concrete stadia. Of course it is the proximity of the river and of Bishop's Park that has also made this charming spot so appealing to developers.
Like Clay before him, the present Fulham chairman, Mohamed Fayed, knows that in redevelopment terms, his club is a blue-chip investment. He claims a commitment to securing a permanent home for Fulham at the Cottage.
For the moment, they are lodging at Loftus Road. Before their game against Arsenal earlier this month, irate supporters were distributing hundreds of leaflets, saying that the local council had already confirmed agreement on a new 30,000-capacity stadium at Craven Cottage. But the club believes that a minimum of 34,000 is required for a return to Craven Cottage to be viable.
In his letter to Chelsea Village lawyer Mark Taylor, in which he responds to Ken Bates's proposal that he acquire 9.9 per cent of the issue share capital of "CV plc", Fayed writes: "My team and I are still working through the options and clearly if it becomes possible to return to Craven Cottage on a sensible commercial basis we will do so."
But he makes it clear that if it proves impossible for a suitable Premiership stadium to be built at Craven Cottage, he is then committed to finding a permanent alternative within the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham.
Chelsea may provide that option, although they would have to overcome obstacles which would probably include appeals against ground sharing from local residents.
Old Gus Mears - his brother's grandson Brian was the chairman before Bates - first broached the subject, offering Fulham the chance to rent Stamford Bridge for £1,500 a year. They chose, instead, to develop Craven Cottage.
For decades, both clubs lived happily enough until the 1980s when, after the expensive rebuilding of Chelsea's East Stand, a complicated scenario unfolded. At one point it looked as though Stamford Bridge would be lost under a massive new development, with Chelsea forced to share Craven Cottage with Fulham. Bates, in the end, gathered sufficient support for a scheme of his own at Stamford Bridge.
Ground sharing might look good on the balance sheets but it fails to address the issues of the heart. And these are what matter to football fans. Fulham's followers don't want to watch their team playing in Chelsea's stadium any more than Chelsea fans want to watch their team playing at Craven Cottage.
A temporary ground share might be acceptable but the message from Fulham fans was spelled out clearly on the leaflets they distributed on Sunday: "Mo - take us home!"