Tangerine Nightmare

 

TEAM: Trialist, Waddington, Trialist, Perkins, McMahon (C), Dunne, Zenjov, Trialist, Trialist, Grant, Trialist.
— Blackpool FC (@BlackpoolFC) July 19, 2014

Blackpool's trials continue courtesy of club owner who took £11m after relegation

The silly season is in swing over at Bloomfield Road. Unfortunately a few of the staff seem to be taking it a little too literally. The club's state lurched from perilous to farcical on Saturday when during a trip to Penrith they were forced to play five trialists.

The are currently eight professional players on Blackpool's books, with the rest of the squad having left due to loan or contract expiry earlier in the summer. A squad with talent and verve during their single Premier League season back in 2010 are now touted as relegation dead certs from the Championship. The villain of the riches-to-rags piece appears to be the man who once saved them from their uppers.

Owen Oyston made headlines for all the wrong reasons when in 2011 he became the highest paid director ever in world football. From Blackpool's Premier League season, when they were relegated at Manchester United, Oyston - the club's owner since May 1988 - pocketed £11 million.



Blackpool's 'squad' warm up for a pre-season at Penrith FC

Oyston paid significant sums to Blackpool when it appeared they might be on the way out of the Football League. When the club's dreams were realised in 2010 and they were promoted to the Premier League, it's alleged they gained the best part of £80 million from the league. That 'they' is deliberately vague, for it's never been really clear who the money belonged to - Blackpool FC or Owen Oyston.

Therein lies the rub for all Blackpool fans, who are furious at the conduct displayed by the club. Or Oyston. It's difficult to tell which is which - and there are numerous goings-on in the background that muddy the waters further. Oyston allegedly uses the money earned from Blackpool to boost his other business interests. He, like many others before him, sees no difference in managing the club like any other business, regardless of how much destruction he wreaks.

Blackpool appear to be the latest instalment in a book on football club owners gone wrong. The title could be Deja Vu: The Sequel, and with a lack of legal efficacy and code of moral conduct around ownership, it's unlikely to be the last chapter in a cruel saga. All around the country men behave badly, and the game's authorities wonder what they can do about it all.

Coventry City now play their home games in Northampton thanks to their London hedge fund owners trying to bounce the council out of the Ricoh Arena by refusing to pay the rent. Consequently they've forfeited income from ticket sales, pushing the club close to administration. 

March saw ex-Birmingham City owner Carson Yeung jailed for money laundering. It remains unclear how much money Yeung really had, and upon describing his testimony, the trial judge accused the businessman of 'making it up as he went along'. Finally, not even a prior conviction for fraud could stop Italian Massimo Cellino from passing a fit and proper test by the Football League before his takeover of Leeds United.

The club's current plight is so bad that the manager, Jose Riga, has cancelled a pre-season tour to La Manga to concentrate on getting some players through the door. He'd identified three. The snag? He and the chairman can't agree over them, and Riga won't sign any more until he gets them.

With three weeks to go until the new season, this hardly seems the best time to play who-blinks-first between manager and chairman. There isn't much left to lose for the club in both the literal and metaphorical sense - and that's mainly down to just one man.

Pictures thanks to Twitter and The Independent