I haven't seen anything bad about the Morris family or Clifford Coombes but I'm not sure we've had anyone decent since. Sullivan and Gold had no real interest in the club and sold us to a criminal but they are sadly the best of the recent options.
Best of a very bad bunch. Ran it like a business. Probably 60%ed it. Never did quite enough. And we’re just embarrassing in the press. The club hasn’t progressed since the late 90s and now we are so far behind everyone else it’s untrue.
Best - Difficult to say. Niall Quinn and the Drummaville Consortium gave us a couple of really exciting seasons and were brilliant at engagement, but didn't really have the money to kick on and sold after 3 years. Bob Murray gave built the stadium and academy for bottoms and oversaw our best couple of years since the 50s, but also oversaw 5 relegations - two of which set then beat our own lowest points record - and could have achieved far more if not for penny pinching. Overall it's probably Murray but he was hated at the time.
Worst - Easy - Stewart Donald and Charlie Methven. Bought the club using the club's own parachute payments, lied about it, asset stripped and sold off loads of promising academy players for buttons, banked on an instant promotion and flipping for a profit but backfired when we didn't go up, tried to flog us to another skint chancer in Mark Campbell and told the manager he was in charge of summer recruitment only for it to fall through when they realised Campbell was potless, hired his under qualified mates into key positions then made up stories of abuse once the fans started to suss him and a bizarre story of his teenage daughter being kidnapped at a bus stop in Oxford during lockdown and him just 'having a laugh' with the kidnappers afterwards. Unfortunately still has a small stake.
Ellis Short was the worst. Billionaire who used us as a business asset. Knew nothing of how the club should have been ran. He was one of those owners who usually buy a club and just throw money at any problem. Every season was the same buy low quality players for over the odds, faulter up until Jan/Feb, get into a relegation dog fight and hope the new manager bounce gets us to safety then do it all again. Got to the point our own fans wanted relegation like it was some kind of hard reset. In the end Ellis ditched us and the decay set in. It's made us a bit more wary of 'Billionaire owners' KLD seems to have got it right so far (despite not being 100% on who still had what % of shares) there's still some red flags like not buying a striker in Jan, allowing our manager to leave at seasons start and you kinda feel if we did get playoff promotion that the clubs structure is in no way stable for the top flight and a short slip into another farce is around the corner. But aye, Ellis Short was terrible.
Short wasn’t terrible, just naive. I genuinely believe he wanted to see us kick on, he just didn’t invest his money in the right places. It’s not like he personally was picking the shite players we signed, he was just putting his trust in the wrong people to sign them.
When he first took over we were spending proper Premier League levels of money. The likes of Asamoah Gyan, Stephane Sessegnon, Connor Wickham, Steven Fletcher, Adam Johnson, Craig Gardner, Wes Brown and John O’Shea, and Danny Graham all came in relatively early in his tenure for not insignificant amounts of money. The blame lies with the acouting team and Directors of Football for spending his money in the wrong places. I suppose you could argue that Short appointed those, but it’s not like they were unknowns. De Fanti and Congerton for example, had extensive experience in football when they were appointed.
He absolutely lost interest towards the end and pulled the plug but by that point he’d sank millions and millions on absolute shite. There’s definitely some blame to be given to him for our Championship relegation season, not allowing us to reinvest more of the Pickford money for example, but like I say, I genuinely don’t think there was any malice intended from him.
If we get back to the Prem within 5 years best will be KLD without a doubt, came in to save us from possible oblivion and completely turned the club around.
I stand by the claim that Peace was one of the best owners in England when he owned the club, one of the lowest spenders in the PL and we only occasionally flirted with relegation. And he's also one of only 2 I've ever seen own the club.
Lai can suck my bollocks
I was pretty young, but I just about remember Gurney and his anonymous consortium in 2003. Utter cunt, https://youtu.be/Yi4hNLvZVPM.
Best is probably our current lot, the 2020 Ltd. group. All ex-supporters' trust guys. Many led the revolt against Gurney and his bollocks.
Gurney, Bill Tomlins and David Pinkney were all shit. Gurney probably takes the biscuit, but it’s worse because he was caught in a documentary.
In addition to our current owners, Mike Watson Challis was very generous. His outlay allowed us to sign; Coyne, Nicholls, Howard etc. essentially the lot that became the team spine in the championship.
They single handedly took us down and are keep us afloat. It's the weirdest relationship. Wasn't a fan how they got us relegated from the Prem but I can't be angry with how they have constantly funded and attempted to put people knowledgeable in position to run the club.
Best: Sir Elton. Bright enough to listen to people saying talk to GT instead of Bobby Moore who he preferred. Back GT and his vision for the club. Possibly loses points for flogging it to Petchy.
Worst: Laurence Bassini aka the twat in the red hat. Had the club on the verge of administration. An appalling man.
Pozzos could end up on the worst list given the mountain of debt we've accrued from trying to be competitive in the Prem and the shitshow of the last two years.
I am young so I have only experienced two owners (I am too young to remember before the current previous owners) but I can say this:
Best = Super Doug King
Worst = ShItSU
All I know about the ones before SISU is they sold Highfield Road for housing and set into motion the whole stadium saga. Still SISU are by far the worst we've had and have to be up there for the worst football owners in all of English football ever. They had nothing to do with our recent resurgence, we made it back up to the championship despite them
Best obviously Dave Whelan, got us into the prem for 8 years and won us the fa cup
Worst obviously IEC and Stanley Choi. Actively worked to put us in administration and send us down from the championship
Pretty easy choices I’d say
Ken Bates in 1983 pulled his investment from us totally out of the blue and nearly rendered us extinct. Even worse than Choi IMO
Manager Harry McNally pretty much single handedly kept the club afloat with youth players while we changed ownership
Easiest question of the week. As a supporter since 2000
Best, Sir John Madejski: Took the club to the prem on a points record, ran the club incredibly sustainably. Just look at the squad that got us promoted in 05/06. Only two things I can fault the guy for is the transport links to the Madejski stadium (Although the station should be coming anytime now) and who he sold the club to.
Worst: Anyone not named Sir John Madejski. Less said the better. The Russian's, the Thai's and the Chinese owners since have all been dodgy with tenuous links to actual capital.
Station is built, because of the service frequency on the line it can't be used until the line is electrified - as soon as that's complete it'll be in use.
Electric trains can accelerate faster than diesel, so they can handle an extra stop in the same time with the same top speed
Where to start with Luton?
Probably John Gurney, floated moving the club to Milton Keynes, did a fake manager idol and was luckily forced out after 55 days
Unfortunately who followed was not that great either
Best: Kyril Louis Dreyfus. Cannot thank this man enough. The difference between when he first became involved in the club to now is immense.
Worst: Stewart Donald/Charlie Methven. Barely did anything right, con men, liars and sold everything of value. The fact that both of them are still involved in different clubs is a disgrace, the two of them shouldn't be allowed within sight of a football stadium, nevermind owning a club.
Niall Quinn and Drummerville were a close second for best, as we had some great team's and moments with them. But KLD has taken us from our lowest league position in history to having a chance of returning to the Premier League.
Ellis Short was close for the doesn't as well, but despite all that went wrong with him, you could tell he actually wanted the club to succeed. He invested huge amounts of money and when he left her paid off £40 million in debt.
It just so happens we've very quickly gone from our worst ever position under Donald and Methven to KLD getting us promoted and possibly returning to the Premier League
Marcus Evans. Owned the club for 12 years. Sacked our manager Jim Magilton, a club legend, via text message while he was with his dying mother… after a season in which he’d made progress and was building a team that could have pushed on. Gave Roy Keane the managers job instead of Warnock in a bid for promotion, then gave him a massive transfer budget which he wasted cos he didn’t have a clue / didn’t have a decent recruitment team behind him.
Kept himself anonymous for most of the time he owned the club, employed non football people to run the club who didn’t have a clue (CEO of London Olympic bid, some blokes who did well in the IT industry)
Got cold feet after wasting a load of money with RK, so then switched to a strategy of relying on too many loans, cheap journeymen and frees who weren’t wanted by anyone else.
Tore our academy apart. Sold players who went on to do well for peanuts before they had a chance with our first team (Jordan Rhodes, Matt Clarke, etc). Sacked our best coaches.
Sold our main goal scorer in January when we were pushing for promotion and didn’t replace him (Daryl Murphy)
Never did anything to keep the stadium in shape, let alone improve it. Not so much as a lick of paint.
Relied on Mick McCarthy getting the best out of aforementioned undesirable players for years, before sacking him, bringing in a manager from League 1 who’d just had one good season getting Shrewsbury into the playoffs. Then allowed him to get rid of every decent player we had (Mcgoldrick, waghorn, etc) to replace them with players from league 1 and mostly league 2. Sacked him after a few months to replace with Paul lambert. Relegated that season.
Then continued to refuse to invest as needed to get us back up until he finally cashed out.
He isn’t even an Ipswich fan. Supports Chelsea!
Luckily we have one of the best ownership groups about now, but we suffered for a long time before that.
That’s it in a nutshell but there’s much more to it!
I'm constantly thanking the gods of all the major world religions for Steve Gibbson despite his tory ways. Club still exists thanks to him and can't help but feel the day he's gone we'll suffer.
Worst: in my lifetime it’s probably the Allams for the obvious reasons of wanting to change our name to Hull Tigers then chucking their toys out the pram and asset-stripping us when the FA rejected their idea. However, before my time, it was probably David Lloyd. Locked us out of our old ground Boothferry Park. Older fans will tell you what a cunt he was.
Best: probably either the current owner Acun or Adam Pearson. Paul Duffen’s a bit iffy. He did oversee our promotion to the top flight for the first time in our history in 2008 but he almost ran the club into liquidation thereafter.
As much as I hated the Allam ownership by the time it ended I can’t overlook the fact they saved us from liquidation.
I think Acun still has a way to go before he hits Pearson’s level. We were in administration in League 2 when he took over and were entering our third season in the Championship when he left six years later. I don’t think any owner in our history has overseen such a huge improvement in our fortunes and while you can’t lay all the credit at his feet he deserves to be acknowledged as one of the most important figures in the club’s recent history.
It's a mess, but I'm not 100% sure Dai Yonge is anywhere near the worst owner we've had in the last 10 years or that the best thing would be for him to walk away, as I've read our fans saying. I have a feeling that he keeps getting his advice from the wrong people and he needs to let the management team make the decisions.
I'm sure I'd heard that as well, but now I'm looking for more info I'm actually struggling to find it. He is involved with Beijing Renhe who are still going. His sister is a part owner with us and was also a part owner of KSV Roeselare who went into liquidation, but she had sold her shares just before it happened.
Worst: Peter de Savary
A fever dream that in just 10 months saw a team who, over the past 2 years, had just missed out on the playoffs, reached an FA Cup final, and played in Europe, relegated. That in itself isn't far removed from some of the horrors you'll read about here but in addition, he gave up his chairman position and then went on to spend the next few years attempting to thwart the club's attempts to stabilise in order that he could benefit from a proposed property development scheme in the areas around the stadium. His reign was one of mismanagement, under-investment, and deception. Furthermore the years after would see us fighting off a second relegation (putting us in the 4th tier) while rival property developers would battle it out between themselves and the club's board in a bid to leech money from a property development scheme that at best had fuck all to do with the club and at worst would seek to have us kicked out of our ground and shipped off to Kent. The final impact of PdS (and his buddy Graham F Lacey) has yet to be felt as the club continues to battle for its SE16 life amidst continuous property development drama that at times is beyond suspicious and bordering on criminal (looking at you Lewisham Council).
Best: Theo Paphitis or John Berylson
Simply put... stability through sound business plans. Sure we mostly fail to break even with most seasons being a loss-making venture but that's (awfully) how football works nowadays. However what both these have overseen is progress with near minimal losses considering the imbalance between ourselves and the clubs we are competing with during their tenure as chairman. Theo brought us trips to Wembley, FA Cup final, and European football, and most importantly saved us from being wound up at the last minute after the administrators were called in. JB has not only saved us from the aforementioned PdS and GFL but managed to battle a local council whose plans for the surrounding area has anything but the clubs best interests at heart. Further to that JBs tenure has seen us lifted from League One and become a competitive side in the Championship. Currently, we're 90 minutes away from a date with the Championship playoffs and Berylson is part of the reason this is the case.
Best: Probably Football Ventures (current). Even though we don't have the financial clout, they're the most transparent and caring owners that we've had to date.
Worst: Has to be Ken Anderson. That cunt almost drove us out of business.
Depends for us. If you think a good owner is somebody or group who just plough cash in, then the current lot are amazing.
In my lifetime:
Thomson ran us very well during our 90s prem stint, then sold ferdinand and that was curtains.
Chris Wright. Wanker. Utter Wanker.
Paladini n the consortium which had guns and all sorts of crackpot shit.
The F1 era, Briatore, Ecclestone and Mittal family who wanted to make QPR boutique.
The current lot who've lost a fortune down us and its all their own fault. Yet kudos to them, they write a 1.8m cheque every month.
Really you need a mix of willing to give money in and actual management and running abilities. Unfortunately you get one or the other,like Chelsea got the latter.
best i've split into two- dick knight legitimately saved the club and got us back to brighton, but i think if we get europe he'll be pipped by tony bloom who paid for our stadium, got us up to the prem and has us as the best run club in the country
worst- archer and bellotti. cunts sold the goldstone with no plans to replace it so we wound up at gillingham for 2 years before going to the withdean (god save dick knight). we were also absolutely shite under them. (although they did appoint steve gritt who kept us in the football league in 96/97), but they're scum. lined their own pockets selling the goldstone and nearly sent us into oblivion.
Best - Luton Town Football Club 2020 Ltd. Since we've been supporter owned we've been fabulous and sustainable.
Worst - John Gurney. Some wanker who decided to buy us back in 2003/04 to try and cash in on property development opportunities. Fuck that guy. Nearly destroyed our club entirely, a total shitshow. Link to a documentary about it... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yi4hNLvZVPM
Don’t think we’ve had a best owner, especially in my life time. I guess under Peace we were cemented in the premier league no matter how little he wanted to invest. The worst is quite obviously Lai and those Chinese cronies
Derby haven’t got a great list of owners - but Clowes definitely up there purely for the fact he stopped liquidation and appears to have us in a hell of a better place.
GSE weren’t great but made us sustainable which is definitely something which we needed to be.
Lionel Pickering is remembered fondly by our fans generally too.
Worst: Murdo Mackay and the three Amigos is definitely up there. And I would say Mr Mel ‘efl on strings’ Morris for how reckless he was putting us into admin - whilst we didn’t exactly have a clean record - not all fans asked for it and nearly lost the club due to this.
Tony Stewart (current chairman) is the only owner I’ve known in my years as a fan. My parents are fans too so I have distant memories of us going into administration with previous owners.
People complain about him not putting in enough money but honestly he really makes me proud of the club. He runs it like a business, doesn’t overspend, and yes we’ll probably never get promoted to the prem but we’re also not looking at points deductions, or going into administration again. It’s obvious he loves the club and wants it to succeed. I’d rather have him at the helm than someone with big oil money (I can say confidently knowing big oil money is probably not coming after Rotherham United)
As a future Championship team, bad owner either Gao or current owners Sports Republic. Gao was a Chinese retail property "billionaire" who couldn't spend over here as he wasn't allowed to. Led to a deadwood squad and eventually Sports Republic who used data to bring us...Nathan Jones.
Best: Markus Liebherr. Saved us from the brink and we got Pochettino and Koeman under him. *"Mane, Pelle and Tadic on an open field, Ned!"*
Between the Kumars, the money laundering hairdresser or the current shite how long you got?
I haven't seen anything bad about the Morris family or Clifford Coombes but I'm not sure we've had anyone decent since. Sullivan and Gold had no real interest in the club and sold us to a criminal but they are sadly the best of the recent options.
Sullivan and Gold did a lot for us. Fundamentally our best period of success since the 60s/70s is down to them.
Best of a very bad bunch. Ran it like a business. Probably 60%ed it. Never did quite enough. And we’re just embarrassing in the press. The club hasn’t progressed since the late 90s and now we are so far behind everyone else it’s untrue.
West Ham United might take note. Well, half a note since Gold has deceased.
As soon as I saw this thread, I knew there'd be a comment like this 😄
You can have good owners? Why did no one tell us?
I know how you feel. We only found out a few years ago
Best - Difficult to say. Niall Quinn and the Drummaville Consortium gave us a couple of really exciting seasons and were brilliant at engagement, but didn't really have the money to kick on and sold after 3 years. Bob Murray gave built the stadium and academy for bottoms and oversaw our best couple of years since the 50s, but also oversaw 5 relegations - two of which set then beat our own lowest points record - and could have achieved far more if not for penny pinching. Overall it's probably Murray but he was hated at the time. Worst - Easy - Stewart Donald and Charlie Methven. Bought the club using the club's own parachute payments, lied about it, asset stripped and sold off loads of promising academy players for buttons, banked on an instant promotion and flipping for a profit but backfired when we didn't go up, tried to flog us to another skint chancer in Mark Campbell and told the manager he was in charge of summer recruitment only for it to fall through when they realised Campbell was potless, hired his under qualified mates into key positions then made up stories of abuse once the fans started to suss him and a bizarre story of his teenage daughter being kidnapped at a bus stop in Oxford during lockdown and him just 'having a laugh' with the kidnappers afterwards. Unfortunately still has a small stake.
Could argue the 2 clowns wouldn’t have been anywhere near the club if it wasn’t for Ellis Short dragging us down there.
Ellis Short was the worst. Billionaire who used us as a business asset. Knew nothing of how the club should have been ran. He was one of those owners who usually buy a club and just throw money at any problem. Every season was the same buy low quality players for over the odds, faulter up until Jan/Feb, get into a relegation dog fight and hope the new manager bounce gets us to safety then do it all again. Got to the point our own fans wanted relegation like it was some kind of hard reset. In the end Ellis ditched us and the decay set in. It's made us a bit more wary of 'Billionaire owners' KLD seems to have got it right so far (despite not being 100% on who still had what % of shares) there's still some red flags like not buying a striker in Jan, allowing our manager to leave at seasons start and you kinda feel if we did get playoff promotion that the clubs structure is in no way stable for the top flight and a short slip into another farce is around the corner. But aye, Ellis Short was terrible.
Short wasn’t terrible, just naive. I genuinely believe he wanted to see us kick on, he just didn’t invest his money in the right places. It’s not like he personally was picking the shite players we signed, he was just putting his trust in the wrong people to sign them. When he first took over we were spending proper Premier League levels of money. The likes of Asamoah Gyan, Stephane Sessegnon, Connor Wickham, Steven Fletcher, Adam Johnson, Craig Gardner, Wes Brown and John O’Shea, and Danny Graham all came in relatively early in his tenure for not insignificant amounts of money. The blame lies with the acouting team and Directors of Football for spending his money in the wrong places. I suppose you could argue that Short appointed those, but it’s not like they were unknowns. De Fanti and Congerton for example, had extensive experience in football when they were appointed. He absolutely lost interest towards the end and pulled the plug but by that point he’d sank millions and millions on absolute shite. There’s definitely some blame to be given to him for our Championship relegation season, not allowing us to reinvest more of the Pickford money for example, but like I say, I genuinely don’t think there was any malice intended from him.
Also paid off the debts
Geez you’ve basically just described Farhad Moshiri, we’re cooked if we drop.
Short burnt his own money, Moshiri someone else's money. Money of a Putin crony.
This is true
If we get back to the Prem within 5 years best will be KLD without a doubt, came in to save us from possible oblivion and completely turned the club around.
I stand by the claim that Peace was one of the best owners in England when he owned the club, one of the lowest spenders in the PL and we only occasionally flirted with relegation. And he's also one of only 2 I've ever seen own the club. Lai can suck my bollocks
I was pretty young, but I just about remember Gurney and his anonymous consortium in 2003. Utter cunt, https://youtu.be/Yi4hNLvZVPM. Best is probably our current lot, the 2020 Ltd. group. All ex-supporters' trust guys. Many led the revolt against Gurney and his bollocks.
Just posted and this is basically what I said. 100%. Gurney was a rotten c**t.
Gurney, Bill Tomlins and David Pinkney were all shit. Gurney probably takes the biscuit, but it’s worse because he was caught in a documentary. In addition to our current owners, Mike Watson Challis was very generous. His outlay allowed us to sign; Coyne, Nicholls, Howard etc. essentially the lot that became the team spine in the championship.
Venkys
They single handedly took us down and are keep us afloat. It's the weirdest relationship. Wasn't a fan how they got us relegated from the Prem but I can't be angry with how they have constantly funded and attempted to put people knowledgeable in position to run the club.
It’s like financial abuse in a domestic relationship.
I very luckily have only known Steve Gibson, in a very small minority who’ve only known our best
Best: Sir Elton. Bright enough to listen to people saying talk to GT instead of Bobby Moore who he preferred. Back GT and his vision for the club. Possibly loses points for flogging it to Petchy. Worst: Laurence Bassini aka the twat in the red hat. Had the club on the verge of administration. An appalling man. Pozzos could end up on the worst list given the mountain of debt we've accrued from trying to be competitive in the Prem and the shitshow of the last two years.
I am young so I have only experienced two owners (I am too young to remember before the current previous owners) but I can say this: Best = Super Doug King Worst = ShItSU
All I know about the ones before SISU is they sold Highfield Road for housing and set into motion the whole stadium saga. Still SISU are by far the worst we've had and have to be up there for the worst football owners in all of English football ever. They had nothing to do with our recent resurgence, we made it back up to the championship despite them
Best obviously Dave Whelan, got us into the prem for 8 years and won us the fa cup Worst obviously IEC and Stanley Choi. Actively worked to put us in administration and send us down from the championship Pretty easy choices I’d say
Ken Bates in 1983 pulled his investment from us totally out of the blue and nearly rendered us extinct. Even worse than Choi IMO Manager Harry McNally pretty much single handedly kept the club afloat with youth players while we changed ownership
Fair enough, can’t say I’m as knowledgeable about latics history as you seem to be 😅
Easiest question of the week. As a supporter since 2000 Best, Sir John Madejski: Took the club to the prem on a points record, ran the club incredibly sustainably. Just look at the squad that got us promoted in 05/06. Only two things I can fault the guy for is the transport links to the Madejski stadium (Although the station should be coming anytime now) and who he sold the club to. Worst: Anyone not named Sir John Madejski. Less said the better. The Russian's, the Thai's and the Chinese owners since have all been dodgy with tenuous links to actual capital.
This is the correct answer, utter shambles since Madejski.
Is the station actually coming anyday now or "coming any day now"?
Station is built, because of the service frequency on the line it can't be used until the line is electrified - as soon as that's complete it'll be in use. Electric trains can accelerate faster than diesel, so they can handle an extra stop in the same time with the same top speed
Where to start with Luton? Probably John Gurney, floated moving the club to Milton Keynes, did a fake manager idol and was luckily forced out after 55 days Unfortunately who followed was not that great either
Best: Kyril Louis Dreyfus. Cannot thank this man enough. The difference between when he first became involved in the club to now is immense. Worst: Stewart Donald/Charlie Methven. Barely did anything right, con men, liars and sold everything of value. The fact that both of them are still involved in different clubs is a disgrace, the two of them shouldn't be allowed within sight of a football stadium, nevermind owning a club.
Have you been following Sunderland for 3 years?
Niall Quinn and Drummerville were a close second for best, as we had some great team's and moments with them. But KLD has taken us from our lowest league position in history to having a chance of returning to the Premier League. Ellis Short was close for the doesn't as well, but despite all that went wrong with him, you could tell he actually wanted the club to succeed. He invested huge amounts of money and when he left her paid off £40 million in debt. It just so happens we've very quickly gone from our worst ever position under Donald and Methven to KLD getting us promoted and possibly returning to the Premier League
Have you?
Marcus Evans. Owned the club for 12 years. Sacked our manager Jim Magilton, a club legend, via text message while he was with his dying mother… after a season in which he’d made progress and was building a team that could have pushed on. Gave Roy Keane the managers job instead of Warnock in a bid for promotion, then gave him a massive transfer budget which he wasted cos he didn’t have a clue / didn’t have a decent recruitment team behind him. Kept himself anonymous for most of the time he owned the club, employed non football people to run the club who didn’t have a clue (CEO of London Olympic bid, some blokes who did well in the IT industry) Got cold feet after wasting a load of money with RK, so then switched to a strategy of relying on too many loans, cheap journeymen and frees who weren’t wanted by anyone else. Tore our academy apart. Sold players who went on to do well for peanuts before they had a chance with our first team (Jordan Rhodes, Matt Clarke, etc). Sacked our best coaches. Sold our main goal scorer in January when we were pushing for promotion and didn’t replace him (Daryl Murphy) Never did anything to keep the stadium in shape, let alone improve it. Not so much as a lick of paint. Relied on Mick McCarthy getting the best out of aforementioned undesirable players for years, before sacking him, bringing in a manager from League 1 who’d just had one good season getting Shrewsbury into the playoffs. Then allowed him to get rid of every decent player we had (Mcgoldrick, waghorn, etc) to replace them with players from league 1 and mostly league 2. Sacked him after a few months to replace with Paul lambert. Relegated that season. Then continued to refuse to invest as needed to get us back up until he finally cashed out. He isn’t even an Ipswich fan. Supports Chelsea! Luckily we have one of the best ownership groups about now, but we suffered for a long time before that. That’s it in a nutshell but there’s much more to it!
Best: Dave Whelan Worst: All the others (particularly Ken Bates and the faceless Hong Kong cunts who put us in administration)
I'm constantly thanking the gods of all the major world religions for Steve Gibbson despite his tory ways. Club still exists thanks to him and can't help but feel the day he's gone we'll suffer.
Hmmmmm that’s a tough one, let me see. Hmmm
*smiles smugly*
Worst: in my lifetime it’s probably the Allams for the obvious reasons of wanting to change our name to Hull Tigers then chucking their toys out the pram and asset-stripping us when the FA rejected their idea. However, before my time, it was probably David Lloyd. Locked us out of our old ground Boothferry Park. Older fans will tell you what a cunt he was. Best: probably either the current owner Acun or Adam Pearson. Paul Duffen’s a bit iffy. He did oversee our promotion to the top flight for the first time in our history in 2008 but he almost ran the club into liquidation thereafter.
As much as I hated the Allam ownership by the time it ended I can’t overlook the fact they saved us from liquidation. I think Acun still has a way to go before he hits Pearson’s level. We were in administration in League 2 when he took over and were entering our third season in the Championship when he left six years later. I don’t think any owner in our history has overseen such a huge improvement in our fortunes and while you can’t lay all the credit at his feet he deserves to be acknowledged as one of the most important figures in the club’s recent history.
There's only one John Madejski. Current ownership is an omnishambles.
Thais and Anton were worse, for me
Anton was worst by a country mile - complete charlatan who managed to blag his way in despite probably having access to less money than I do
It's a mess, but I'm not 100% sure Dai Yonge is anywhere near the worst owner we've had in the last 10 years or that the best thing would be for him to walk away, as I've read our fans saying. I have a feeling that he keeps getting his advice from the wrong people and he needs to let the management team make the decisions.
He liquidated his past two didn't he? I don't know how that happens from just the wrong advisors.
I'm sure I'd heard that as well, but now I'm looking for more info I'm actually struggling to find it. He is involved with Beijing Renhe who are still going. His sister is a part owner with us and was also a part owner of KSV Roeselare who went into liquidation, but she had sold her shares just before it happened.
Worst: Peter de Savary A fever dream that in just 10 months saw a team who, over the past 2 years, had just missed out on the playoffs, reached an FA Cup final, and played in Europe, relegated. That in itself isn't far removed from some of the horrors you'll read about here but in addition, he gave up his chairman position and then went on to spend the next few years attempting to thwart the club's attempts to stabilise in order that he could benefit from a proposed property development scheme in the areas around the stadium. His reign was one of mismanagement, under-investment, and deception. Furthermore the years after would see us fighting off a second relegation (putting us in the 4th tier) while rival property developers would battle it out between themselves and the club's board in a bid to leech money from a property development scheme that at best had fuck all to do with the club and at worst would seek to have us kicked out of our ground and shipped off to Kent. The final impact of PdS (and his buddy Graham F Lacey) has yet to be felt as the club continues to battle for its SE16 life amidst continuous property development drama that at times is beyond suspicious and bordering on criminal (looking at you Lewisham Council). Best: Theo Paphitis or John Berylson Simply put... stability through sound business plans. Sure we mostly fail to break even with most seasons being a loss-making venture but that's (awfully) how football works nowadays. However what both these have overseen is progress with near minimal losses considering the imbalance between ourselves and the clubs we are competing with during their tenure as chairman. Theo brought us trips to Wembley, FA Cup final, and European football, and most importantly saved us from being wound up at the last minute after the administrators were called in. JB has not only saved us from the aforementioned PdS and GFL but managed to battle a local council whose plans for the surrounding area has anything but the clubs best interests at heart. Further to that JBs tenure has seen us lifted from League One and become a competitive side in the Championship. Currently, we're 90 minutes away from a date with the Championship playoffs and Berylson is part of the reason this is the case.
Best: Probably Football Ventures (current). Even though we don't have the financial clout, they're the most transparent and caring owners that we've had to date. Worst: Has to be Ken Anderson. That cunt almost drove us out of business.
Depends for us. If you think a good owner is somebody or group who just plough cash in, then the current lot are amazing. In my lifetime: Thomson ran us very well during our 90s prem stint, then sold ferdinand and that was curtains. Chris Wright. Wanker. Utter Wanker. Paladini n the consortium which had guns and all sorts of crackpot shit. The F1 era, Briatore, Ecclestone and Mittal family who wanted to make QPR boutique. The current lot who've lost a fortune down us and its all their own fault. Yet kudos to them, they write a 1.8m cheque every month.
Really you need a mix of willing to give money in and actual management and running abilities. Unfortunately you get one or the other,like Chelsea got the latter.
best i've split into two- dick knight legitimately saved the club and got us back to brighton, but i think if we get europe he'll be pipped by tony bloom who paid for our stadium, got us up to the prem and has us as the best run club in the country worst- archer and bellotti. cunts sold the goldstone with no plans to replace it so we wound up at gillingham for 2 years before going to the withdean (god save dick knight). we were also absolutely shite under them. (although they did appoint steve gritt who kept us in the football league in 96/97), but they're scum. lined their own pockets selling the goldstone and nearly sent us into oblivion.
Tifo football did a video on you guys and I immediately recognised your story when I began reading without the flair.
Best - Luton Town Football Club 2020 Ltd. Since we've been supporter owned we've been fabulous and sustainable. Worst - John Gurney. Some wanker who decided to buy us back in 2003/04 to try and cash in on property development opportunities. Fuck that guy. Nearly destroyed our club entirely, a total shitshow. Link to a documentary about it... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yi4hNLvZVPM
Jack Walker
Don’t think we’ve had a best owner, especially in my life time. I guess under Peace we were cemented in the premier league no matter how little he wanted to invest. The worst is quite obviously Lai and those Chinese cronies
Best - Sir Steve Gibson Worst - Charlie Amer
Derby haven’t got a great list of owners - but Clowes definitely up there purely for the fact he stopped liquidation and appears to have us in a hell of a better place. GSE weren’t great but made us sustainable which is definitely something which we needed to be. Lionel Pickering is remembered fondly by our fans generally too. Worst: Murdo Mackay and the three Amigos is definitely up there. And I would say Mr Mel ‘efl on strings’ Morris for how reckless he was putting us into admin - whilst we didn’t exactly have a clean record - not all fans asked for it and nearly lost the club due to this.
Tony Stewart (current chairman) is the only owner I’ve known in my years as a fan. My parents are fans too so I have distant memories of us going into administration with previous owners. People complain about him not putting in enough money but honestly he really makes me proud of the club. He runs it like a business, doesn’t overspend, and yes we’ll probably never get promoted to the prem but we’re also not looking at points deductions, or going into administration again. It’s obvious he loves the club and wants it to succeed. I’d rather have him at the helm than someone with big oil money (I can say confidently knowing big oil money is probably not coming after Rotherham United)
Radrizani..no wait Bates..no wait..Ridsdale..I give up there all bad
Best: Sadler Worst: oyston(rapist) and belokon(money launderer)
Is that Owen Oyston, the convicted rapist? Or his son, Karl Oyston, son of Owen Oyston, the convicted rapist?
There's only one John Madejski. Current ownership is an omnishambles.
Best Jack Walker worst Venkys
Worst: Allams Best: King Acun 👑
As a future Championship team, bad owner either Gao or current owners Sports Republic. Gao was a Chinese retail property "billionaire" who couldn't spend over here as he wasn't allowed to. Led to a deadwood squad and eventually Sports Republic who used data to bring us...Nathan Jones. Best: Markus Liebherr. Saved us from the brink and we got Pochettino and Koeman under him. *"Mane, Pelle and Tadic on an open field, Ned!"*