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Topic Originator: Sacktheref69
Date: Wed 2 Sep 07:14
Welcome to award-winning sportswriter Stephen McGowan’s observation of the life of a football club chief executive officer — Keith Lasley of St Mirren. Here, Keith explains the need for a fan-owned club to live within its means and have a joined-up approach, a strategic vision and the ability to adapt to any eventuality.
Today’s Part I is free, but most of our content is paid.
By Stephen McGowan
On a whitewashed wall facing the entrance to St Mirren’s Marbill Coaches Stadium is a black plaque. Inscribed in large letters is the date 27 July 2021, a significant landmark in the club’s history. As the lines underneath make clear, that was the day Buddies fans took ownership of the club and set about safeguarding its future.
A recent study by Off The Pitch, the football intelligence platform which publishes data on club finances, player values and salaries, declared the Paisley outfit the eighth-most financially sustainable club in Europe.
While Celtic’s fixation with sustainability drives their supporters to distraction, the Scottish champions led a top 10 also featuring Brann, Silkeborg, Napoli, Manchester City, Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund. St Mirren managed to nudge ninth-placed Serie A club Atalanta and French giants Lille down the list.
“It’s pleasing when you see that,” admits chief operating officer Keith Lasley. “I would be lying if I said it wasn’t. It’s not patting-yourself-on-the-back time, nothing like it, but it is good to see us mentioned in that sort of company. Some of those football clubs are very well established and mature in the way they are run. So for us to be mentioned in that company is pleasing.”
St Mirren’s place in the Off The Pitch top 10 is no accident. Like so many clubs up and down Britain, the Paisley outfit confront rising player salaries, increased operating costs and inflationary pressures on a daily basis. In a never-ending cost-of-living crisis items relentlessly rise in price and, to make supporters aware of the problems the club face, St Mirren recently published a strategy document called ‘Our Progression’.
Their goal is to become ‘the best community-centred development club in Scotland’ after St Mirren Independent Supporters Association (SMiSA) worked in conjunction with Paisley-based social enterprise Kibble to purchase a majority stake in the club from former owner Gordon Scott.
Answerable to the 1624 members of SMiSA, the club subsequently released the strategy document building upon the progress which saw them beat Celtic for their first major trophy in 12 years in last season’s Premier Sports Cup Final.
Proof of concept: St Mirren with the League Cup after their 3-1 defeat of Celtic in last season’s final
“Sustainability has to be one of the realities of being a fan-owned club,” explains Lasley. “What we have done in the last three or four years has been success for this football club. Top-six finishes, winning a national trophy and doing that while not losing money.
“The norm in this industry has now become that you lose a significant amount of money operationally. But a fan-owned club that doesn’t have a benefactor to underwrite that loss can’t operate like that. We need to compete on a break-even basis and that, in itself, in this day and age is actually an achievement in itself…
“So, yeah, hopefully on and off the park we have shown discipline and a plan which has borne some fruit.”
From time to time, the harvest has been less fruitful. The price of winning the League Cup was the loss of their previous manager Stephen Robinson to Aberdeen after three consecutive top-six finishes. By the time he left, the club were already battling to steady the ship after a choppy run of results in the SPFL Premiership.
Interim boss Craig McLeish survived a two-legged relegation play-off against Partick Thistle to preserve the club’s top-flight status, securing the job on a permanent basis. The club’s former academy chief has since overseen a significant turnover of staff and a change to the style of play. The robust, direct football of before has been softened and, after three games, Saints sit second in the Premiership with seven points from a possible nine. Only an added-time equaliser from Motherwell stripped them of a 100% record.
“Listen, there have been some tricky times in there,” adds Lasley. “You don’t need to look too far back to the play-off last season and the tricky times we had around then.
“But as St Mirren we are going to have some bumps along the way. It’s never going to be a linear journey. It’s just not, given the clubs we are up against.
“But there is a plan there, there is a real alignment around the plan and the latest document was almost an update on the core strategy.
“I am into my fifth season now and one of the things I identified when I came in was that it was very disparate. It was very silo in nature from the boardroom to the fan ownership to SMiSA to first-team operations to academy operations — and it all felt as if someone had to say, ‘Listen, we need joined-up thinking.’
“A plan, essentially, and a bit of strategy which asked: Who are we? What are we doing? How are we trying to do it and why? And that’s when we launched our first strategy three years ago now called ‘Our Purpose’. We then fast forward into ‘Our Progression’, which is the latest document.
“When everything is going well, a plan is great. The hard part comes when the pressure hits and you lose three games in a row. You need to be strong. And it’s in those moments that a plan is most important.”
Craig McLeish (left) is unveiled as the permanent St Mirren manager by Keith Lasley in June, having guided the club to play-off survival
Key to the delivery of the plan is keeping supporters informed, a basic trick some clubs find inexplicably difficult to get right. A few miles up the M8 from Paisley, Celtic continue to draw flak for the lack of a two-way conversation with their own paying customers. When an information vacuum develops, people are quick to fill it with scuttlebutt and inaccuracies, and Lasley would prefer to let supporters hear what’s going on from the club themselves via fan engagement events and strategic reports.
“Football is essentially a game of incomings and outgoings. And those outgoings have progressively crept up and up and up. Whether it’s wage inflation driven by English clubs going for the same players as us and making them cost more; or some of the things we can’t control like national insurance rises, utilities, stewarding, police costs.
“You go through all of the costs you need to run a football club and they have all significantly increased. The job at the club then is to commercially keep up. And keep up on the football side of things. Outwith your core operation, things like player trading become so important.
“We want to be ambitious. We are not putting a docum
This is Andy Tod`s world and we are lucky to live in it.
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Topic Originator: wee eck
Date: Wed 2 Sep 08:05
Interesting stuff; shame about the cliffhanger ending.....
Keith Lasley was an interesting appointment as CEO by St Mirren. I recall he was a player at Motherwell when he retired and was a joiner by trade with no direct experience of football administration.
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Topic Originator: onandupthepars
Date: Wed 2 Sep 08:54
Stephen McGowan has written what could have been a dull piece in a lively, engaging way. A very talented writer who can write like that, as if to a friend.
It puts the Buddies in a good light. Thanks for posting it Sacktheref. Is there any more to add? I`d like to read the plan.
Post Edited (Wed 02 Sep 08:57)
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Topic Originator: Sacktheref69
Date: Wed 2 Sep 10:28
We want to be ambitious. We are not putting a document out just to say, ‘Aw things are tough.’ We don’t have the backstop of a benefactor, whereas some of the clubs we are competing with in the league do. That’s allowed and it happens but we just don’t have that.
“So, yeah, we need to update the fans on how tough it is getting. But we also want to retain that ambition and fire to keep pushing forward.
“Hopefully that is what the document does. And maybe you do set yourself up for a kick in the you-know-whats by setting out your targets but you have to believe. You have to believe that it’s the right thing to do, and over the medium to long term it will bear fruit.”
Lasley meets Nutmeg in the midst of a transfer window where the club have made nine new signings. As he speaks, speculation continues to surround the future of midfielder Killian Phillips after a strong start to the season and an unsuccessful approach from Aberdeen. For a football CEO, the end of a window can be a busy, unsettling and potentially frustrating few days.
“Every club has their own goals. We had a change of manager with Craig taking over in the summer,” says Lasley. “We knew there would be a big turnover with a change of style, a change of shape and a change of player profile with a lot of comings and goings.
“So we have had a pretty busy summer. We have brought a number in to date and expect to do a little bit more, both ins and outs. Gavin Miller has come in as head of recruitment from Motherwell and has really hit the ground running. Every day it’s about communication with a football board involving me, Gavin, the manager and others — and communication and alignment are key in a window.
“Any decision we make has gone through the same process. We want to make the club as systematic and as process-driven as possible. You need to be ready to react because someone can come in for a player tomorrow. Killian Phillips, for example, has had a great start to the season and we were never rushing him out of the door. He’s a character as well and I think you see that on the pitch.
“We are a development club and we know that our best players are going to get interest and you just need to be ready to deal with that when it comes along.
“But it’s always a balance between the value of the asset and their value to the team and what that might bring you in terms of a higher finish in the league.
“We want St Mirren to be a club which has a plan in place for any eventuality.”
Part 2
This is Andy Tod`s world and we are lucky to live in it.
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Topic Originator: Stanza
Date: Wed 2 Sep 11:15
That was an interesting article, especially the stuff about keeping the fanbase engaged by regular and open communication. I imagine that if I were a St Mirren fan I would be poring over every word!
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Topic Originator: Raymie the Legend
Date: Wed 2 Sep 15:30
Interesting read. It shows that you can compete in the modern game if you have the right people running the club.
The opposite is also true, you can have loads of money and still not be successful.
It`s bloody tough being a legend
Ron Atkinson - 1983
Post Edited (Wed 02 Sep 15:32)
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Topic Originator: Sacktheref69
Date: Thu 3 Sep 05:42
Welcome to part II of Stephen McGowan’s observation of the life of a football club chief executive officer — Keith Lasley of St Mirren. Keith speaks ahead of tomorrow’s SFA summit which aims to work out how to encourage clubs to play young Scottish players. There are always competing interests to consider, but Keith believes there is now cause for cautious optimism.
By Stephen McGowan
By the end of tomorrow’s youth development summit in St Andrews, St Mirren chief executive Keith Lasley hopes to witness something as rare and unusual as a full eclipse of the sun. A unanimous show of hands among Scottish football clubs.
Between 9.30am and 3.30pm club owners, chairmen and chief executives will hear SFA chief football officer Craig Mulholland address the nation’s failure in the field of player production, before pitching their own views and ideas. Finger wagging, lectures or browbeating will be discouraged.
Recently promoted from the role of chief operating officer, Lasley has covered every base in Scottish football. He played over 400 games as a midfielder for Motherwell over two spells. Before he became a fixture in Premiership boardrooms, he did some coaching and, at the age of 46, he has been around the block often enough to know that persuading all 42 clubs to agree on anything at all is notoriously difficult.
The interests of Celtic and Rangers are not the same as those of St Mirren or Motherwell, just as the interests of St Mirren and Motherwell are not the same as Stenhousemuir’s or Stirling Albion’s. When club officials gather around the same table the question to the fore of most minds will be: ‘What’s in this for us?’
While a rule compelling clubs to field three under-21 players in every game might enhance Scotland’s hopes of reaching the knock-out stages of a World Cup finals, managers under pressure to reach the group stages of UEFA competitions might see less benefit to them.
In the Champions League play-off defeat to LASK Linz, only three Scots started for champions Celtic in a team filled with expensive Danes, Colombians, South Koreans, Germans, American internationals and Canadians. In their Conference League qualifiers, Motherwell started two, while Hibs started one. Unusually, Hearts won their play-off against Rapid Vienna with six Scots in Wouter Vrancken’s starting XI.
While most seem to agree that players between the age of 16 and 21 see nowhere near enough first-team minutes, doing something about it is fraught with difficulty.
“I feel — and maybe I am kidding myself on — that on the back of recent SFA reports and the new Scotland manager and European results there is a bit of momentum there to maybe find a consensus,” says Lasley, espousing an air of cautious optimism. “We need more of our own young players coming through for a number of reasons.
“So I want to come out that room and feel, firstly, that there is a general agreement that we need to do something here. And, secondly, that we have an action plan. A plan to say, ‘What are we going to do about it?’
“For me, that needs to be systematic. Whether that means mandating so many players in your matchday squad or incentivising clubs in monetary terms, we need one or two things that get all the clubs nodding around the table.
This is Andy Tod`s world and we are lucky to live in it.
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Topic Originator: onandupthepars
Date: Thu 3 Sep 14:23
Is the vote about getting more young Scottish footballers playing for Scottish teams to be taken tomorrow 4th September?
Thanks again for posting, Sacktheref.
Post Edited (Thu 03 Sep 14:24)
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