Brendan Flood - The Book Review

Following his arrival his name was seldom out of the local Press and for a good while he seemed to become the voice of the club, to such an extent that us ordinary folk, the rank and file supporters, inevitably thought that this man is the chairman in waiting. The general impression was - watch out, Brendan and the good times are here, and indeed they now are. In truth his name appears less now and sadly, when it has, it has often been in connection with the Modus business difficulties.

There is no doubt; within the business world, that the man is high profile, with a wealth of connections and contacts. Until the folly of the banking world hit us, and a system where the world revolves around borrowed money collapsed in tatters with far-reaching consequences for all of us, those connections and contacts served him and the club well. The loans he provided kick-started the club and gave it fresh impetus; rejuvenated the Chairman, "battered and bruised", who had worked tirelessly to keep the club afloat, and enabled player purchases.

Other directors too had provided cash-injections at crucial times and I have to say, one of the questions I asked myself when I picked up this book, was would they too receive acknowledgment for their input. There were whispers of huge difficulties in April of 2009, and the fact that transfer embargoes had been imposed earlier than that because of late payments for players already purchased, came to light via Owen Coyle and Alan Nixon in the Press, quite recently.

I wanted to see if these would be covered in the book. And, maybe a little cynically perhaps - I wondered if this book would be a glorified ego trip. You know the kind of thing: "Look folks, see what I have done for you all at Turf Moor." The book is sub-titled, The Epic Story of Burnley's Meteoric Rise to the Premiership'. I'm not sure why it should be that unless it means that someone at Llama PR or TH Media decided it was down solely to Brendan's two year involvement. I thought the rise took us 33 years.

As someone who has written five Burnley Books, and with the Jimmy McIlroy biog also out in October, I also know how easy it is to drop clangers. The chapter about John Bond in NNN Volume One was seriously misleading in regard to former director Derek Gill. Volume Two put it right. And in the Harry Potts biography somehow the Orient Game was re-labelled the Lincoln game, the latter being the club that did go down at the season's end so I suppose there is some connection. That clanger escaped proof-read after proof-read. Lord, forgive me for that one. No writer sets out deliberately to hunt for mistakes by others, but when you do spot them you can say: "Hey, well at least I'm not the only one, I'm in good company." Would Brendan make any?

It's not a heavy volume; at a lightweight 228 pages and maybe at around 75,000 words by my rough and ready calculation, you can't say that this is a substantial book. But then the affordable price of £9.99 reflects that. And in any case there is no rule that says to be 'worthy' a book has to have 300+ pages. And let's say right now, that this, overall, is a book well worth inclusion in any Burnley book collector's library. As Alastair Campbell says on the back cover, it's a timely reminder that it is as much the work of the men in the boardroom, as the manager and players, that helps achieve promotion. And he uses the word men, as in plural. That's important. When Modus money began to dry up, others then dug deep, at one critical time in particular towards the end of the promotion season.

It's what all we ordinary fans want to read - an inside story - for aren't most of us by instinct nosy, always eager to know just what does go on in the corridors of power, who said what and to who; and exactly what are the politics of the boardroom. Just how did this deal or that deal happen? Just what did happen and why to Steve Cotterill? How did they 'discover' Owen Coyle? And how did Brendan Flood himself become a director, and why? And then of course we love to read the little stories, the anecdotes and the funny bits. We love to find out if there are skeletons in cupboards (there always are) and will just one or two of them pop out? The page about Dobbo, Clive Holt and the dog turds is a hoot. The book passes all these tests with flying colours though maybe the skeletons are safe - for now.

It begins with the how and why of becoming an addicted and very genuine Claret. There's a whistle stop tour of Claret history and the key moments since his involvement first began as a disinterested 7 year old, who, at the first game took his conkers to amuse himself rather than watch the game but by the end was hooked.

It's in this section that he drops the clanger I wondered if I'd find when he talks about the infamous Celtic game: "The match passed with relatively little incident." Dear God it was hell that night; the worst night of terrace violence ever seen at the ground. The game had to be stopped; the players were taken off and it was on national TV news. Steve Kindon makes a living telling stories about it.

Harry Potts asked him in the dressing room to go back out onto the pitch and appeal for calm. "Just one slight problem boss," he said. "It was me that scored the f****g that started it." In the Scottish Press there were front page apologies. And years later when Harry Potts, the then manager, was tormented by dementia, his wife Margaret told me in the book we did Harry Potts Margarets Story, that there were late nights when he would rush into the street telling people to be careful because Celtic were here.

There's an interesting line about how status is often the motivation in becoming a director. At the beginning of the day these guys are just ordinary blokes like you and me, but then something separates them out from the herd. Then, by the end of the day they have become elevated and something different to the rest of us. If we had the talent maybe all of us would love to be a pro footballer. If we had no talent but money, maybe all of us would love to be a director.

Don't lots of us speculate what we would do if we won £10million on the lottery? Yes, I think I'd be knocking on Barry's door with a fair chunk of it. I'd get Bikey in for starters and maybe that one will happen. But Brendan actually had £500,000 ready for the admission ticket, and then more after that. What's interesting is that he had already been wooed and courted earlier in 2005 with a view to becoming a director but declined.

As for the first major input of £2million, what comes across is that this was unplanned; when at the first board meeting he attended, on an impulse, "inadvertently", he said he would find the extra £2million as he heard the assembled members' "sombre mumblings" about cutting the wage bill down to £2.5million thereby settling for mediocrity, "preparing to fail". At that first meeting he became unintentionally "determined to see this proud football club make a real challenge for promotion."

If, in this book all you want to read about is Burnley Football Club, then I suppose you can happily miss out chapters 2 and 3. But oddly enough you won't find the page where they start from the contents page. This is the only book I have ever read where the contents page doesn't give the page numbers. Anyway, suffice it to say, the two chapters cover his learning curve in the world of banking, finance and rise up the ladder becoming the gritty, imaginative businessman that he is today. I actually found it a relief to get back to the football and BFC (in my other life I was a humble scholarly village headmaster with no head for business, whose biggest decision was probably how many toilet rolls to order) and the first of what might be called the titbits of behind-the-scene gossip that many of us suspected, but could now be revealed as fact.

That, for example, former Chief Executive Dave Edmundson felt unloved and "hadn't always enjoyed as much respect from the board as he deserved." From this point on the stories come thick and fast; Steve Cotterill's grumble that most home defeats against the big clubs were because of the number of fans they had behind the goal; the wise old Barnsley director who advised him never to put money into a football club, he'd be better off going to Scarborough and "pissing in't sea." And that Steve Cotterill really did believe that one day he would be England manager.

From this point on it really does become a very readable cracking book with enough revelations, tales and insights to keep us hooked. How many of them are 100% nailed-on accurate, or are just a tad embellished or have a bit of added drama, only Brendan or the other directors might know.

Probably only the other directors will be able to say to what extent Brendan really was, or is, the one motivating factor, or the dominant force and character on the board, and whether in fact they are happy with that. Skysports.com on August 16^th began a piece by labelling him "Burnley owner." That might not go down too well.

If he talks about "sombre mumblings" and "preparing for failure" then of course the inference is that take him and that first £500k away, then the almost immediate £2 million, and then the impression he gave (certainly to Edmundson) that here was someone who would "sort things out;" the saviour of the club, as it were, then we would not be sitting where we are in the Premier League. Those others that know the inside story of the last two and a half years must be the judge of that.

In a bizarre way the story of promotion perhaps begins when Burnley drew 2 - 2 with Sunderland, having had a 2 - 0 lead. From that comes the long winless run, and after that the sure knowledge that Steve Cotterill was a spent force and his time was up. Hello Owen Coyle. The book takes us through all this, the return of Ade, suspicions of disharmony in the dressing room between players and manager, and then through all the rest, right up until Wembley.

But at one point, particularly at the end of Chapter 5, you do wonder who is running the show now. Is it Brendan Flood making the club's judgements and decisions or is anyone else involved? Eventually he becomes Operations Director and can push things through 'officially'. "Barry seemed content to sit back as I was funding the club and decisions were made quickly." Of course the inference is that it was he who was making them.

In the narrative we learn about fractured communication lines, why we didn't sign Michael Essien or Matt Derbyshire when they came to Gawthorpe; the closeness of American investors, the return of Robbie Blake, making contact with Paul Fletcher, the hour he spent learning from Alex Ferguson, and how the video they had of Berisha to satisfy the tribunal, by mistake began with a bit of a John Wayne movie.

The Michael Essien story is interesting though. There are other stories that conflict with the Flood version. But the latter is the better story. It sells books and generates publicity. The other version is that he wasn't here for a trial at all; he was just joining in for a couple of days whilst being looked after by someone who lived in the area and that in fact there was never any chance of signing him.

And then there's the story of Colonel Gadaffi being a Burnley supporter. Fact or fiction… lucid or loony, whatever, it makes a darned good story and ensures a big plug and exposure in the Daily Mirror from Alan Nixon with a picture of the book cover.

I never managed that with the Harry Potts book, a book that even though this coming season is the 50^th anniversary of his winning of the title, a book that distinguished journalist Frank Keating in his review said it was the kind of book that ought to be at least short-listed for the prestigious William Hill Sportsbook of the Year Award. But, there isn't a copy on the club shop shelves for anyone who wants it this special year. Envious… miffed… ho ho… of course I am… I have a garage full of them. Give me a call.

The promotion season narrative proceeds at a pace. Mrs T asked at the beginning of that season would I be doing a diary of the season. No, I said, time for a rest from that sort of book. Whilst kicking myself now for not writing one; simultaneously, how glad I am that I didn't. It would have been blown out of the water by this one. And anyway there are folks inside the club who think that there are far too many Burnley FC books appearing now. SEVEN new ones will have appeared in between August this year and December and sadly they all compete against each other. My own view is that having so many dedicated Burnley authors is a club virtue and they should be valued, marketed constantly and vigorously. Shirts sell themselves. Books don't. Seven new books in such a short space of time is totally unique and should be seen as such. And they're all different. This is a unique club.

Small Town, Big Club and Me for me is a one-sitting book. I read it cover to cover in one go because I couldn't put it down. The brevity and punchy style helps and also the fact that the story is essentially covering such a short period. There's honesty and candour about the Modus business disaster. The story of that weaves in and out of the Burnley story in the ensuing chapters. Bereavement hit the Flood family in huge ways during the writing. Harmony in the boardroom was not always evident; put ten people on a committee and there never will be. I can empathise with him on this one. I was the young (well - ish) buzzing headmaster years ago in my little school. It needed change, vision, and some people a good kick up the arse. It wasn't easy. Some of them were bigger than me.

If a picture emerges it is that Flood has been the driving force over the last couple of years. If you knew nothing at all about the club and this was the one book you had to read on holiday, you'd put it down thinking, to this man goes the credit. But I was pleased to see a substantial tribute paid to the work and investment of Ray Griffiths who I knew personally. God that man could call a spade a spade and his description of one director, related as part of the tribute, is Ray to a 't'.

"An after-darker, no bugger knows what he does," he called the unnamed director, actually referring to ******* ah perhaps I'd better not say. Ray was annoyed at the re-signing of Akinbiyi and thought the big screen was "a bloody waste of money." I may be wrong but I think the Ade's second signing was done without board approval and was solely down to Brendan, one of his solo decisions.

Strangely, however, the book doesn't touch on the two things that could have had such a huge impact. Firstly there was the transfer embargo placed on the club because payments on players bought at one stage couldn't be met. And neither does it shed any light on the critical state of finances in April when certainly Ray Griffiths (and three others), made such a crucial extra last-ditch investment of around £1million to keep the show on the road.

Of course at this stage Brendan himself had no more money to lend. And of course the timing of the completion of the book means that there is no mention of the £3.7million plus interest repaid to the Modus administrators/creditors by the club so very recently. The potential for that to become legal and messy was immense. Maybe it's not over yet. There's an extra chapter there I suspect.

Is this a book to buy? Yes it is. A whole number of things come across. Three of them are: Firstly what a tortured soul Steve Cotterill was; secondly the huge contrast between him and Owen Coyle, and thirdly the amount of multi-tasking ability, energy and resilience Brendan Flood must possess. In the manner of the telling it reminds me just a little of Stan's book, though minus the bad language. Co-writer Stuart Wilkin has done a good job.

Forgive me if I do a personal plug but a copy of Russians Don't land Here, the story of the long winless run in season 2006/07 would complement it nicely. And don't forget Harry Potts Margaret's Story for the story of the 59/60 season and the start and end of his career. Give me a call; I have a garage full of them both.