100 Owners
Possibly our most successful (and least completed – more on this to follow) was 100 Owners, which took one hundred football club owners and arranged them in no particular order, from the very birth of the game right the way through to the modern era.
100 Owners: Number 72 – Jim Ballantyne (Airdrie United & Airdrieonians)
Franchising remains a taboo subject in England, but it has happened on several occasions before in Scotland, perhaps most notably when Airedrieonians went bust in 2002.
100 Owners: Number 73 – The Bhatti Brothers (Wolverhampton Wanderers)
Two successive relegations may feel for Wolves supporters as if their world is caving in, the club has been here before.
100 Owners: Number 74 – The Three Amigos (Derby County)
It is now almost eleven years since ITV Digital collapsed into administration, dragging the clubs of the Football League into a mass financial crisis which took years for its clubs to recover from. When it collapsed in May 2002, the television company owed the...
100 Owners: Number 75 – Graham Westley (Farnborough Town)
There are few people in lower division football for whom more vituperation is reserved than Graham Westley. The Preston North End manager has a reputation for management-speak and self-aggrandisement that is well known, but such character flaws are hardly unfamiliar...
100 Owners: Number 76 – Ken Wheldon (Walsall & Birmingham City)
The 1980s were a period of decline for football in the West Midlands. A decade which had started with one of its clubs, Aston Villa, winning the Football League Championship and the European Cup in successive season soon saw several of its most notable clubs hit...
100 Owners: Number 78 – Robert Chase (Norwich City)
It takes, it might be argued, a special type of football club chairman to persuade the supporters of Norwich City to violent demonstration. In the first months of 1996, however, one man managed to achieve this, and that man's name was Robert Chase. A local builder,...
100 Owners: Number 79 – The Glazer Family (Manchester United)
There will be a number of people reading this for whom the initial reaction at seeing The Glazers in the position that they occupy on this list will be one of surprise and, quite probably, anger. There have, after all, been few other football club owners in recent...
100 Owners: Number 80 – Brian York & Arthur Eastham (Cambridge City)
The story of a non-league football club sitting on a valuable piece of land but vulnerable to take-over by those with less than honorable intentions has become something of a morality tale in modern football, but few clubs have fallen prey to it in such a protracted...
100 Owners: Number 81 – Irving Scholar (Tottenham Hotspur & Nottingham Forest)
In June 1984, shortly after bringing Tottenham Hotspur its first European trophy in twelve years, Keith Burkinshaw left White Hart Lane for the last time. Greeted by the press outside the ground, he gesticulated over his shoulder towards the rear of the shiny new...
100 Owners: Number 82 – Wallace Mercer (Heart of Midlothian )
The problem of what to do about Rangers and Celtics domination of Scottish football is a seemingly intractable problem which has troubled many minds over the years. There have been oases of openness over the years, perhaps most notably in the early to mid 1980s when...
100 Owners: Number 84 – Geoffrey Richmond (Bradford City)
It can be astonishing how quickly fortunes, both in business and in football, can be lost. Reputations can be won or lost in what seems like the blink of an eye, with adulation turning to derision on the basis of the slimmest of margins. Bradford City, throughout the...
100 Owners: Number 85 – Brian Hillier (Swindon Town)
Whiter than white though some might claim it to be, the history of football in England is pock-marked with attempts to bend the rules as set out by the Football Association. The punishments meted out to these clubs have been many and varied, but it could be argued...
100 Owners: Number 86 – Douglas Craig (York City)
In May, York City beat Luton Town by two goals to one in the Blue Square Bet Premier play-off final at Wembley Stadium, ending an eight year long stay in non-league football and the the return of League football to one of the English games more idiosyncratic venues,...
100 Owners: Number 87 – Louis Edwards (Manchester United)
It has, in recent years, become standard for some Manchester United supporters to sing songs regarding the death of Malcolm Glazer. The owner of the club inspires such extreme emotions amongst the clubs fan-base that it is possible to think that him and his family are...
100 Owners: Number 88 – Tony Lazarou (Enfield FC )
In November of last year, a non-league football club made its first appearance at its new home ground. This in itself is nothing truly remarkable. After all, football clubs relocating has been a common enough sight over the last quarter of a century or so. For this...
100 Owners: Number 89 – Terry Smith (Chester City)
There are several clubs which will turn up more than once on this list, and one of those is Chester City FC. The story of this particular clubs last twenty years is one that could fill a book on its own, but its demise can largely be traced to the activities of three...
100 Owners: Number 90 – Jim Thompson (Maidstone United & Dartford)
It was, as you will no doubt be aware by now, the twentieth anniversary of the start of the Premier League next month, but what will likely be forgotten in the slew of retrospectives is the fact that just three days after the behemoth which has come to eat English...
100 Owners: Number 91 – Michael Knighton (Carlisle United)
At opposite ends of the Football League, he was involved in events which bookended the 1990s, and his failure to take control of one of the biggest football clubs in the world remains one of the great "what if" questions of that last couple of years before the...
100 Owners: Number 92 – Doug Ellis (Aston Villa)
If you ask the question of why the best-supported club in Englands second biggest city have managed just one English championship in the last one hundred and two years, there is a chance that some - if not many - Aston Villa supporters will have a ready-made answer:...
100 Owners: Number 93 – Bill Hiddelston (Third Lanark)
There is a curious paradox at the heart of the dynamic of a football club which always seems likely to attract a certain type of undesirable to the game. In terms of their financial position, most clubs live a hand to mouth existence, but many sit on one asset which...
100 Owners: Number 94 – Mazhar Majeed (Croydon Athletic)
It is very seldom that a non-league football club makes the headlines of a national newspaper for any reason other than a surprise result in the FA Cup, but at the start of the 2010/11 season exactly this happened to Croydon Athletic of the Ryman League Premier...