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Sacking - Compensation

edited November 2008 in General Charlton
It strikes me that the business side of football is bonkers, we have very successful businessmen running football clubs, who for some reason loose their business ability as soon as they step into the boardroom, how else can you explain that a manager, and lets use Alan Pardew as an example (purely in a hypothetical sense) under performs as a manager, in signing bad players, leading the team to the brink of relegation and losing the very players he manages, so this Board of successful businessmen want to sack him because of this...but they cannot, because for some reason he has to be compensated for losing his job, why is football so different form the real world? if you are no good its P45 time and absolutely no cash except paying you up til the day you were sacked.
Its mad.
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Comments

  • its called supply and demand, exactly the same way players can demand such fees and contracts. Perhaps the FA should step in and put in a framework, however that might be a restraint of trade.
  • or get rid of contracts.

    Give 3 months notice and whoosh put them on gardening leave and job done.

    Works both ways then.
  • Think about it. I will use a hypothetical situation to demonstrate exactly why he doesn't have a 4 week notice period like most normal jobs.

    Lets say Last year Alan Pardew got us promoted, we were now top 4 in the league. With Spurs not doing so well they decide when this ditch Ramos that they'll have a bit of Alan Pardew. Now Spurs approach Pardew, Pardew hands in his notice and what happens ??? We are due no compensation because Alan can give 4 weeks notice and walk. So now we have no manager and everyone on charlton life is jumping up and down because "the board are businessmen why didn't they secure his contract for a longer period"

    If only you could have your cake and EAT IT
  • You could have a one sided contract but who would sign it, even if you imposed a framework some clubs would just pay more to compensate. Its a judgement at the time how long a contract you give someone, I rather liked those with options to renew after 1 or 2 years for a set period but getting someone to agree to that might be tough and it would have to go both ways.
  • thing is with football (unlike most jobs) what do you sack them for?
    incompetency / underachieving is fine as a reason but try and prove it in law ...
    they can blame players etc so a no go really as a manager cannot be measured purely on his own performance but on that of others too :-(

    shame cos I'd have got rid of him a good while back :-(
  • you could give them a more performance base salary.. however if they are forced to sell players as Pardew has been they could easily argue unfair dismissal.
  • [cite]Posted By: Ledge[/cite]or get rid of contracts.

    Give 3 months notice and whoosh put them on gardening leave and job done.

    Works both ways then.

    But what if pards had saved us from relegation from the prem, had us on the brink of europe, ooops im off to utd heres my 3 months notice, bye.

    Yes, it does work both ways.
  • And a contract may have big performance related bonuses built in. If you deny him the chance to earn those bonuses by firing him before the contract expires, a manager will likely be able to claim and element of that earning opportunity in compensation, even if in reality it was never going to be paid out.
  • [cite]Posted By: IdleHans[/cite]And a contract may have big performance related bonuses built in. If you deny him the chance to earn those bonuses by firing him before the contract expires, a manager will likely be able to claim and element of that earning opportunity in compensation, even if in reality it was never going to be paid out.

    That might explain why the figure to pay off AP is supposedly £2.5M. That is ludicrous - how could anyone possibly substantiate that getting us into the relegation zone and then getting sacked for it justifies the payment of a bonus for hypothetically getting us promoted?

    There is one person in this whole equation who most definitely has his cake and is eating it!!
  • [cite]Posted By: Stu of HU16[/cite]
    [cite]Posted By: Ledge[/cite]or get rid of contracts.

    Give 3 months notice and whoosh put them on gardening leave and job done.

    Works both ways then.

    But what if pards had saved us from relegation from the prem, had us on the brink of europe, ooops im off to utd heres my 3 months notice, bye.

    Yes, it does work both ways.

    Yeah but at least we'll all know where wwe stand and don't have to put up with all these poxy clauses in contracts etc.
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  • The reason is quite simply that a British football manager in this decade doesn't operate like a British football manager at any other time. Pardew was NOT responsible for all of those signings, and all of them are approved by the board. So, if you (the Charlton board) want to sack him on the grounds that the players he's signed are shite, then the first question that the tribunal would ask would be "did you not approve these signings, and negotiate the final fee and salary" and then the next question is "do you not have ultimate responsibility for all major spend?" . If the answer to both of them is YES then you've got a lot of explaining to convince the tribunal that the gross misconduct on the part of the manager stems from an area over which you have ultimate control. It's not one that you can win, so it's easier to just pay them off. If he got caught snorting coke he'd get fired like anyone else, with no cost.
  • [quote][cite]Posted By: Weegie Addick[/cite][quote][cite]Posted By: IdleHans[/cite]And a contract may have big performance related bonuses built in. If you deny him the chance to earn those bonuses by firing him before the contract expires, a manager will likely be able to claim and element of that earning opportunity in compensation, even if in reality it was never going to be paid out.[/quote]

    That might explain why the figure to pay off AP is supposedly £2.5M. That is ludicrous - how could anyone possibly substantiate that getting us into the relegation zone and then getting sacked for it justifies the payment of a bonus for hypothetically getting us promoted?

    There is one person in this whole equation who most definitely has his cake and is eating it!![/quote]

    So now Pardew is being blamed for what the Board may or may not have put in his contract???
  • [cite]Posted By: Barn Door Varney[/cite]
    [cite]Posted By: Weegie Addick[/cite]
    [cite]Posted By: IdleHans[/cite]And a contract may have big performance related bonuses built in. If you deny him the chance to earn those bonuses by firing him before the contract expires, a manager will likely be able to claim and element of that earning opportunity in compensation, even if in reality it was never going to be paid out.

    That might explain why the figure to pay off AP is supposedly £2.5M. That is ludicrous - how could anyone possibly substantiate that getting us into the relegation zone and then getting sacked for it justifies the payment of a bonus for hypothetically getting us promoted?

    There is one person in this whole equation who most definitely has his cake and is eating it!!

    So now Pardew is being blamed for what the Board may or may not have put in his contract???

    No, he is being blamed by me at least for not doing the decent thing. Probably too much to expect him just to resign/ walk, but a £1M mutual consent pay off would still see him laughing and us at least with a small chance of climbing out of the appalling mess he has got us into.
  • i like the idea of Compensation
  • the performance related pay is a great idea but then he - sorry they - probably gets bonuses as well as a (supposedly) huge basic
    how about a commission only basis - this year alan you have earnt, erm, tap tap tap - oh it appears you owe us your house ...
    NOW ? OFF!!! ;-)
  • oh erm I am only a lodger you see as it is performance related I live in my overdraft ;o)
  • [cite]Posted By: Mortimerician[/cite]The reason is quite simply that a British football manager in this decade doesn't operate like a British football manager at any other time. Pardew was NOT responsible for all of those signings, and all of them are approved by the board. So, if you (the Charlton board) want to sack him on the grounds that the players he's signed are shite, then the first question that the tribunal would ask would be "did you not approve these signings, and negotiate the final fee and salary" and then the next question is "do you not have ultimate responsibility for all major spend?" . If the answer to both of them is YES then you've got a lot of explaining to convince the tribunal that the gross misconduct on the part of the manager stems from an area over which you have ultimate control. It's not one that you can win, so it's easier to just pay them off. If he got caught snorting coke he'd get fired like anyone else, with no cost.

    Hmm, there's an idea. Can anyone plant some charlie on Pards tonight ? :-)
  • [cite]Posted By: Mortimerician[/cite] Pardew was NOT responsible for all of those signings, and all of them are approved by the board.

    IMHO Pardew is fully responsible for all of those signings. He choose the players he wanted, within the budgetary restraints set by the board, and they were signed. The role of choosing the appropriate players is delegated to him by the board just as any company would hire a specialist to carry out certain roles

    For example a private hospital hiring a doctor to use a apt case. If the doctor hires another doctor to assist them who turns out to be incompetent or is not doing their job correctly would that be the fault of the owner of the private hospital who has no medical knowledge or the doctor doing the hiring?

    [cite]Posted By: ceydababy[/cite]Think about it. I will use a hypothetical situation to demonstrate exactly why he doesn't have a 4 week notice period like most normal jobs.

    Lets say Last year Alan Pardew got us promoted, we were now top 4 in the league. With Spurs not doing so well they decide when this ditch Ramos that they'll have a bit of Alan Pardew. Now Spurs approach Pardew, Pardew hands in his notice and what happens ??? We are due no compensation because Alan can give 4 weeks notice and walk. So now we have no manager and everyone on charlton life is jumping up and down because "the board are businessmen why didn't they secure his contract for a longer period"

    If only you could have your cake and EAT IT

    What Ceydababy says
  • Your private hospital analogy doesn't quite work Henry.

    Whilst what you say is morally correct legally the hospital (owner) would be liable as it employed the doctor who hired the negligent doctor as it's agent unless the first doctor was self employed under a contract of sevices in which case it would be different. Complicated stuff legally!

    Pardew though is indisputably an employee so ultimately legal responsibility rests with the Board if he is negligent in his work.

    The question in my opinion is (or should be) whether or not the Board can justifiably sack him for incompetence and gross dereliction of his duties and thus possibly avoid having to pay up the remainder of his contract.

    I suspect the answer is "no" to that question or else it may well have been done already...
  • edited November 2008
    [cite]Posted By: 2nd Division & Proud[/cite]the performance related pay is a great idea but then he - sorry they - probably gets bonuses as well as a (supposedly) huge basic
    how about a commission only basis - this year alan you have earnt, erm, tap tap tap - oh it appears you owe us your house ...
    NOW ? OFF!!! ;-)

    Don't forget when we recruited him Pards held all the cards, we were desperate for him, we had Les Reed and the supporters were chanting for him, he was almost in the position of writing out his own contract, although i suspect it was his agent who did - false messiah.
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  • [cite]Posted By: LenGlover[/cite]Your private hospital analogy doesn't quite work Henry.

    Whilst what you say is morally correct legally the hospital (owner) would be liable as it employed the doctor who hired the negligent doctor as it's agent unless the first doctor was self employed under a contract of sevices in which case it would be different. Complicated stuff legally!

    Pardew though is indisputably an employee so ultimately legal responsibility rests with the Board if he is negligent in his work.

    The question in my opinion is (or should be) whether or not the Board can justifiably sack him for incompetence and gross dereliction of his duties and thus possibly avoid having to pay up the remainder of his contract.

    I suspect the answer is "no" to that question or else it may well have been done already...

    Yes, if the case was about negligence in care of a patient you are right.

    But that is not an anology with a football manager. The point is that in such cases an owner/director has to be guided by the "expert" in the field. A non-medical owner or a non-footballer board would not be in a position to say who was the best doctor/nurse/radiologist to recruit and the same would apply to footballers.

    They may wish to retain a veto but they can not, and should not, say Doctor A or footballer A is better than Doctor B or Footballer B.
  • edited November 2008
    According to The Times this morning, it has cost Spurs £1.7m to pay off Ramos...

    Although we were a Prem side when Mr Pardew arrived, we were never Spurs.

    So how come all the estimates for the cost of getting rid of our manager are higher (£2.5 million was quoted by Win Grant ) ?

    Maybe it is now not going to arise, and he's going to turn it around in the 5/6 more games he has been given.

    But if push comes to shoove and it costs CAFC more to get rid of its manager than it cost Spurs, that is frankly ludicrous and the board have some major questions to answer about the nature of the contract.
  • edited November 2008
    Wyn Grant is meant to have said £4.5m or £2.5m which is a huge difference and based on not very much.

    I also doubt that Ramos and his backroom team only cost £1.7m but I don't know the inner workings of Spurs finances so can't really comment.
  • [cite]Posted By: PeteF[/cite]why is football so different form the real world?
    1. Nature of business: In no other business is performance so rigidly defined by a hierarchical grading system (the league). At the start of a season we know that three teams will be relegated. However, just because three are relegated it does not follow that their managers’ were incompetent. The very nature of the business means that some football managers are set up to fail.

    2. Rigid time frames: Everything is judged on where a team will be at the end of a season. But seasons are arbitrary, pre-determined and inflexible. Whilst managers in the real world will have monthly/quarterly/annual targets, few (if any) businesses will have such rigid performance defining timescales with no scope for allowances to be made.

    3. Rules which set out to hamper managers: Can you imagine any other industry where a manager would be told that no matter what the state of their team they could only recruit in January? Of course plenty (probably the majority) of managers do not have the financial wherewithal to just go out and recruit whenever it suits them, but that is still markedly different to having a governance structure forbidding the improvement of ones’ workforce.

    Please note, I am not saying that managers should not be judged, that they shouldn’t be sacked or that they are all good. I am certainly not using these arguments to mitigate the performance of our own manager and his team. I’m merely suggesting these as reasons why football is different to the real world, and why owners/directors might be cautious when firing managers who might have a case for compensation.
  • Some people on this thread clearly don't understand what a contract is.
  • edited November 2008
    d'oh
  • edited November 2008
    double d'oh!
  • [cite]Posted By: Off_it[/cite]Some people on this thread clearly don't understand what a contract is.

    Good point but no need to say it thrice ; - )
    [cite]Posted By: Stig[/cite]
    [cite]Posted By: PeteF[/cite]why is football so different form the real world?
    1. Nature of business: In no other business is performance so rigidly defined by a hierarchical grading system (the league). At the start of a season we know that three teams will be relegated. However, just because three are relegated it does not follow that their managers’ were incompetent. The very nature of the business means that some football managers are set up to fail.

    2. Rigid time frames: Everything is judged on where a team will be at the end of a season. But seasons are arbitrary, pre-determined and inflexible. Whilst managers in the real world will have monthly/quarterly/annual targets, few (if any) businesses will have such rigid performance defining timescales with no scope for allowances to be made.

    3. Rules which set out to hamper managers: Can you imagine any other industry where a manager would be told that no matter what the state of their team they could only recruit in January? Of course plenty (probably the majority) of managers do not have the financial wherewithal to just go out and recruit whenever it suits them, but that is still markedly different to having a governance structure forbidding the improvement of ones’ workforce.

    Please note, I am not saying that managers should not be judged, that they shouldn’t be sacked or that they are all good. I am certainly not using these arguments to mitigate the performance of our own manager and his team. I’m merely suggesting these as reasons why football is different to the real world, and why owners/directors might be cautious when firing managers who might have a case for compensation.

    I'm with Stig
  • edited November 2008
    OK, I've done some more digging into the Spurs-Ramos contract and pay-off.

    He was on an annual salary of £3.5 million.

    He had two and a half years of his contract to run.

    Therefore to buy out his contract in full would have cost £8.75 million.

    He has walked away with £1.75m.

    His lawyers initially threatened to sue for more, but have now settled on this figure :

    a) in favour of a speedy resolution

    b) to avoid the expense and humiliation of court action

    c) because there was some performance-related element in the contract and they were, after all, bottom of the table.

    Therefore, please can we have no more talk of how we can't afford to get rid of Mr Pardew, if needs must. On the basis of the Spurs example we should be looking to pay off no more than 20 per cent of his contract. Assuming Wyn Grant's figures are right (£2.5 m to pay off AP's contract , the other £2m he calculated was to recruit new backroom staff etc so can be disregarded for these purposes), then he should be offered a maximum of £500,000. Quite possibly even less, because I'm sceptical that the remainder of his contract really is worth £2.5 m without bonuses.

    Now, Mr Pardew, go and win four out of the next 5/6 games so that the matter doesn't arise !

    More on edit: Ramos’s assistants, Alvarez and Poyet, have accepted circa £400,000 each - just six months money, the same as Ramos.

    Spurs seem to have learnt the lessons of Jol's dismissal, after they paid him £5 million to leave, by drawing up a much tighter contract for Ramos. Has some common-sense finally entered football (although £1.75m for being useless still wouldn't happen in the real world, would it?)
  • But Nigel that is Spurs. Even if those figures are correct which we have no way of confirming that would only be possible because the contract with Ramos allowed it.

    What it costs to pay off Pardew will depend on CAFC's contract with Pardew not Ramos's contract with Spurs.

    Whether the club can afford to pay him off depends on how much it is and how much we have available. Two figures we don't know (and neither does Wyn Grant)
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