Peter Kenyon’s successor at Stamford Bridge wants to lead the club to new heights
On the face of it, Ron Gourlay has taken on one of the cushiest jobs in English football. Chelsea are top of the Premier League, having entranced with a scintillating style, sweeping all-comers aside. The new manager is winning allies, the club’s ambitious owner is enthused, and on a summer tour of the United States games were played in crammed stadiums in a country apparently still sceptical of all things soccer.
Yet, as Peter Kenyon’s successor settled into his new office this week, the clutter in the chief executive’s in-tray will have served as a reminder that everything at Chelsea remains a work in progress. The perception of this as a flashy club, prone to “brashness”, lingers. Neither of the two European Cups targeted for the first decade of the Roman Abramovich era have been secured, with Manchester City usurping the London club in the nouveaux riches of the modern era. Manchester United remain the trailblazers all pursue, while the potential of a 12-month transfer ban over the Gaël Kakuta affair looms large. Gourlay is braced to work seven-day weeks. Daunted? Apparently not.
The Dundee fan who shivered on the terraces at Dens Park from the age of seven and followed Kenyon from United to south-west London five years ago, initially joining as chief operating officer, is in contact with Abramovich “two or three times a week”. The discussions touch upon various aspects of a business whose turnover swelled to £213.1m in the most recent accounts, for the financial year ending 30 June 2008. “Roman wants Chelsea to be the best, and we all do,” Gourlay says. “He wants to win games playing exciting football. He would like us to continue identifying good, home-grown players and nurturing them through our academy.”
Ideally he would also like this business to be self-sufficient, though that will have to wait. That target has, for now, been put back and, rather than make bold predictions of a financial future free of reliance upon the oligarch, the CEO is preaching realism. “It would be nice to go to the owner and say we don’t need any more cash, but that’s not where we are today,” he says. “I like to operate honestly but realistically. Self-sufficiency is still the goal. That’s what we’re trying to attain. Is it going to happen this year? No. I’m not going to make any claim on that front because, realistically, it isn’t going to happen this year but we’re not that far away. But there’s probably more pressure from ourselves as a board of directors [to achieve self-sufficiency] than from the owner.
“You get what you see with me. I like to manage people and I like them to get on with their jobs. I don’t like to do their jobs for them. Brashness? Everybody has a different style. People always say to me: ‘You worked with Peter Kenyon for a long time,’ but we’re two completely different personalities and I do things different. Hopefully, if there was brashness there then maybe you won’t see as much brashness going forward. You’ll still see as much energy, you’ll probably see more will to win with realistic goals.
“We’ve learned a lot in the last five years. And I know exactly what I’ve got to achieve in the next three years. The challenge has always been the cost of running the business. It’s no secret about our wage bill and that isn’t going to go away, so we will be looking to drive up revenue.” Wages made up 70.6% of turnover in 2008 before “exceptional items” – the £23.1m of compensation payments made to José Mourinho, Avram Grant and five coaching staff – were taken into account. The figures to be announced next year will include the pay-offs since forked out to Luiz Felipe Scolari and his backroom team. There is confidence such costly mistakes will not be repeated in the foreseeable future.
“When you look at Carlo [(Ancelotti] and what he’s done in his career, there’s always been stability. He’s been at the same club, Milan, a long time and he’s delivered the top trophy twice. His background is slightly different to where we’ve been in the past. Carlo will be given the time. Of course, we will all feel the pressure if we don’t win any trophies. Not only will there be pressure on Carlo, there will be pressure on me. That doesn’t mean to say we’re going to sack the manager. I don’t think I’ll find myself in that position.
“The goal is to win the Champions League and that does take you up another bar: your sponsorship ability and your commercial ability just rise to another level. The impact on your merchandising sales alone is huge overnight. You can start to generate licensing fees for different products in different parts of the world, the awareness of the football club grows. I witnessed that in a past life [at Manchester United] and I’ve seen just exactly what you can do. In the 10-year plan [drawn up in 2004] there were two Champions Leagues and we’ve been very unlucky. Over the next five years we’ve still got to shoot for the stars. I’d still like to think we can win the Champions League twice in the next five years. That might sound aggressive but I think we can still do it.”
The Kakuta issue could yet have implications on that ambition. Chelsea expect to discover next week whether the Court of Arbitration for Sport is willing to freeze Fifa’s 12-month ban from registering players pending an appeal hearing early next year. Should that be confirmed then the league leaders would have an opportunity to strengthen their squad – potentially for the last time until the summer of 2011 – in January. “But we already have one of the strongest pools of players out there, undoubtedly the most experienced in the Premier League,” Gourlay says. “We have the ability to be in the market if we feel we need it. At the present time, I don’t think we need it.”
The reality is that transfer policy is in limbo while CAS deliberates. “We feel we’ve got a strong case, but who knows? We didn’t expect the ban in the first place. For it to be so severe was very much a shock, but we’ll deal with it whatever way it goes. We won’t go around feeling sorry for ourselves if the ban stands. We still have a top squad and, at times like that, you’ve got to buckle down and get on with it.”
That squad is as settled as it has ever been. Joe Cole should follow the recent trend by signing extended terms imminently. The futures of Nicolas Anelka and Michael Ballack may be revisited over the course of the season, with Chelsea confident they will be able to ward off the likes of City in an increasingly distorted wage market. “We’re setting ourselves goals that will see the percentage of wages of our turnover will remain static,” said Gourlay. “That is still one hell of a lot of money to play with.”
Are Manchester City will be active in the transfer window. Are they yet a threat? “I’m not really sure they’ve signed anybody recently that we were interested in,” he says, glossing over the unsettling interest in John Terry last summer. “It’s a competitive marketplace. That’s something that we’ve got to deal with going forward. With the players they have, they’re certainly going to try and push their way into the top five. Commercially, it’s not that easy. They’re very much a Manchester-centric club. To break into the ‘big world’ and start developing your business in Asia and the US, you need to really start winning some trophies, and not just one Premier League. They can attain it with consistency over the next few years. But there are one or two other clubs out there who may have something to say about that.”
For now, it is Manchester United who focus minds at Stamford Bridge. The champions visit on Sunday trailing their hosts by two points in the Premier League but braced to confront a team that has won all nine home games under Ancelotti. “Anybody who finishes above United will win the league, so I do see them as our biggest rivals,” says Gourlayadds of his former employers. “But we look forward to it. For me, this job is a great challenge. This business is growing. I think I’m the correct person to build on the hard work of the last five years and take it on to the next level.”
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