‘There is another way to run a football club’

One thing that always sends the fear of god into me is when a manager praises his own players. Not that Darrell Clarke has described Matty Taylor as the next Jamie Vardy or Tom Lockyer as the next Bobby Moore, but the weary football fan such as me fears the worst when the Rovers acquire and nurture a very good player because, as sure as eggs are eggs, you know he’ll soon be on his way.

I loved the Barry Hayles era, followed by the Roberts/Cureton era. Great days for Gasheads, at least until we sold them all. Then the goals dried up, we signed lesser players, and our dreams of Championship glory were turned to, firstly, rubble and later relegation.

It doesn’t take long to see a football dream ended and you know full well that when you are having a good time watching your team today, tomorrow it can all change.

Let’s be honest. Clarke can say all he likes about his players. If he was to “big up”, as we football folk say, one of his star players, it will not come as much of a shock to other clubs. They will have long known about, say, Taylor and Lockyer, and it will make no difference to their futures and where their futures will be.

If those players are the real deal – sorry about the clichés: I’ve been saving them up – then they will go to a higher level. Like just about every club in the land, going as far up as the likes of Liverpool, Rovers are a selling club.

It may not be that Rovers need the money, although the current losses suggest that they do, but if a player sees a more lucrative and longer contract at a higher level, it’s human nature that he will want to take it. Bigger clubs signing players from smaller clubs works everyone in the game.

This Saturday, assuming the game survives the severe weather warning for rain, sees Rovers entertaining AFC Wimbledon which will remind us that there is another way of running a football club.

The fans own Wimbledon and decide what happens at the club. And there are more and more clubs like them, with elected board representatives and democratic trusts taking decisions.

The model we are used to in lower league football, that of a few millionaire owners controlling everything is one model, in Rovers’ case augmenting the board of directors with a couple of ineffectual “fan director” puppets who are so in touch with the ordinary fans they sit in a luxurious executive box every home game, and fan ownership is another.

We are always told, particularly at the Rovers, that without the board of directors there would be no Bristol Rovers, a comment I treat with the contempt it deserves.

Look abroad, particularly to Germany, and the majority of its clubs are owned by the fans. We are also told that fan owned clubs cannot compete in the transfer market with clubs owned by rich men. Bayern Munich and co might have something to say about that. Bayern are not exactly a selling club, are they?

My ideal would be a club in which supporters have a major say through an elected trust, together perhaps with experienced businessmen fans. I suspect hell might freeze over before that happens but you can still dream in football, can’t you?