Karl Oyston is the Chairman of Blackpool Football Club.
Karl Oyston has also sued several supporters of Blackpool for saying unflattering (and admittedly not proven) things about him and his father, Owen Oyston. So, while this is a subject I care about a lot, I will also be strict about what facts are included in this space.
Blackpool currently have seven senior players under contract for their upcoming season in League One: the third-tier of the English Football Pyramid. That’s not a typo: seven players. What’s even more frightening is that none of these aforementioned players is a goalkeeper.
This is déjà vu for Tangerine fans since, a year ago, the club hired experienced Belgian manager, Jose Riga, and only retained eight players, none of whom were goalies.
That’s hard to fathom considering only five years ago, they were celebrating their first season ever in the modern Premier League, and first in England’s top flight since 1971.
So, how did we go from the Premier League to not even having the players necessary to put a team on the field? There’s not a simple answer to that question, but the man at the centre of it is Karl Oyston.
Karl is the son of a real-estate family that’s among the 1000 richest in England and who have owned Blackpool since 1988. After occupying a variety of positions in “family businesses”, he took over as the club’s Chairman in 1999 from his mother, Vicki.
In the time he’s been Chairman, the club has risen from the fourth tier to the heights of the Premier League. However, no small part of this rise was Latvian businessman, Valeri Belokon, buying a 20% stake in the club in 2006. Specifically, Belokon, the club president, helped fund stadium improvements and a transfer fund to bring in players when the club was pushing for promotion to the Premier League.
Once at the top, the team put together a game effort but were relegated on the final game of the 2010-11 season with 39 league points, and finished in 19th place. This was only one point away from 17th-place Wolves. Considering the financial windfall that comes from being in the Premier League, the Tangerines’ biggest signing was £1.75 million for Leicester City striker, D.J. Campbell. Most of the remaining signees were free transfers or loans from other clubs.
But there was a falling out following this promotion, with the club president, Belokon, implying that the Oyston family jettisoned his support when they no longer needed his money and had reached their goal.
Blackpool did make the Championship play-off in 2011-12, but did not earn promotion. Ian Holloway, one of the club’s most successful managers ever, left for Crystal Palace shortly after in November 2012. It’s been a revolving door of managers ever since, with eight men holding the position, including caretakers.
The owner/supporter relationship truly began to deteriorate in the 2013-14 season, including supporters stopping a match by throwing tennis balls and tangerines on the pitch during a 1-0 loss to local rival Burnley.
This was only a warm-up for 2014-15, an absolute farce that was foreshadowed by the lack of signings leading up to that season.
The on-field results were bad enough; the Tangerines only won four matches and garnered 26 league points in 46 matches. For good measure, they also scored the fewest goals (36), had the most goals allowed (91) and didn’t win one of their last 18 matches.
But this doesn’t even scratch the surface of the truly absurd.
Goalkeeper Joe Lewis was forced to wear a shirt he had autographed for a fan raffle because there were no other goalie shirts available. It did not help that the club had fired their kit man, whose job it was to take care of these uniform issues, and did not replace him. Players were told as a result of this firing they had to wash their own uniforms and boots.
Nile Ranger, an oft-troubled striker on his final chance, left Blackpool without explanation last November for the remainder of the season. The most absurd thing is the club have attempted to offer Ranger a contract for the 2015-16 season.
Jose Riga, who was sacked in October, following one victory in their first 15 league matches chose a vehicular analogy when speaking to “The Guardian” about Oyston and bringing in players at Blackpool.
“I’ll put it this way: you want to buy a car and you are offered a bike. You say: ‘No, I want the car because you need a car.’”
Riga’s top assistant, Bart De Roover, also left the club claiming he hadn’t been paid for his services.
That’s not exactly a sterling endorsement of support from ownership, although neither Riga nor his equally-hamstrung successor, Lee Clark, directly attacked the Oyston family.
There was also the physical condition of the pitch at the club’s Bloomfield Road stadium, which by the second half of the season should have been declared an injury hazard by the Football League.
Karl Oyston’s personal number got out on a Blackpool message board and he received text messages from disgruntled supporters, which isn’t acceptable behaviour under any circumstances. But don’t start feeling too sorry; Oyston responded to these messages by calling supporter, Steve Smith, “a massive retard” and to “enjoy [his] special needs day out”.
The English Football Association just handed down a six-week ban on abuse charges related to those text messages. An honourable mention when it comes to poor PR should go to the Chairman’s son, Sam Oyston, who had to pay £20,000 for Twitter comments he made towards another supporter implying the man stole from his former employer.
The anger came to a head during the club’s final home game of the season versus Huddersfield Town. Prior to the match, thousands of supporters marched to the stadium under “Oyston Out” banners in an organised protest titled “Judgement Day” referencing previous Chairman comments to judge his club at the end of the season. During halftime of the match, supporters invaded the pitch and even rushed into the Oyston family box.
The match against Huddersfield was eventually abandoned, but the goal of drawing national and even worldwide attention to the dissatisfaction of Tangerines’ was successful.
So why should this matter if you’re not a supporter of Blackpool?
Because this could be any club – including the club you support. Plus, it’s a shame for the supporters of a team with 100+ years of history that’s being run in a manner barely acceptable for a semi-professional outfit.
Football should be a source of entertainment and joy in a supporters’ life, not a continuous blight on those who have not already given up hope. Unfortunately for Blackpool supporters, they may not have even experienced the last of that latter category.
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