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Owners Can Ruin Football Clubs. Fact. Why Do They Do It? 

Three of our best known football league clubs are in trouble. Two played in the top tier not so long ago . How can this happen? They all played one night last week 

1. Orient. Or as it should be Leyton Orient. The club has had more managers this season than home wins and currently is second from bottom in league 2 and nonleague looks a realistic prospect next season. 2660 fans turned up to watch a 1-0 home defeat against Morecambe. Another club in financial trouble. Only a few seasons ago Orient were beaten in a playoff final for promotion to the Championship. The theme behind the fans concerns is the ownership of the club and the behaviour of the owners. 
2. Coventry had 11,672 watching them play Wycombe. This sounds positive until one realises that this is the semi-final of the Checkatrade trophy and Coventry sit bottom of league 1 having won 4 of their 29 games scoring a meagre 23 goals. They are effectively 9 points from safety and look doomed. The owners Sisu are at war it seems with the fans . 
3. Blackpool. It seems only yesterday that Blackpool were in the premiership under the maverick manager Ian Holloway. Under the care of the Oyston family the club has plummeted down the league and resides in a mid-table league 2 position. Their crowd last night for the 0-0 game versus Crawley was a meagre 2080

Why do owners allow their clubs to fail like this? In each of the three cases it is not so clear what the gain for the owners really is. I don’t have the answer.  But for an owner to oversee such catestrophic failures of the extent that conceivably each of these teams could be non-league or not even in existence in a few seasons is far from a miserable speculative view. What is their gain? Can it simply be pure management incompetence? Surely no commercial gain!

Similar stories are heard at Charlton and Blackburn. Blackburn won the league not that long ago and are making a series of catastrophic managerial appointments seemingly twice a season. What Tony Mowbray will bring to them is beyond me.