Be Careful What You Wish For (33 page)

No punches were pulled on either side and I make no apologies for what I said. I told him that whether he liked it or not he worked for me, not the other way round, and he should learn his place. For two and a half years I had given him the benefit of the doubt and I was tired of this constant, divisive, disrespectful crap from him.

The storm eventually passed and we both regained our composure. The conversation moved on to more constructive matters about the following season. We agreed that it was likely Andrew Johnson would now go as I had promised him that if we didn’t get promoted, he could leave. Dowie asked if he would get the funds and I said it was likely he would get a significant percentage of them for reinvestment.

Then, like a bolt out of the blue, he told me he was considering leaving Palace so he could return up north to be with his family, who had shown no wish to relocate during his two-and-a-half-year tenure at the club.

I am rarely speechless. We had moved on from the row, spent twenty minutes talking about the new season, he had asked for more money for players and more backing and got them. Then, as if I was talking to a different person entirely, he told me he
wanted
to leave the club. I was flabbergasted, and said if he wanted to leave to go and work up north and be near his family then that changed everything.

Dowie went on to say that he would stay until a job came up. I said, ‘How can that work? I can’t allow you to buy players knowing you want to leave. That’s absurd!’ and terminated the call.

Within half an hour Bob was on the phone. He wanted to act as mediator but I saw little point. I told him as I had told his brother that I had things to think about.

After digesting the Dowie call I came to the conclusion that if he wanted to go he could. He had failed in my eyes to keep us in the Premier League when he should have done and had most definitely failed miserably in my view to get us back with the strongest squad in the Championship.

So in the week I thought about it I came to the view perhaps he was right to want to leave. But perversely I had reservations. Yes, I was bored with his antics and outlook but then ‘better the devil you know’, as the saying goes. When all was said and done, Dowie had been the only manager to date who had given me a modicum of success.

I spoke to him a week later and he seemed in an immeasurable hurry to get this matter resolved. He was now resolute about going back up north, even rescinding the ludicrous offer to stay until we appointed his successor.

We had a £1 million compensation clause in his contract and by releasing him I was effectively waiving that. Of course, then we wouldn’t be held to paying up the remainder of his contract. But this was his agenda. Purely out of empathy to his wishes, given he was playing the family card so strongly, I agreed to waive my compensation rights and release him from his contract.

I was to fly in on Monday 22 May to hold a press conference to
announce
his departure. As I have said before there are very few secrets in football and soon the rumour mill began to reach my ears.

I got a phone call on Friday 19 May from Neil Ashton of the
Daily Mail
, a staunch Crystal Palace fan who I knew well. He asked what the press call was for and when I said ‘wait and see’, he told me it was to announce Dowie’s departure, which slightly irked me as I wanted to announce it. He then said: ‘You do realise that Dowie is nailed on for the Charlton job?’

I don’t know whether it was arrogance, naivety or just plain stupidity, but I found it difficult to believe that Dowie would have the gall to lie to me in such a barefaced way. I phoned him to just check again about his ‘going up north to be with his family’ but got no answer. So I spoke to his brother Bob, who told me that there was no way to his knowledge that he was going to Charlton. So I left it there.

I flew in and met Dowie in my office prior to the press conference to sign the compromise agreement, which nullified the contract in its entirety. When I got to Palace, Dowie’s lawyers had changed the agreement. My HR director Kevin Watts, my rock of all things employment, was on a flight to Dubai and unable to be contacted.

Dowie and his lawyers wanted a specific clause about the removal of compensation in the compromise agreement, which was totally unnecessary as the compromise agreement did precisely that. It set off alarm bells and I suggested we did the press conference and sign afterwards, as by that time Kevin would have landed in Dubai.

Dowie pleaded with me to sign, and as the press were now waiting I asked him straight out: ‘Are you going to Charlton?’ and he categorically assured me that he was not. So I relented and signed, thus releasing him and waiving our £1 million.

In nine days’ time I took a controversial action as the depths of Dowie’s treachery became evident.

12

YOU HAVE TO WONDER WHY

‘UN-FUCKING-BELIEVABLE. WHO DOES
he think he is?’

That was my reaction as the news filtered through to me that, three days after being released from Palace and despite his promises and protestations to the contrary, Iain Dowie was going to be unveiled as the new Charlton Athletic manager in a press conference scheduled for the Tuesday after the May bank holiday weekend in 2006.

I couldn’t believe it; well, I suppose I could because he had no shame. Dowie knew he was going to Charlton and, using his family as an excuse, played on my better nature to get himself released from a contract that had a £1 million compensation clause in it. There was no way I was going to take that up the backside.

Dowie should have known me better. But as I have said football people live in a cosseted environment, outside the normal rules that govern society and think they can do as they damn well please.

Over the years I spent many hours with lawyers and many millions of pounds fighting legal injustices so there was no surprise when my legal representation received my call. My lawyer, Mark Buckley, was aware of the Dowie departure and the manner in which it had
manifested
itself and now he had been informed that Dowie was to be the new Charlton manager. I wanted something done and I wanted to be told how I could address this outrageous abuse of trust.

Mark Buckley came back with two words: ‘fraudulent misrepresentation’.

Aware that Dowie would be presented as Charlton’s manager at a press conference with his new chairman Richard Murray I decided to get a writ served on him live on national TV.

It was drafted over the weekend and was ready to be served. There was a private detective who I used regularly, Stuart Page, and I instructed him to pose as a reporter going to the press conference. Once he was in, at the most opportune moment, I told him to serve it upon Dowie in front of millions of watching eyes.

I sat in front of my TV in Spain watching Dowie being unveiled as the new Charlton manager – the post he said he would never take – and only about six miles north of Palace. I waited patiently for my guy to deliver my leaving gift to Dowie, but as the press conference went on, I listened to certain parts where Dowie blatantly lied and Murray ridiculed me, but there was no sign of Stuart.

My phone rang. ‘I can’t get in, I couldn’t get a press pass.’

‘Hold tight, Stuart, I’ll get you in.’

I phoned one of the Sky guys and told him that if he wanted to see something unique and interesting to get my guy in.

Stuart Page burst into the press conference with a writ in his hand from CPFC for fraud against Iain Dowie. The place descended into mayhem. Dowie looked gobsmacked and Murray bemused, perhaps thinking it was some kind of prank from
Candid Camera
. Eventually my guy got manhandled out by security. Meanwhile, I sat in my front room, thinking, ‘OK, Mr Dowie, you wanted to lie and cheat, now you have something else to consider.’

My phone lit up like a pinball machine as newspapers and radio stations bombarded me with calls, but I wanted to speak to Sky live to ensure everybody knew what and why this was going on.

Jim White, the Sky anchor, who considered himself something of a roving investigative reporter, tried to portray my actions as taking football to a new low. I agreed wholeheartedly and said that when a man lies and cheats his way out of a contract and betrays people, football
has
reached a new low!

OK, it was theatrical and unnecessary to have served the writ in the manner I did but I wanted to ensure that Dowie got his just desserts. He had hoodwinked me; Charlton, our now fiercest rivals, had got him for absolutely nothing, and unlike most others in football, I was not going to sit back and let that happen. As with Steve Bruce before him there was a consequence. In the world outside of football, there were consequences for managers who behaved unethically, and I didn’t see why football should be any different.

Once the furore died down I discussed the next move with my lawyers and was horrified to be told that the charge I was alleging against Dowie was one of the hardest to prove and they had reservations about its success. My grandstanding had the potential of becoming a big custard pie in my own face. ‘Bit bloody late to tell me that now,’ I said, ‘and not what you said when we decided on this drastic course of action. You got me in this with your advice, you better get me out of it one way or another.’

And with that we put together a case that was to create legal history.

As I have mentioned many times before I didn’t want to constantly be in the way of confrontation but I wouldn’t avoid battles when they were necessary. Despite putting myself under enormous pressure I only stepped up when it was the right thing to do. Iain Dowie had betrayed me and all the Palace fans who
had
supported him when he was at the club. Why shouldn’t he be held accountable for his treachery?

During the summer of 2006 I distracted myself with getting involved in other projects. I’d always been interested in the restaurant business and with a partner launched the soon-to-be-award-winning Club Bar and Dining in the heart of Soho. I also decided to sell my 50 per cent shareholding in the very successful motor car magazine I had launched just over three years earlier to Felix Dennis, one of the country’s leading publishing moguls.

Returning to football I was always looking at ways to increase Palace’s reach. I had previously considered buying Northern Spirit, an Australian Club, also coming close with the Auckland Kingz, a New Zealand side playing in the Australian Major League, only to pull out when I discovered that they were being booted out of the league. This had been represented differently to me by Phil Alexander, who had a personal agenda because he wanted to run the club.

Following on from that theme of trying to increase Palace’s reach wherever I could, I started up a venture in America: Crystal Palace USA. We were to be the first English club to have a subsidiary in the US and would be based in Baltimore, just outside of Washington DC, and play in what was the Second Division of American Major League Soccer. The idea was to have a club where we could discover new talent for CPFC UK, as well as a venue for our young players to gain invaluable experience before joining our first team. It was a revolutionary move and one that could have had big potential.

While the long arduous task got underway with the lawyers on the Dowie case, I started the search for yet another manager. Incredibly, I had still kept on Bob Dowie, despite the situation with his brother. He assured me that he still wanted to work and
I
felt Bob would be advantageous to have around to help select a new manager.

I met Graeme Souness in Marbella for dinner to discuss the Palace job. I liked Graeme as he had been great with my dad when he had open heart surgery in 2005, talking to him about his own experiences of it. I admired his forthright nature and the passion he exuded. We had a good chat but I got the impression that he was done with club management. I have to say that would have been an interesting relationship between myself and Graeme.

In a night out with friends in Puerto Banus, I bumped into Mike Newell, the former Everton and Blackburn striker, who was then managing Luton Town. When I say ‘bumped’, Newell lumbered over, drunk as a skunk, plonked himself down next to me and told me he wanted an interview with Palace. I got the impression he actually expected one there and then! I told Newell that Bob Dowie was doing the selection process and if he wanted to be considered he should go through Bob.

You would have thought that I had just told him I had slept with his wife, given the offence he took. ‘Charlie big fucking bollocks, too important to talk to me,’ he raged. I thought he was going to hit me, especially when I told him that it was an impressive interviewing technique, standing in front of a potential employer pissed as a rat. Unsurprisingly, he never got his interview and was filed under miscellaneous with Stan Ternent and trolled off back under the bridge whence he came.

Someone, somewhere mentioned the former Palace player Peter Taylor, and for the life of me I can’t recall who it was or how it came to be otherwise I would have probably served a writ on them as well as Dowie with the benefit of hindsight. For some reason Taylor became a serious candidate. I held a long-standing opinion that Taylor was a coach, not a manager, and had conveyed as much
to
his chairman at Hull, Adam Pearson, a friend who I saw a lot of in Spain. Adam always told me how much that irked Taylor. Following Trevor Francis’s departure I had an opportunity to talk to Taylor when he was the Leicester manager in 2003. Peter had expressed a serious interest in the Palace job, but I had heard that he was nervous at Leicester and if they started badly he would get fired so was thinking of jumping before he got pushed. My reaction to that was, ‘What a bloody loser.’ Why would I want someone managing my club who forecasts failure?

With all that in mind I still interviewed Peter after Bob had met him and given me a good report on him. Given the absolute waste of time this appointment was to be I jokingly assumed that this was Iain Dowie’s parting gift to me: getting his brother to advocate Taylor’s appointment.