Please be upstanding for the chair of the board, the unsung hero or pantomime villain of English football
Even by the standards of Watford FC, thousands of people singing ‘I don’t care about Gino! He don’t care about me!’ is unprecedented. Absent from criticism is chair Scott Duxbury, who has been almost mute in the two years since Rob Edwards was dismissed weeks after Duxbury put his name to a statement that the club would stand by their man whatever happened. Three wins in 11 games happened, and Edwards became the fourth Watford manager to be dismissed inside 12 months.
When I read David Bernstein’s book about his time as chair of Manchester City Football Club, which he loved so much he forced his rabbi to screen the FA Cup final at his barmitzvah lunch, I was quietly impressed by how he managed upwards to the owner and across to the rest of the executives. He took no fee, boarding the train up from London most weeks to chair board meetings at a club which, at the time, was a basket case short of a basket.
Normally, fans look to the owner to spend the money, to help them dream and to hire a revolutionary manager. But these are not normal times, and fans are as clued-up on boardroom machinations as they are to the recruitment drive and the tactics room. And thus, in what I think is a rare celebration of the role, I am about to enumerate some of the finest chairpersons in English football.
A few omissions to note: Newcastle chair Yasir Al-Rumayyan presides over a sovereign wealth fund, Tom Werner of Liverpool had to recant his support for the European Super League, while the taints of Todd Boehly of Chelsea and Khaldoon Al Mubarak of Manchester City outweigh their honours and financial outlay. I do not need to spell out why Joel and Avi Glazer are sub-optimal chairs of Manchester United, or David Sullivan at West Ham, where David Gold’s daughter Vanessa now holds 25% of the club.
Slightly better chairman/owners include Dragan Šolak of Southampton, Shahid Khan of Fulham and Alan Pace of Burnley. Then there’s Tony Bloom of Brighton & Hove Albion, whose boyhood club are, without doubt, having the best period in their history. Most Seagulls acknowledge the astute ownership and chairing of the man who is merely a custodian of the institution founded in 1901.
Cliff Crown of Brentford is, like Bloom, a Jewish chair, and he has overseen the club’s modern era of Premier League success in a role which used to be taken by Greg Dyke; it is no coincidence that manager Thomas Frank has lasted six years in the job. And did you read Barney Ronay’s Guardian piece about Spurs chairman Daniel Levy, which called him a peerless accountant whose arrival at the club in 2001 set in motion ‘a transformational miracle’.
Spurs may have an accountant for a chairman, but Nottingham Forest have a barrister, Nicholas Randall KC. In his professional life, he has represented two Manchester United captains (Keane and Rooney) and two former managers of Newcastle and England (Keegan and Robson), while in his spare time he deals with the incomparable Forest owner, Evangelos Marinakis.
Some names of chairpersons are familiar to Premier League watchers: Steve Parish, who owns 10% of Crystal Palace and is a much-heard media voice advocating for the protection of the lesser big clubs; Mehmet Dalman and Jeff Shi are still the respective representatives on earth at Cardiff City and Wolves for Vincent Tan and the Fosun conglomerate; plus there’s Top Srivaddhanaprabha, who became chairman of Leicester City after the death of his father Khun Vichai. James Berylson did the same for Millwall, after his beloved father John died in a car accident in 2023; continuing the bad run of fortune, 12 months later Millwall lost their Montenegrin goalkeeper Marija Sarkic to heart failure.
The Kroenkes, dad Stan and son Josh, are always in the news when Arsenal aren’t doing so well, and are seldom praised when it’s going alright. Such is the curse of chairing a Big Club. I haven’t seen much praise go to Nassef Sawiris, the chair of Aston Villa and richest man in Egypt, though I expect to see his name and that of Everton’s chair Marc Watts pop up in the next year. The latter club move into their new stadium in August under new ownership, although it will be hard to beat the late theatre impresario Bill Kenwright for glamour.
There is, however, the glitz of gridiron potentially coming to the Premier League next season; as well as chairing Leeds United, Paraag Marathe is the Executive VP of Football Operations at Leeds’ ultimate owners, the San Francisco 49ers. In recent decades, other successful men from outside football, like ex-Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls at Norwich City, and TV executive Acun Ilıcalı, who chairs Hull City in the post-Assem Allam era, after the magnate sold the club to Turkish company Acun Medya.
Coventry boasted footballer turned pundit turned chair Jimmy Hill. The Midlands side are now owned and chaired by local lad Doug King, who had to fire Mark Robins in November 2024 despite him getting the club a couple of penalty kicks to the Premier League 18 months beforehand. On taking control of the Sky Blues, King immediately upgraded the training facilities and has made noises about the club owning their home ground that they have rented for 20 years.
Down in West Bromwich, Columbia alumnus Shilen Patel is using the acumen from running his own healthcare company to pilot the Baggies back into the Premier League. Patel bought the club in 2024, a decade after dipping his toe into football waters in Bologna, who played in the 2024/25 Champions League after Juventus poached their manager Thiago Motta. Billionaire banker William Foley II, who turned 80 last Christmas, added Bournemouth to a portfolio that includes Lorient and Hibernian.
Walsall have American co-chairs in Benjamin Boycott and Leigh Pomlett, while Huddersfield owner/chair Kevin Nagle was born in Minnesota but raised in Southern California. He parlayed experience in business to a sports team portfolio that includes soccer and basketball teams in Sacramento. Charlton have Gavin Carter, himself a sports investor who worked with Charlie Methven, the Oxford-educated theology graduate who recently part-owned Sunderland.
At the moment, the Mackems chair is the billionaire owner and former aspiring football player Kyril Louis-Dreyfus, who was born in Switzerland and whose dad Robert was CEO of Adidas in the 1990s. At that time, Steve Gibson had not just rescued his beloved Middlesborough from liquidation but gave them Premier League football and an FA Cup final; Gibson will soon be marking the 40th anniversary of his significant purchase, while his nephew Ben is captain of Stoke City, who themselves are owned by the billionaire Coates family and chaired by John, son of patriarch Peter.
Sheffield United have two chairmen, Steven Rosen and Helmy Eltoukhy. The latter is a CEO who has a PhD in electrical engineering and founded two health start-ups that dealt in genomics and biotechnology; so, when he isn’t cracking the secret to life, he’s helping Chris Wilder get the red team in Yorkshire back into the top division. In spite of Harrogate Town struggling near the bottom of League Two, Irving Weaver has not had any cause to sack the manager; Irving’s son Simon is closing in on 16 years as manager, almost triple the length of Thomas Frank’s time as manager of Brentford and double the length of Pep Guardiola’s time in charge at Man City.
Meanwhile, Bristol City owner Steve Lansdown installed his son Jon as chair, while also in the Championship, data analysis expert Christian Nourry, who worked for Retexo, is chair of QPR at the age of 27. Nourry brings a youthful vigour to a club who won one of their first 16 games in the 2024/25 Championship season, then lost only three of their next 15; the side in Shepherd’s Bush, West London might well rise back to the top division after a rocky few years on and off the pitch. I wonder how odd it must be for 33-year-old club captain Steve Cook to be younger than the CEO.
Like QPR, Notts County also have data analysts for owners, in their case the Danish brothers Christoffer and Alexander Reedtz, and County are giving promotion from League Two a good go. I hope that Simon Hallett earns some credit after the team he chairs, Plymouth Argyle, overcame Liverpool in the FA Cup, even though the unexpected victory is likely to be overshadowed by the failure of Wayne Rooney as manager and possible relegation into League One.
This has also happened to Tom Wagner, the venture capitalist who chairs Birmingham City who cashed out the Rooney chips quickly. Fellow League One promotion-chasers Wrexham have a whole Disney+ series dedicated to their co-chairmen, whom you might know from other TV shows and movies. CEO Michael Williamson has a football background having worked for Inter Milan and DC United, and he replaced Fleur Robinson, who took over from her dad Ben as CEO of Burton Albion.
Burton are now chaired by Ole Jakob Strandhagen, who bizarrely works full-time at Molde in Norway and has a deputy in Tom Davidson, who co-founded the Nordic Football Group that bought the club from Ben Robinson after four years scouting the continent for a worthwhile investment opportunity. Football Ventures did the same and alighted upon Bolton Wanderers, whose chair is Sharon Brittan. Port Vale’s chair is also female, in their case the peerless Carol Shanahan, best known for providing the people of Burslem with hot meals during the pandemic and making Vale fan Robbie Williams co-club president.
Then there are the lifers, two of who are called Mark. Mark Ashton was Watford CEO in the 2000s, and via time at West Brom, Oxford United and Bristol City is now a friend of Ed Sheeran’s at Ipswich Town. Mark Palios, former chair of the English FA, has been at Tranmere Rovers for years, and the side are currently perched near the bottom of League Two. Let us not overlook Blackburn’s chair Steve Waggott, headhunted by the Venky family after working at clubs as varied as Charlton, Coventry and Southend United. Waggott told one interviewer his goal was to ‘get amongst the community to make sure the brand and the perception of the club become positive again’.
Down at AFC Wimbledon Mick Buckley takes charge of a club he supported in the 1970s by using experience gained with US broadcast networks; the vice-chair Michele Little is a Cambridge-educated chartered accountant. Bromley boy Robin Stanton-Gleaves bought his hometown club in 2019 and, thanks to his work off the pitch and the astute management of Andy Woodman on it, they became a Football League club and are holding their own this season as a comfortable mid-table League Two side.
David Wilkinson has ended up chairing the board of Luton Town, the club he has supported through its enormous highs and very low lows: Wilkinson helped to save the club in 2008 as part of the consortium, from whence they have risen from the National League to the Premier League, although they are in a second successive relegation battle only nine months after tumbling out of the top tier. Also on the Luton board is Sony Music CEO Rob Stringer, whom last year Billboard magazine named the third most powerful person in the music industry (Taylor Swift was number one).
Grant Ferguson has a quite embarrassingly successful career in media and telecoms, particularly in Asia, and was also on the board of Inter Milan when it had Indonesian ownership. He was brought in to chair Oxford United, while at Portsmouth the Eisner family hired local lad Andrew Cullen. Cullen was headhunted from the club that play in Milton Keynes after they, in turn, had swiped him from Norwich City. It’s not just players who rise up the football food chain, but the executives too.
Like Brighton, Portsmouth, Luton and Bromley, Leyton Orient are chaired by a local lad. In 2017, after some quite wretched ownership issues plunged them into the National League, they were rescued by Nigel Travis, who chaired Dunkin’ Donuts. Eight years on, Travis is seeking investment in the club so they can make the leap from League One to the Championship, with investor Sulman Ahmed providing funds acquired through his Texas-based dental company. The club hosted, and led, the champions of England, the Abu Dhabi-owned Manchester City, in the FA Cup fourth round in February 2025; the defeat brought the focus on to a home game against Mansfield Town three days later, which they won 3-0.
Some Championship sides are doomed to be too good to go down and not quite good enough to go up. In the past ten seasons, Preston North End have finished between 7th and 14th, winning between 15 and 19 games each season and mostly finishing with between 61 and 64 points. Trevor Hemmings, whose horses won three Grand Nationals and who briefly owned Blackpool Tower, saved the club from liquidation in 2010; when he died in 2021 his son Craig took over ownership of the famously Proud club.
With Preston North End up for sale, there will be no shortage of investment groups bidding for the club, which back in 1889 went an entire season unbeaten and which famously boasts the great winger Tom Finney as a club hero. And what about Watford, whose chair Scott Duxbury has a direct line to club president Elton John but also to the hands-on yet barely audible owner Gino Pozzo? Should Signor Pozzo find a buyer for the club he bought for £15m in 2012, which was valued at about 15 times that a few years later, there may be a vacancy for the chair of the board, a role once taken by Graham Taylor.
So that’s a survey of football club chairs: can’t live with ’em, can’t survive without ’em.
Banternalysis, an investigation into football punditry, is available as an eBook here