Clark was not in the dark

It was no secret that the financial situation at Blues was, to put it mildly, precarious, in recent years. It was common knowledge that Birmingham City were a club on the brink – a club desperately trying to cut costs and raise funds.

You didn’t have to be a financial expert to be aware that these hard times existed. Yet Lee Clark, our former manager, claims he wasn’t aware of the cost cutting measures put in place before he took the job at St. Andrews.

I apologise for being so up front and blunt about this, but that is absolute nonsense.

While Clark was at the helm, he acknowledge publicly on several occasions that he was fully aware of the financial implications before even applying for the vacancy upon Chris Hughton’s exit.

The problems may have worsened some time into Clark’s stint but he was fully aware, briefed and clued up about the purse strings. Everyone was. The reason his predecessor departed was because of the cash flow not being deep enough to match the board’s expectations.

Clark took the job knowing how tough it was going to be but living in hope of better times. Carson Yeung’s house arrest didn’t help matters. The team were struggling on the pitch, players were being sold on the cheap and the fans had lost confidence in a manager who seemed to discombobulate them with his array of confusing tactics and baffling team selections – now the majority shareholder was being held legally in his native Hong Kong on suspicion of money laundering.

In his new autobiography ‘Black or White, no Grey Areas’, Clark also claims that a feud with his former assistant managers, Terry McDermott and Derek Fazackerley, put an end to their working relationship. And he reveals all about that infamous spat with Nikola Zigic.

But as a fan looking from the outside in, Clark is looking to lay blame for his managerial failings, particularly at Blues, away from his own door.

But nowhere in the book does it state where he purchased the bingo machine that he used to select his team’s from.