on the Albion and sort it out because
it would be a good challenge for him,
a new challenge. You know, he’s done
advertising; he’s very good at advertising.
Let’s see what he can make of the
Albion.” Little did she know what she was
letting me in for!!
I decided to take Liam with me and I
basically said to him, “Right, I’ll form
a consortium and you are going to be
Director of Football and I’m going to bring
in my pal who works in the ad business,
he’s a Financial Director and he’s an
Albion fan through and through. He’s like
me. We both went to school together in
the same year at H ove Grammar School,
Bob Pinnock, and the three of us will
have a go at it, Liam.” Then, within literally
a few weeks Liam was approached by
David Dein, who was the Vice Chairman
of Arsenal at the time, offering him a job
that, being an Arsenal legend, he couldn’t
refuse: to run the youth setup at Arsenal.
I couldn’t stand in his way, so it was just
me and Bob who went up against Archer,
with Martin Perry, who worked for builders
McAlpines, as our planning advisor. I
could see Archer wasn’t stupid by any
means, he was clever, but he was devious
and he assumed that I was devious as
well!
LE: Was Archer the reason the club were
in in this position?
DK: Oh, yes, he was the architect of
everything that had happened to our club
in the previous seven or eight years. He
was the architect of it all.
Archer almost got away with what he was
planning to do because he exploited the
fact that Hove and Brighton councils were
separate authorities when he took over.
He told one that the other was doing that
and vice versa. So he got Hove Council
to give him planning permission to sell the
Goldstone, without having proper plans
in place for a new stadium. His objective
was to build a huge retail park at Toads
Hole Valley with a small football stadium
in the corner. That was his game plan.
But I was very stubborn and the big
advantage I had over him was that I was
a genuine fan of the club. It was my club,
I was a fan, I’d been there since I was a
little kid and he never understood any of
that. He thought running a football club
was a piece of cake, as long as the fans
didn’t get in the way. Of course, he didn’t
understand that what you do is get the
fans on your side. In my case, it wasn’t
difficult for me to do that because the
fans quickly recognised that I was like
them, I was a fan. I knew the history of the
club and I was able easily to demonstrate
that. And all of that was what the fans
were looking for.
LE: David Belotti was part of it as well
and he passed away last year, aged 71 I
believe. I’ve got to ask you this though. If
you bumped into Bill Archer in the middle
of the street tomorrow, what would you
do? What would you say?
DK: I would hardly recognise him for a
start because I didn’t have that many
meetings with him. He knew he was
beaten though when I wouldn’t go away.
He kept calling me a chancer. That was
his way of dealing with people that he
thought were like him. He couldn’t fathom
me out because he could see that I was
quite a successful businessperson. A big
disadvantage as far as he was concerned
was that I was a southerner. He was a
tough northern businessman and I was a
soft southern bastard.
He had no concern about what was going
to happen to the Albion. If it managed
to survive in a corner of his huge retail
shopping development, it would only
survive as a club in the lower reaches of
the football pyramid. It could never stay in
the Football League, let alone rise to the
Premier League… If you go to Chester,
they’ve got a big retail development and
in the corner is Chester Football Club’s
little ground and look what happened
to Chester FC. They’re now stuck in the
Conference. The Albion had no future
under him. Archer felt that making the
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