Simon Jordan
I removed Trevor Francis on his birthday and offered to post his P45 in his birthday card.Collection: Birthday
I believe change to be a good thing. Everything must evolve but you can't make an omelette without breaking eggs.Collection: Change
Racial equality isn't a bonus or privilege, it is a fundamental right - as is equal opportunity. Yet equal opportunity doesn't necessarily mean equal outcome. Talent gives that.Collection: Equality
Whilst Solskjaer is a decent football man, you wonder when Manchester United became the side of someone that employs the track record of and capability of Ole Gunnar Solskjaer to bridge the gap against Manchester City, Liverpool, Real Madrid, Barcelona... against all the superpowers that Man United purport to be bigger than.
Our national sport is bloated with overpaid players, the majority of which aren't willing to help their own industry.
I made mistakes and it is silly and foolish to suggest I didn't.
If there was a place called Cynic, I would be its mayor, its MP and have keys to the town.
In 2005, we tried to sign Dean Ashton for Crystal Palace from Crewe - but my lamentable integrity led me to suggest to the chairman of two other bidding clubs that we should coordinate our bids.
The coronavirus is a crisis the likes of which the world has not seen for a long time, shutting football down.
To be honest, nothing ever surprises me. However, sometimes people or things can disappoint me.
I won an injunction against Steve Bruce and successfully sued Iain Dowie.
Despite all the billions now involved, football still needs heart and soul and owners who believe, care and honour their responsibility of being a custodian.
The motivations for owning a club are varied. Ego always plays a part. Some buy them just because they can, some for the kudos and some to own an iconic British institution.
Like Brexit, Covid-19 divides opinion.
Transfer windows are pretty much the living embodiment of the seven deadly sins. Sloth, gluttony, envy, greed, lust and pride are all represented in the frenzy of the market.
Life is full of challenges and I will continue to embrace them each and every one.
Does international football really mean that much to players? I think when England fans look ahead to home games against Bulgaria and Kosovo, they think of empty corporate seats, overpriced journeys and the cost of tickets to watch pedestrian, uninspiring matches.
I often feel my raison d'etre is to hold people to account. To bring authenticity and objectivity to the world of sport.
One of the ludicrous myths I found in football is that people have got to be given time. Whether it's a year or 18 months, if you're seeing no progress whatsoever and you keep on giving them that time, then you keep on not progressing.
If you have ambition in football that's the dangerous thing because the ambition will drive you on to make decisions that commercially you might not make in any other business.
The bottom line is if you want to own a football club you have to pay the price to have success.
In real life I have always been a huge risk-taker, a person who believes and invests in other people's ambitions, so not quite a philanthropist, but certainly a pseudo-Renaissance man.
Football is the only industry I know that builds in failure as part of its fibre.
A manager who is fired will normally have some or all of his contract paid up by the club for failing - and no it doesn't cut both ways.
Not in any parallel universe would I sign Sturridge. Not for me. I wouldn't even give him a pay as you play deal.
I wouldn't want Sturridge in my dressing room or at my training ground around younger players.
I think the conventional wisdom in the game is that Daniel Sturridge is a troubled, problem player. He's a very, very, very talented footballer but he's a divisive influence.
The fact nobody wants Sturridge will give you clear indication the industry has a certain perception of him. He's one of those players who plays entirely for himself. He is, in my view, all about himself.
When I bought Crystal Palace at the age of 31, I naively thought it was all about attainment. How wrong I was.
In all other industries, if things are going belly up after a year or so, would the most senior people get to keep their jobs? No. They get fired and rightly so. The difference in football is that people get paid for ultimately failing.
No one gets jobs for life any more, do they? Why is it different for football?
Ninety per cent of players and managers don't support the club they are employed by.
If games are required to be played behind closed doors, the loss of income becomes a big factor for every club.
The reason the Football League is broken is because there has been a complete lack of direction or response since the Premier League revenue went supernova at the start of the 21st century.
Parachute payments aren't evil but they do ensure achieving Premier League status is a blessing, not a curse or a route to the poor house.
While it may be argued that football isn't the most deserving of causes, it is part of the social fabric of this country and must be preserved.
I sat in Football League meetings for far longer than I wanted and listened to absolute drivel. When real reform was needed, petty nonsense was discussed.
In the crisis over ITV digital in 2002 for instance, the incompetence was staggering. EFL clubs were signed to a broadcast deal with a startup business that had no funding, no parent company guarantees from ITV, and clubs got royally shafted for millions when it inevitably failed.
It is one thing handing over all the financial benefits of football to the players, it is another entirely to cede control to them.
In football, statistically, there's an under-representation from the BAME community in dugouts, boardrooms and coaching roles. The claim is that systemic racism and unconscious bias are to blame. Yet, surely, statistics are the beginning of a conversation, rather than the conclusion.
It's important to establish why racial inequality exists and then focus on the solution. But it needs facts over feelings.
Huge disparity between Premier League and EFL revenues means the average top-flight club receives as much for 90 minutes of football in TV monies as a Championship team gets for an entire 46-game season.
The football industry brought inflexibility upon itself by deciding they can only buy and sell its key product when it chooses or needs to.
Football agents are evil, divisive scum. Once upon a time I made this proclamation and it ensured a thousand headlines during my ten years as an owner.
I found certain agents to be predatory flesh traders whose sole focus (when not carrying young players' manbags) was to create division between clubs and players, with the motivation being money.
Football has systematically refused to deal with agents. Instead of regulating them like the mid-2000s, football has loosened control over the business as even more money poured in.
Agents can act with what is called duality, working for both a club and a player - and get paid from both ends.
Football originated as a working man's game.
The likes of Facebook, Twitter and Instagram dominate every aspect of people's thinking and have in part been responsible for the election of an American President.
During a World War I armistice in 1914, a match was played between British and German soldiers before the real hostilities resumed. A century on and the game is now consumed by tribalism, driven by mis-guided loyalties.