Saturday 19 November 2011

It's Not Me, It's You. And You. And You.

According to the UK Young Rich List compiled annually by the Sunday Times, Imraan was worth an estimated £6 million by 2008. Not bad going before hitting your 30th birthday, an age when most people are still trying to scrape together a deposit on a house, or consolidating their various debts into one manageable loan.

By 2010 Imraan’s business was reported to be forecasting annual turnover of £80 million despite the recession. This was around the time he flogged a massive 90% share to that bloke off Dragon’s Den, who usually gives the impression that he’d sooner part with his gonads than sink money into a risky venture.

So we have to assume that Imraan has a very smart business brain, though obviously not nearly as clever as Roman Abramovich, who went from rubber duck salesman to mega billionaire in ways that I’m sure he would have no problem with discussing.

He is certainly, when he chooses to be, a very effective and skilful communicator. Imraan’s public statements are usually extremely well crafted. In the days when he posted on Poppynet as Official KTFC (as opposed to various suspected other nom de plumes), it was impossible not to admire his ability to make everything he did seem perfectly reasonable.

You found yourself nodding your head at the sheer justice of his complaints against the Council, the Pickerings, the Conference board, the Football Association, ITV, the PFA, sundry other football clubs, managers, companies and organisations with which he was in dispute, various disgruntled ex club officials, employees, players & volunteers, certain small nations in central Africa, the organising committee of Crufts, and Felicity Kendal.

In the space of one evening at Wicksteed Park, he managed to persuade a substantial majority of his audience that Kettering Town’s long term interests were best served by moving to a more expensive stadium in a different town, because the commercial opportunities were so much greater, sponsors would be bidding against each other, the club would fulfil its destiny and we’d never be poor or sick or lonely again.

Had he kept talking for half an hour longer, he’d have convinced many of the same people to have MUG tattooed across their foreheads and parade naked through the streets of Irthlingborough.

So it is perhaps fair to make the following assumptions:

1. Because it’s generally accepted that happy staff produce better results, the meteoric rise of DRC Locums was probably not achieved by regular bust ups, barmy appointments, scattergun departures, telling them they’re all crap, and docking their pay without telling them.

2. If the latter isn’t true in the case of KTFC at present, Imraan would be very quick to put the record straight.

3. But even if it is, he was entirely justified and the miserable underachieving buggers should be thankful he doesn't have them whipped.

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