[JEFF]

In this article football is her life

“I’ve been approached by another club and definitely want to stay involved in football. It’s my life.”

In this article she is not a mad football fan

“I do check the scores on Sky News every weekend because I want to see the players doing well but, to be honest with you, I'm not a mad football fan. People get so obsessed with football it's unbelievable.”

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Ignorance is just bliss for Mrs Lazarus

Last updated: 14/08/2009 10:29:00

Football hooligans? Well, there are 92 club chairmen for a start. So went Brian Clough's view on football club chairmen. Len Shackleton left a blank page in his autobiography for a chapter entitled: What Chairmen Know About Football.

Wonder how they'd have tackled one Marcelle Lazarus, the 47-year-old businesswoman who is at the helm of Accrington Stanley.

Before we have a look at Lazarus, let's make one thing clear: this isn't about the ability of a woman to be the chairperson of a football club. It is nothing to do with her gender. It's to do with her knowledge of football - and whether she needs to do some homework.

“I do check the scores on Sky News every weekend because I want to see the players doing well but, to be honest with you, I'm not a mad football fan. People get so obsessed with football it's unbelievable.”

Like the 699 Norwich fans who were at Yeovil on Tuesday, three days after seeing their side beaten 7-1 at home?

And then there's her master-plan for making the Crown Ground, Accrington, THE place to be for Premier League players and managers - because she flogs them the mobile telephones which have to be surgically removed from their ears before they can go out on to the pitch.

“I'm friendly with quite a lot of players and managers from other clubs and I'd like to see them come to visit Accrington. I've already had a word with a few of them and I'm hopeful it will happen. They would just come as our guests on match days - and watch a game at Accrington Stanley.

“It would be good publicity for us, and for Accrington fans, they can meet players from the Premier League.”

I really can't work out whether she is brilliant or barking - up the wrong tree. Lazarus was appointed because of her commercial skills and her contacts book: her job, presumably, also to bring in new business interests.

“There is an awful lot of potential at this club. I would like to see Accrington run as a Premier League club - but to a smaller level.”

I'm thinking here that she needs to be a bit more ambitious, because Wayne and Coleen aren't going to watch League Two football every time they pop out for a cocktail and lager shandy.

Of course, there is a price to pay for over-ambition. Take Mike Ashley, who has failed miserably to turn his personal business profits into a dream at Newcastle and has succeeded only in making them a laughing stock.

Or Michael Knighton, the man who would have been king of Manchester United in 1989 - until his backers dropped out and he was left with just the memory of a decent set of keepy-uppies on the hallowed turf.

He went on to buy Carlisle and in a few years took them from the Fourth Division to the Second Division and then ruined it all when he saw a UFO. His crime was to tell everyone about it.

Then he became Carlisle manager - and guess what, they were relegated.

Perhaps Peter Ridsdale gets the vote, after deciding to fund manager David O'Leary's transfers at Leeds by gambling on future success. It didn't come. Leeds were crippled financially and are now in League One alongside Norwich.

Or perhaps it should be spectacularly misguided American Terry Smith, who bought Chester in 1999 and couldn't resist making himself manager.

A TV documentary showed what the players felt about his methods: they practically laughed out loud. One team talk included the Lord's Prayer. He won four games in four months.

Perhaps Mrs Marcelle Lazarus has got it right. Just admit you don't know much about football - and let those who do get on with it!