The old saying goes...The cemeteries are full of indispensable people... We shall see how good your owners are with this next appointment....but there are no guarantees for either club.
I recall when Grayson resigned from Blackpool he was working at Leeds the very next day - Blackpool were crying foul - You can't do that but it still happened and I'm not even sure if Blackpool got any compo
But as I said, all you can really do is sue him for breach of contract. You can't actually stop him from starting another job. And as I also said, contracts aren't worth the paper they're written on.
If they really are demanding £2m, then we shouldn't just pay up. That's an obscene amount just for compo.
We paid more than twice that much for an average defender, this is our manager, if we aren't willing to pay that and would rather have a difficult situation then it would just be acting awkward.
Transfer fees are different. Players are commodities that are bought and sold according to their value. Mills was so expensive because of his age, and (before he came to Leicester!) someone obviously thought/thinks he may be a top level defender one day. It's different with manager, and this is compensation being paid to a club that will probably do just as well without Pearson as with. Midtable obscurity. And I think we should remember that our owners don't have a bottomless pit of cash. They may be more free-spending than most, but they're not as rich as some other club owners, as rivals keep pointing out.
You may as well just not bother than take it to a tribunal. A tribunal will take weeks at minimum, in some cases they can drag it out for bloody months with a decent (or petty, your choice) set of solicitors, which I'd be willing to wager Allam will get. Also you assume a tribunal will find in your favour, which is not guaranteed. As has been mentioned earlier, Allam is a pricky, stubborn ****hole of a business man. He's not the kind of man who let's you do what you want if it's not what he wants. I don't think he's going to let you take Pearson without a substantial amount of cash.
You can start him from starting another job if there's a non-competition clause in his contract. You could sue for breach of contract you're right; you could also seek an injunction to prevent him from taking over at Leicester which is the much-more likely remedy if he breaches that particular provision of his contract. As for contracts not being "worth the paper they're written on", I can assure you from having worked on a great number of messy employment disputes, you're certainly wrong.
Assuming for a moment you are right (big assumption) - What message would that send to potential replacements - they may find the risk of being sued a bit of a negative
Well no - we'd just have to do it by the book, like anyone should. There's no assumption that you've done anything wrong, but if Pearson resigns from a contract with a non-competition clause in it, then we could seek an injunction to stop him taking over at your boys. There's so many assumptions there, we're assuming he resigns, we're assuming he has such a clause, we're assuming we'd take legal action. But in my opinion, there doesn't seem to be any other reason as to why he just doesn't resign and take over at Leicester, like Grayson at Leeds.
The definition of Gardening Leave is: ' whereby an employee who is leaving a job (having resigned or otherwise had his or her employment terminated) is instructed to stay away from work during the notice period, while still remaining on the payroll.' Does that apply to Pearson? If he were to resign, which is what John Percy (never heard of him BTW) says he will do if nothing is agreed, then, as Danger pointed out, surely he is free from that moment on to do and to go wherever he wants? I'm not sure how all this legal thing works. What would be the rules regarding compensation should he resign?
But a tribunal wouldn't stop Nige from starting. It would only delay Hull getting their payment and and will affect how much they get. It's usually a sensible amount, which will be lower than Hull are asking for I'm sure.
Calm down peeps .. The actual wealth of an individual has very little to do with anything in terms of football ownershipand how that might translate to the teams they own... a lot of rich people cannot (or are unwilling to) generate funds (at least in the short term) from their wealth - i.e to be able to provide your manager with a £20 mill transfer kitty you either need to have tha cash on hand or mortgage your assets to generate it. So most of the conversation is spurious - it inevitably comes down to the desire of the individuals to go beyond it just being a hobby etc. Fortunately for us, Vichai confirmed, when I went out for a very tasy Panang Nua and Jasmine rice with him last week, that his son Top is more than willing to part with the millions in his Post office savings account to fund further spending in January- which it looks like we may need - top of the list are loan deald for Chris Samba from Blackburn and Emmanuel Frimpong from Arsenal - our team sheet will then read 'Samba, Bamba, Frimpong' ... I know I've done this one before, but just couldn't resist a repeat... get my coat again.
