Invisible Man Must Step From Shadows

SEARCH Google for Paul Suen and you’ll find plenty of financial stories.

Click images and you won’t find a bean. The Birmingham City owner guards his privacy with fanatical zeal and is immensely proud that not a single photograph exists in the public domain.

Unusual? Yes, but hardly the end of the world. For Blues fans, memories of Carson Yeung are painfully fresh and an invisible owner is still better than an incarcerated one. Especially if he pays the bills.

Folk at St Andrews can live without seeing Suen’s mug. What they can’t abide is the boardroom incompetence that makes him look like one.

Forget the dismissal of Gary Rowett. Disastrous it undoubtedly was, but Suen and Co have been beaten with that stick so often it has splintered to pieces. Even Bluenoses are sick of hearing about it.

Far worse is the apparent lack of direction, strategy and accountability in the 16 months since that fateful decision.

Take the pick ‘n’ mix approach to managers. Rowett, an unglamorous pragmatist, was replaced by Gianfranco Zola, a global icon who promised – and failed – to bring sunshine football to Small Heath.

Next came Harry Redknapp, a domestic doyen who’d spent the best part of two decades in the Premier League.