Jon Lansdown on Bristol City's leadership structure, his dad's position and Richard Scudamore

Jon Lansdown has defended Bristol City’s committee-style of leadership, believing it’s the best model for the club to ensure everyone within the hierarchy is “aligned”, removing the potential for self-interest to influence decision-making and how that is presented to supporters.

City have been without a formal and club-specific CEO since Phil Alexander’s surprise departure last September, while the dismissal of Nigel Pearson the following month meant the Robins lost one of their most significant, respected and authoritative public voices, with the former manager consistently there to communicate matters far beyond just what was happening on the pitch.

Since Pearson’s exit, chairman Lansdown, technical director Brian Tinnion, Bristol Sport group CEO Gavin Marshall and COO Tom Rawcliffe have all conducted various media interviews discussing wider issues related to the club, whether that be from a financial, commercial or overall policy perspective, while head coach Liam Manning continues to deliver weekly press conferences based around the football.

It does represent something of a departure as previously there would be one lone voice from a club perspective, which tended to be Alexander and then previous to that Richard Gould and Mark Ashton, with owner Steve Lansdown then speaking in a less frequent but more all-encompassing sense, depending on the situation.

Lansdown Snr’s last City-related interview was last August to BBC Radio Guernsey in the wake of Alex Scott’s £25million sale to Bournemouth, and the billionaire, while remaining a keen supporter of the team, has taken a notable backseat in a public-facing role, and that void has increasingly been filled by a group of individuals rather than one person.

Speaking to Bristol Live, Jon Lansdown insists it’s been a natural evolution towards that point insisting that everyone now acting and speaking on behalf of the club is doing so underwritten by the greater good, the implication being - albeit not said - that hasn't always been the case.

“Collaboration has always been one of our key values. It’s something you aim towards,” Lansdown said.

“What have you normally got in football?” he adds, holding his left hand in the air, forming a globe shape, followed by the right. “You’ve got a big ego in terms of someone running your first-team, a big ego in terms of someone running your football club, whether it be the chief executive, both of who are normally passing through to some extent - it was slightly different when we had Richard Gould because this was his club, but normally it’s not - so you’ve always got some element of, ‘what’s in it for me?’ ‘How does it boost my career?’ or whatever else.

“I’m not saying it’s always like that, but it’s a better situation if it’s not because then you know everyone’s aim is exactly the same. I’m not saying in those situations you can’t get people pointing in the right direction but it’s got to be an element of, what’s in it for them.

“Whereas we’re at far more of a stage where everyone wants the same thing and it’s easier because it’s naturally aligned and there are fewer distractions.

“It’s probably easier to do if you’re at a smaller club because you naturally have fewer people, you tend to have more local people and it tends to be ‘their club’. Whereas the higher you get, it’s not straightforward to find a coach who isn’t focused on their career.”

Broadly speaking, Manning is obvious in charge of the day-to-day running of the team, Tinnion as technical director has a wider brief beyond just the first-team, also encompassing the entire recruitment operation and the academy, while Rawcliffe - who previously served as head of finance and worked closely with Gould during the complications around Covid - sits more towards the football administration and operations side, as his office at the High Performance Centre is situated directly next to Tinnion’s, with the commercial aspect of the business then coming under Marshall and Lansdown’s remit.

Lansdown's greater presence in a public sense has been represented by the frequency at which he now conducts interviews, while he was also on the top table at Manning's unveiling, but also at club events such as the Senior Reds. He does, though, seem keen not to occupy all, if any, of the limelight, revel in his status or take credit for certain club-related decisions and even for this interview he’s reluctant to pose for any pictures to accompany it.

“It’s a collaborative approach in terms of that, you should be getting the same messages from different people, it’s not just going to be one person talking all the time,” Lansdown added. “It’s not something I want to do, pushing myself out there all the time, but there is leadership behind that and someone has to drive it. But I’m not always going to putting myself out to do all the media, all the time, but you’ll still get the right message whether that’s from Tom, Gav, Brian and Liam.

“It’s probably fairly unique in the UK. Our commercial model, having multi-sport, might be more similar in Europe and in the States you have more of a general manager approach. I’m not saying we’re that because you have Tom in charge of the operation in the building and the team in terms of leadership here, but he isn’t responsible for the commercial so it isn’t a typical chief executive role. You still have all the functions you need, it’s just split differently.

“I think we’re different in that we are open and connected here as well. Agents or whoever else, when they come here, you’ve got Liam, me, Brian all talking in the same building, so you don’t need to have four different conversations and get four different answers. Everyone knows what we’re trying to do and what we’re doing.”

This interview, of course, forms part of the strategy of more openness and accountability, as we’re afforded 45 minutes with the chairman at the HPC on the back of a long post-season discussion with BBC Radio Bristol. Marshall also appeared on the Forever Bristol City podcast, while Rawcliffe was a guest on 3 Peaps in a Podcast after the final game of the campaign against Stoke City.

The fallout post-Pearson around the messaging from the club hierarchy created an air of distrust and disconnect from sections of the fanbase, which will take some time to heal, but Lansdown believes it is slowly but steadily improving.

“We spoke quite a bit after Liam joined about communications before, and we needed to improve it, but you don’t flick a switch and it’s overnight, it’s building that up and I think the off-season is a good time to make sure we connect with fans to make sure people understand what we’re trying to do and how doing it, so you can rationalise your actions, essentially, rather than it being a surprise,” he added. “It’s their club, they should feel attached to it, they should know what’s it about, they should feel like people care about it.”

Even with this new version of City’s organisational structure, there has been a clamour from some supporters to hear from Steve Lansdown who’s not spoken about Pearson’s exit nor other matters around the most recent season, both good and bad.

But while, in theory, the idea would be to provide some kind of reassurance given his standing and history with the club and fanbase, in practice it doesn’t make much sense because, quite simply, he’s not as involved in the day-to-day running of the club as before, having previously indicated his desire to gradually step away from the shop floor, having passed his 70th birthday.

“He’s obviously still very connected with the club in terms of how much he cares and everything else but not as intertwined with it in terms of what happens on a day-to-day basis. He wasn’t involved in Liam’s appointment, for example,” Lansdown said, of his father. “I’m not saying it’s for good but he’s talked about doing that for years and it’s never quite gone away but it is natural because it’s like, right, who’s the best person to talk about this?”

There remains another figure of influence behind the scenes at City, of course, although they’re not situated at the HPC or Ashton Gate. Alexander admitted last year that former Premier League chief executive Richard Scudamore, a lifelong and passionate Robins fan, “is very much involved here”, and the 64-year-old appears to hold a position acting as sort of an unofficial external consultant.

Having served as Premier League chief executive and then executive chairman from 1999-2018, Scudamore has been previously, and naturally, been linked with the CEO role in BS3, but the Bristolian is more of a spiritual leader, more than anything else.

“He’s a fan of the club so he’s always somebody you can go to if you want advice on any particular issues, and I don’t think that’s a secret,” Lansdown added.

In Monday's third and final part of our interview with Jon Lansdown, the Bristol City chairman discusses the latest around the possibility of additional investment into the club, the summer ahead, Liam Manning and next season...

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