Express & Star

Mark Jenkins: Eighteen years in West Brom hotseat

For a combined 18 years, Mark Jenkins has been at the forefront of all the key decisions Albion have made.

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New manager Tony Mowbray watches the game from the directors box, with Mark Jenkins.

Commercial deals, hiring and firing managers, and setting the transfer budget are all areas he has been responsible for.

Now the 54-year-old is looking forward to retirement having decided to step down as Albion’s CEO following their promotion to the Premier League.

It’s not the first time the finance chief has tried to enjoy a more relaxing way of life.

Jenkins also retired in 2016 after helping to oversee the transition of ownership from Jeremy Peace to Guochuan Lai.

But a year later – while lying on a beach in Mexico – his phone rang with Albion’s new owners desperate for him return.

In his absence, the Baggies had gone from having £40million in the bank to needing an overdraft, while an eight-year stay in the Premier League was also destined to come to an end with the club splashing vast sums of money on players only to end up bottom of the

division.

February 13, 2018, was the date that Jenkins returned to The Hawthorns.

Chairman John Williams and chief executive Martin Goodman had been running the club, while Alan Pardew was head coach.

And Jenkins admits it was a sense of duty that convinced him to accept Lai’s request asking him to return.

“I’d had a fantastic year and was enjoying retirement when I got the call,” Jenkins said.

“My daughter had actually said to me I’d changed, that she felt I was a lot happier.

“And I promised her I wouldn’t go back.

“I was on a sun bed in Mexico and I got a call asking if we could have a chat when I got back.

“When I’d left – on December 16, 2016 – we were seventh in the Premier League.

“We had just lost to Man United. But we were seventh and doing all right.

“Then we lost a few games and I thought ‘they are missing me – that’s nice’.

“But then we kept losing and kept losing and it wasn’t funny anymore.

“It was clear the club was not being run right. So when I got the call, I did want to prove to myself that I could be the one to turn it around.”

Jenkins admits when he returned to the club he could never have imagined the problems that were around the corner.

“I’ve done various interviews and everyone knows my views on where the club was and how it had been run,” the 54-year-old continued. “But on the Thursday of the week I’d come back, Richard (former technical director Richard Garlick) came into my office and said ‘we have got a problem’.

“I said: ‘We are bottom of the table and I’ve had a look at the books and you’re telling me we have got a

problem?’

“He said the police are in the reception area of a hotel in Barcelona. Four of the players have been accused of stealing a taxi.

“The beach in Mexico felt a long way away then, I can tell you.

“I thought, ‘what have I walked into?’

“I thought perhaps we could stop it from getting out, but by the next day it was on the front page of The Sun.”

With Albion struggling under Pardew, Jenkins admits not sacking the former Newcastle boss earlier was

mistake.

“The owners wanted stability and from my experience, if you change the manager too many times it’s carnage anyway,” he continued.

“Look at Watford this season, change the manager more than twice in a season and you are in trouble.

“I think supporters think I gave Pardew much longer than I should. Pardew had five league games under me, that is all.

“But clearly a decision should have been made earlier than those five games.

“The names being given to me by the people around me, though, did not fill me with confidence that they were going to be any better.

“I was thinking ‘do we make the change? Do we keep a bit of stability?’

“In the end, I think it was after the Burnley, game, it was obvious things weren’t going to improve.

“It was too late and that is one of my regrets.”

Another decision Jenkins regrets is not standing up to Lai when he wanted to appoint Giuliano Terraneo as the club’s sporting director.

“I have made mistakes,” he said. “Me making decisions on people is difficult for me to talk about.

“But allowing Mr Lai to convince me to take Giuliano Terraneo as temporary sporting and technical director was a mistake by me.

“I should have just said ‘no, that is not going to work’.

“That is probably one of the biggest mistakes and it set us back a year.

“That didn’t allow me to start building the structure right.

“And Darren Moore came as head coach with no structure around him.

“Normally when a manager has come in, we have that structure. We have a sporting and technical director and he just drops in.

“But when me and Darren took over at the end of that season, we had to rebuild and Giuliano did not fit.

Mark Jenkins Chief Executive of West Bromwich Albion in the stands before the match (AMA)

“We did not have the structure around Darren and it did not work.”

In terms of best signings, Jenkins ranks Gareth McAuley and Peter Odemwingie as his favourites.

But some of his best deals, he believes, are ones he didn’t do.

“Bosmans are the best,” he said. “We had this model for a while where we focused on Bosmans, but like all good models they come to an end and you have to change.

“I think now you have to try and invest in youth and that is very difficult with the way the academies are structured.

“Gareth McAuley was probably the best deal we have done.

“Odemwingie too. He cost £2million and immediately scored goals in the Premier League.

“That is the type of player we need to find now.

“But sometimes the best deals are the ones you don’t do.

“We went for Owen Hargreaves and I said ‘no way’.

“And we went for Abou Diaby when he left Arsenal.

“He was constantly injured. But we went for him.

“His agent was there and I refused to go to the meeting. We were not doing that deal.

“He went to Marseille in the end and only played five more games before retiring.

“I would always make jokes at board meetings asking if he played yet.

“I’d always say ‘has he played yet, has he played yet?’

“People will call me ‘cheap skate Jenkins’ but some of the Bosmans we have done have been superb.

“When I came back to the club, the club was very agent driven,

“We had gone from scouting to a club reeking of agents.

“They were swirling around the place and it needed changing. I didn’t do it overnight, it was not an easy fix.”

When it comes to managers, Roy Hodgson and current boss Slaven Bilic are the men Jenkins has enjoyed working with the most.

“Roy and Slaven probably,” he said when posed the question.

“Roy was probably the most successful. Steve Clarke finished higher in the league, but it was Roy’s team really – with a few additions.

“And Slaven because he is just a really decent bloke.

“What you see is what you get.

“Sometimes with previous managers you don’t want to go into work, it’s a battle every day.”

In an exclusive interview with the Express & Star, Albion’s now retired CEO said he believed the promotion achieved last month was the most important in the club’s history due to the financial implications of Covid-19.

Having helped guide the club back into the big time, Jenkins knows he can walk away with his head held high and an outstanding record from his 18 years of service.

Twelve of those 18 seasons were spent in the Premier League, while four of the six in the Championship ended in promotion or defeat in the play-offs.

“Winning promotion last month, undoubtedly,” Jenkins said when asked what his biggest achievement has been during his time at the club. “But I dug out the article when I came back and looked at what I said I hoped to do.

“It was to reduce ticket prices and bring entertaining football – if you want to re-engage with fans the best way to do that is with entertaining football and we hadn’t done that previously.

“And it was to get promoted.

“Another objective of mine was that I felt the club could do more in the community – I wanted to do something charity wise.

“We looked at homelessness but we focused on loneliness and launched Baggies Buddies which got picked up by Prince William. It’s not a massive thing but the Albion Foundation have picked that up and run with it.

“During the pandemic ringing fans who were on their own was a great achievement.

“But getting promoted was the best achievement.

“For me to be able to say I played a small part – in what is now my fourth promotion in six attempts – I am pleased with that.”

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