Football: Coming up roses on Noades' Brentford farm

RON NOADES' explanation of how he became the manager at Brentford might give the impression he is a man driven by whim and that football clubs are playthings for the well-to-do.

"It's just something I wanted to do," he said yesterday, at a lunch in an upmarket Italian restaurant in London to celebrate being named the Nationwide Third Division Manager of the Month for August. "I got to the point where I thought `I'm 60 years of age, it's now or never'," he added, as if buying a football club and then deciding be owner, chairman and team manager were common.

To take his comments at face value would be to gloss over his passion for football, his extensive knowledge of the game (he has held an FA coaching badge for more than 20 years) and his shrewdness as a speculator in the industry.

Noades is the man who bought Wimbledon before they were in the league and then sold them. He then bought Crystal Palace at the start of the 1980s for pounds 600,000 and sold them this summer to the businessman Mark Goldberg for nearly pounds 23m.

"I didn't want to sell Palace but it went for pounds 22.8m, including the ground," he said. "That goes into my holding company's assets, but I've lent Goldberg pounds 6m. Because he couldn't afford to buy the freehold, I've given him an option on it. So, in the end, Goldberg only came up with enough money to buy the club. I think it was a stupid deal for him to do."

Noades is not stupid. He spent pounds 650,000 on the proceeds from Palace to buy a majority share of Brentford, and in the process made himself the manager, a position he has long sought. "Once you're in [the board room] you're never allowed to get out," he said, relieved to now be in total control. He added he was offered eight clubs - including Manchester City, Portsmouth and Notts County - when he made it known he was in the market, but he opted for Brentford because "it was available" and because he felt fans at bigger clubs would not have accepted him as manager.

Since taking over, he has presided over a coaching team of three - Ray Lewington, Terry Bullivant and Brian Sparrow - and Brentford have won three of their four league matches and knocked First Division West Bromwich Albion out of the Worthington Cup.

Noades said that although he works "by consensus" with his staff, it is ultimately he who picks the team. "I'm an organiser first and foremost," he said. Mistakes will no doubt occur, as they did at Palace, where he was closely involved with buying players - including the pounds 1.8m Italian Michele Padovano, who flopped - but, at Brentford, his aim is simple. "I'll do the manager's job as long as I'm enjoying it," he said. "If a new stadium comes, Brentford could be a big club in London," he added, referring to a 25,000-seat multi-purpose ground that has been in the pipeline for some years. "If not, they could just be a farm for bigger clubs."

Noades will not settle for being a farmer, but his latest accolade should also sound a note of caution - the Second Division's Manager of the Month last March was Micky Adams, of Brentford, later to be relegated.