Players and managers may get all the attention, but owners may have a far greater impact on a football club’s success, therefore here are the seven people you should trust to run it.
The fact that club owners are under more scrutiny than at any other time in the game’s history reflects the critical role that money plays in modern football.
With the success (or failure) of teams on the field increasingly influenced by the amount of a club’s pay bill, the person in control of annual budgeting can have at least as much effect on where a team will end up as any player or manager. Nowadays, owners are quite important.
And they are a diverse group. The owners of the 24 clubs in the EFL Championship include successful local businessmen, American investment companies, and even a couple of Hollywood celebrities. Until a few years ago, the division even boasted its own celebrity chef.
The owner has a difficult task. Everyone in the second division wants to play in the Premier League, and this has resulted in a wage arms race among Championship clubs over the last few decades, forcing wages to levels that even current broadcast contracts and match-day earnings cannot pay on their own.
So club owners must be trustworthy and prudent. Many teams have found themselves in grave problems as a result of top executives’ overambition, and the consequences of poor management can persist for years. With all of this in mind, Football League World has identified the seven people you should entrust with the management of your football team.
7Mark Attanasio
Mark Attanasio, the Milwaukee Brewers’ MLB owner, has only been in charge of Norwich City for two years, and the Canaries haven’t made many headlines since then, but what has stood out is how he handled the club’s sole problem.
The choice to hire Liam Manning made perfect sense at the time. Manning is a reasonably successful manager at this level of the game, having began his career with the team.
But when it became clear that things were not working out, he acted promptly and forcefully, and the club’s replacement, Philippe Clement, was both clever and inventive.
Clement led Norwich City to ninth place in the Championship last season, and despite losing their first home game of the season to West Bromwich Albion, Carrow Road remains a rather positive place, and Norwich fans appear to be generally pleased with him.
6Steve Lansdown
Success does not necessarily need to be spectacular. There have been few fireworks for Bristol City under Steve Lansdown’s long-term ownership, but he has provided stability, durability, and a transition into the modern era.
Steve Lansdown has witnessed significant investment in Ashton Gate’s infrastructure. The stadium has been updated, and the team is in a pretty good financial position. Some supporters complain about the club’s lack of ambition, but Landsown’s Bristol City have lived within their means and are in a fair financial situation given their division.
This is their 12th consecutive season in the Championship, and while there are obvious reasons for frustration as other clubs make their way to the Premier League, even if only for one or two seasons, this is also a solid run for a club that has spent a lot of time in the third and fourth tiers over the years.
5Michael Eisner & Family
Given Portsmouth’s history of poor ownership, which peaked with Ali Al-faraj, a man about whom so little was known that Pompey fans began referring to him as “Al Mirage,” whoever took over the club from the supporters trust that saved them, in collaboration with a group of local businessmen, would have to treat the club with the respect its heritage deserves.
And Eisner has come through. When he took over the team in 2017, they had recently been promoted from League Two. This is their third season in the Championship, having won the League One title in 2024, so it’s safe to say they’ve improved under his control.
Pompey is now owned jointly by his family. Since March 2026, his three sons, Breck, Eric, and Anders, have owned 24.5% of the club, while Eisner owns the remaining 26.5% and has full voting rights. Michael Eisner is now 84 years old, but the share transfer has helped safeguard the club’s future.
4David Clowes
David Clowes might be higher on this list if he hadn’t lately been in talks to sell Derby County, though recent discussions with Saudi boxing billionaire Turki Alalshikh appear to have failed.
However, Derby fans have a lot to be grateful to Clowes for. He bought the club out of administration in 2022, an act that was not for the faint of heart, considering the Rams’ predicament as a result of some major overspending by the club’s former owner, Mel Morris.
Under his ownership, they were promoted from League One, stayed in the Championship, and came close to making the playoffs last season. If he sells the club, Derby fans will have a lot to thank him for. They are unrecognisable in comparison to the financially insolvent disaster they were before his arrival, and they are better for it.
3Tom Wagner & Knighthead
There aren’t any more ambitious ownerships in the EFL right now than Birmingham City’s, and they’re aiming high. Plans are being developed for the construction of a 62,000-capacity stadium as the centrepiece of a sports complex that will totally redefine the club.
Things have not been absolutely smooth sailing. Birmingham was demoted at the end of their inaugural season in charge. However, the reaction to the relegation could not have been more positive, with 2024-25 achieving a new EFL points record of 111, followed by a satisfactory 10th-place finish in the Championship.
Of course, Tom Wagner’s health troubles earlier this year were a terrible thing for him personally, but the club itself did not suffer significantly. Indeed, the manner in which Knighthead coped with his unexpected absence after having a stroke in February merely hinted at their professionalism, and Birmingham supporters’ reactions spoke loudly about how popular he has become at St Andrews.
2Ryan Reynolds & Rob McElhenney
When Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney reflect on their carers, they may consider the £2 million they invested in Wrexham in 2021 to be the best money they ever spent.
Not only has the club’s value skyrocketed, but they’ve also embarked on an almost unbelievable journey, with their club winning promotion from the National League to the Championship in successive seasons and then finishing just short of a play-off spot at the end of the 2025-26 season.
They have linked with the town, put it on the map, and made the football club world famous, and they appear to have fallen in love with the town, the club, and the game. And the sentiment appears to be mutual among the club’s fans. The stadium is being renovated, and a community and football club that have both been through difficult times have been handed a boost.
The fairytale storyline is wearing a little thin, but there’s no denying that the journey that Wrexham fans have been on over the last five years is one that any football fan would want to take.
1Steve Gibson
The original and finest. Steve Gibson often feels underappreciated since he has been around for so long. Gibson was part of the group that saved Middlesbrough from extinction in 1986, when financial problems that had been building for three or four years came to a head. He became the club’s chairman in 1994.
Middlesbrough has had 16 years of top-flight football since Gibson took over at Ayresome Park forty years ago. They’ve reached their first (and so far only) FA Cup and UEFA Cup finals. They have only won one major prise, the 2004 League Cup, and have finished second in that competition twice. They even moved to a new stadium.
None of this would have been possible without Steve Gibson. His dedication to the club has been unwavering, and while he’d be the first to admit that he hasn’t always gotten things right, he has gotten far more right than wrong, and his way of doing business has long exuded patience, an increasingly rare trait in an increasingly impatient world.
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