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INTERVIEW
AN INTERVIEW WITH MARK AND NICOLA PALIOS
Back in August 2014, Mark Palios and his wife Nicola
took over at Wirral’s Tranmere Rovers Football Club
from outgoing chairman Peter Johnson. Mark became
Executive Chairman of the club, with Nicola as Vice-
Chairman, and Johnson becoming Honorary President.
Mark had previously played for Tranmere as a midfielder
for nine years between 1973 and 1980 and then from 1983
until 1985.
Wirral Life caught up with Mark and Nicola to catch up on
their plans for Tranmere.
What’s been the high point since your return?
Mark: I can’t imagine anything beating the feeling of the win
at Wembley when we secured our restoration to the League
in 2017. It wasn’t only the enormous importance of getting
back into the League, but also the dramatic fashion in which
we did it on the day – down to 10 men after only 47 seconds,
Connor Jennings coming out of hospital to play, one of our
players getting hit on the head with a bottle... you couldn’t
make it up! We, and every Tranmere supporter, were on
cloud 9 for weeks and you could feel the difference it made
to the whole area.
Tranmere’s revival is a true underdog story. Was there a
sense of life coming full circle?
Mark: For me, yes. I came back to the area after about 30
years away and it felt as comfortable as putting on an old
glove. I was born in Wavertree, but brought up mostly in
Wallasey, so Merseyside has always been where I have
thought of as home. It was slightly surreal coming back as
the owner of the club I had played for 13 years, but it just
seemed the stars had aligned.
Nicola: For me it was more of a step into the unknown! I was
brought up in the North East and had spent 20 years living
in Jersey, so I didn’t know a great deal about Tranmere, but
Mark and I have always both enjoyed change and neither of
us are scared of taking risks, so I was very much up for the
challenge.
How has your early career as a footballer helped to shape
or influence you?
Mark: I think team sports teach you a lot of transferable
skills such as teamwork, discipline and resilience and these
have helped me throughout my career. My background as a
player is hugely important now, because in most clubs there
is a big divide between the boot-room and the boardroom,
and here there isn’t.
It can be hard for normal business people to understand
some of the strange dynamics of running a football club, and
it can be very difficult for football managers to understand
business disciplines. I can speak the language of both the
boardroom and the boot-room, which helps bridge the gap
between the two.
I can sit down with the manager and have a conversation
with him on a different basis to most chairmen, and I try to
use that to the Club’s advantage. It’s important that I use it to
influence, challenge and support, and not to undermine the
manager. At the end of the day, the manager is accountable
for his performance, so he is responsible for his own
decisions.
What are your thoughts on the grossly unfair decision by
the EFL by just 0.04 of a point?
Nicola: It was a hugely unjust outcome of a woefully
poor process. At the time the season was stopped, we had
10 games left to play and although we had a poor spell in
December and January (thanks mainly to a large number
of injuries) we had strengthened the squad in January and
had won our last 3 games in a row prior to the season being
suspended. We were absolutely confident that the corner
had been turned and we would have stayed up, but we were
denied that opportunity because other clubs – those not in
the relegation spots – would inevitably vote in their own self
interests.
Mark: I was incandescent with rage for days after the vote.
Every football person knows that PPG is massively flawed. It
takes into no account the impact of spending in the January
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