Bullet
Andy Thompson
I didn't know that. Quite an interesting Wikipedia article; a story of success and then success and success and then... administration:
Jordan was an accomplished young footballer signing schoolboy forms with both Chelsea and Crystal Palace. He has described himself as being "good enough to be a professional, but mentally I wasn't interested. You often get players who have bags of talent, but not the required application. I was one of them."[2] His father Peter Jordan played for the Palace youth team, but never made an appearance for the first team.
In the late 1980s or early 1990s he was invited by a friend, James Wright, to join him in his business, Wright Connections, selling mobile phones via adverts placed in Loot and Exchange and Mart. Jordan and Wright rented an office from Delta 5, another mobile phone dealer, and the business lasted for a short time before changing its name to Corporate Cellular Ltd (CCL). This business was not considered to be a great success either and Jordan left in the early 1990s.
In 1994, Jordan and Andrew Briggs set up their own mobile phone retail company called the Pocket Phone Shop. They started with £30,000 and a 3,500 sq ft (330 m2) unit in Slough, and after forming an agreement with service provider Astec, the business flourished.
By 2000 the Pocket Phone Shop had 208 outlets nationwide, employed 1100 staff and was forecasting a turnover of £102 million for the 1999/00 financial year. Pocket Phone Shop was seen as one of the main rivals in its sector to leader The Carphone Warehouse, for whom both Jordan and Briggs previously worked.
Crystal Palace
Jordan and Briggs left Pocket Phone Shop in 2000 after selling the company to One2One for reportedly circa £80m. That year, Singapore financier Jerry Lim bought Crystal Palace Football Club, who had been hours from extinction, from the administrators, and immediately sold it on to Jordan. Then aged 32, Jordan immediately appointed himself chairman, making him the youngest chairman of a Football League club. Having been born "100 yards from the ground"[3] Jordan had been a lifelong fan, and he noted "I have been prepared to put my money into something I truly believe in, and my first job is to turn the fortunes of this club around." Jordan also vowed that the club would be promoted to the Premiership, within five years. They achieved this in four years. Despite owning the club, Jordan did not own the ground, which belonged to Ron Noades, who had been chairman from 1981 to 1998.
Jordan announced in July 2008 that he planned to sell the club and move away from football, stating he had "been disillusioned with football for a long time".[4] This occurred following a Football Association tribunal's decision on the John Bostock transfer to Tottenham Hotspur, after which Jordan stated "It's a panel of halfwits". Palace were awarded only £700,000, having valued Bostock at £5 million.
No potential buyers came forward to make a bid for Crystal Palace, and the club became embroiled in deep financial trouble. Rumours persisted of personal financial difficulties as Jordan faced cash flow problems relating to wage payments at the club in November and December 2009.[5] On 26 January 2010 Crystal Palace went into administration and Jordan's ownership came to an end.
