SPEAK TO ANY MANAGER OFF THE record and he will tell you that the average football supporter knows nothing about the game. They turn up, they buy a pie, they whinge and whine and then they go home and ring a radio phone-in show. That’s the problem – everyone has an opinion, but hardly anyone has a Uefa Pro Licence.

Will Brooks is a 36-year-old Fulham supporter and has been going to Craven Cottage since he was a boy. He has watched Fulham during the good times and the bad, but win, lose or draw, he has never been able to get rid of the nagging suspicion that he could do a better job than Lawrie Sanchez, or Chris Coleman, or Jean Tigana.

Instead of ringing BBC Radio 5 Live, Brooks decided to do something about it last month by setting up myfootballclub.co.uk, a website that is on course to recruit the 50,000 members it needs to raise £1.375 million to buy a football club, which the members will run. For £35 a year, each member will have a vote on team selection, transfers and all significant decisions affecting the running of the club. It may sound like a pipe-dream, but about 23,000 visitors to the website have already put their money where their mouth is and the search for a club to take over before the start of next season has already started.

Leeds United, Nottingham Forest and Brighton & Hove Albion are among the top targets and if Brooks has his way, Dennis Wise will no longer be picking the team at Elland Road next season. The 50,000 members of myfootballclub.co.uk would take care of team selection via an internet vote every Friday night and Wise would become the coach instead of the manager.

“One night in the pub I realised that you could raise a phenomenal amount of money through the internet and that it could be a fascinating way of running a club,” Brooks, an advertising copywriter, said. “The coach will have a very interesting position because he can blame the fans for picking the wrong team – it is going to turn things on its head.”

With 50,000 fans picking the side, attendances should shoot up as members turn up to follow a team that is, literally, theirs. Games will also be shown on the internet and the club’s own television station. In between matches, members will be able to log on to the club’s website to read updates from the coaching staff about the form and fitness of players and scouting reports on opponents and transfer targets.

“I think fans tend to get things right as a group,” Brooks said. “Some managers are extremely stubborn but when they listen to fans – by changing formation or dropping certain players – results change. Fans are not as stupid as people in the game think they are.”

The idea of coaching a side that is picked by the man in the stands is unlikely to appeal to many managers. “It will take the pressure off because the coach can’t be blamed if the team lose,” Brooks said, but the concept has hit the ground running and its founder is flabbergasted by the interest that it has generated, not only in England but also in Spain, Argentina and the United States.

Brooks has already been approached by big-name sponsors and a leading television company who want to follow the club next season, but he insists that he will step aside and let the members – and a board made up of supporters – run the show once he has hit his target of 50,000 members.

“I am surprised that no one has thought of it before,” Brooks said. “It is a revolutionary idea, but fans are the most important people in the game and it will be fantastic for them to have more control than ever before.”

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