JD Sports has handed the chair to Peter Agnefjäll from 1 September. He ran IKEA for four years and chaired Ahold Delhaize for four more. Neither business sells trainers, which is the most informative thing about the appointment.

An appointment like this is usually read as a settlement: the interim ends, the quarrel closes. Read it as a job description instead. Those get written by whoever has decided where the fault lies.

The rest of the record keeps that shape. He sits on the board of WPP and has served on those of Deichmann, Wizz Air and Orkla: value footwear, a discount airline, consumer goods. Most of that list competes on cost per unit, and the airline exists for little else.

The search was led by senior independent director Kath Smith, a former managing director of the adidas and Reebok brands who went on to run The North Face’s EMEA business, and who has held the JD job herself, as interim chief executive in 2022.

The one director who knows the trainer trade from the inside ran the search and did not hire her own kind.

The accounts explain her. Like-for-like sales fell 2.1% in the year to 31 January, and 3.9% in the UK, while organic sales rose 2.1% on new space. Revenue still reached £12.66bn, a rise bought more than earned. Free cash flow climbed 36.3% to £462m, enough to fund a dividend increase and a fresh buyback — proof that a board can keep shareholders content while the format itself stalls.

Gross margin held at 47.0% while operating margin before adjusting items slipped from 8.2% to 7.0%. Footwear was flat on the year; accessories grew about 11%. A board that thought the trainers were the problem would have hired for trainers. The part it can act on sits below the gross line, and that is where a format operator earns his keep.

JD had already written the job description. It closed 24 net stores in the UK last year and grew JD’s selling space there by about 4%, under a policy it calls “fewer, bigger, better”. A parallel plan funds supply chain automation. Agnefjäll spent almost two decades at the company that turned that principle into a one-way floor plan.

His remit stops short of the argument that emptied the chair. When Andy Higginson pushed to replace chief executive Régis Schultz this spring, Pentland’s 55% stake kept him in post, on Financial Times reporting carried by Drapers. Higginson left in July. Agnefjäll arrives to a chief executive confirmed by the shareholder who decides.

His welcome statement praised JD’s “strong brand partnerships”. It is the right phrase and the uncomfortable one. The gross margin is settled in Beaverton and Herzogenaurach before the doors open, and no distribution centre renegotiates it. Everything he is good at lives below that line. IKEA never had to ask anyone for the good shoes.