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‘Where there is harmony, may we bring discord. Where there is truth, may we bring error. Where there is faith, may we bring doubt. And where there is hope, may we bring despair’
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Other Dodgy Owners on 06:53 - May 28 with 2223 views
‘Where there is harmony, may we bring discord. Where there is truth, may we bring error. Where there is faith, may we bring doubt. And where there is hope, may we bring despair’
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Other Dodgy Owners on 07:38 - May 28 with 2221 views
‘Where there is harmony, may we bring discord. Where there is truth, may we bring error. Where there is faith, may we bring doubt. And where there is hope, may we bring despair’
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Other Dodgy Owners on 13:59 - Jun 6 with 2170 views
‘Where there is harmony, may we bring discord. Where there is truth, may we bring error. Where there is faith, may we bring doubt. And where there is hope, may we bring despair’
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Other Dodgy Owners on 14:17 - Jun 6 with 2168 views
‘Where there is harmony, may we bring discord. Where there is truth, may we bring error. Where there is faith, may we bring doubt. And where there is hope, may we bring despair’
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Other Dodgy Owners on 14:37 - Jun 6 with 2166 views
‘Where there is harmony, may we bring discord. Where there is truth, may we bring error. Where there is faith, may we bring doubt. And where there is hope, may we bring despair’
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Other Dodgy Owners on 14:50 - Jun 6 with 2161 views
‘Where there is harmony, may we bring discord. Where there is truth, may we bring error. Where there is faith, may we bring doubt. And where there is hope, may we bring despair’
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Other Dodgy Owners on 10:50 - Jun 7 with 2142 views
NOT THRIFT FOR PURPOSE Leyton Orient owner Francesco Becchetti leaves £20million mansion… but fails to pay long-serving staff member just £6,000
Italian was seen in Mayfair this month, but did not appear in court today where his rock-bottom side still owe money to creditors
18:52, 20 Mar 2017 Updated: 21:14, 20 Mar 2017
LEYTON ORIENT owner Francesco Becchetti leaves £20million mansion - days before it emerged he 'could not afford' to pay a long-serving staff member a paltry £6,000.
The multi-millionaire businessman was seen outside his Mayfair home earlier this month, but did not appear in court today where his rock-bottom side STILL owe huge sums to creditors
Wearing a leather jacket with yellow collar, he left the former Red Lion pub, which closed in 2009 and has been turned into a stunning townhouse.
Italian waste management and media magnate Becchetti bought it when he took over the east London club in 2014 when they were on the cusp of the Championship.
An unknown woman also pulled up outside the central London property in a grey chauffeur-driven Rolls Royce.
But he has headed up a disastrous reign since, as Orient tumbled to the very bottom of the entire Football League, where they currently lie seven points from safety.
And today were in the high court over an unpaid £250,000 tax bill, with a very real threat of administration or liquidation.
Around 30 Orient fans piled into the courtroom at the High Court on Monday, with many more outside — but there was no Italian presence anywhere to be seen.
But SunSport's exclusive pictures show he is still in the country, amid rumours he had left for his homeland after refusing to attend games since before Christmas.
Having initially ploughed millions into the club, he threw a strop and stopped putting money in - but he did settle the bill with the taxman today, thus staving off liquidation — for now.
But the bad news slowly unravelled as it emerged the winding-up petition was taken over by other parties owed money by Orient.
These included matchday stewards provider Central Circle Event Management, who have not been paid £18,000 - and shamefully, a long-serving staff member being owed £6,000.
Waltham Forest Council are owed £35,000, and there are other creditors too who must be paid who are entitled join the continued petition.
Mr Registrar Briggs gave the club until June 12 to pay off sums of money to creditors - time being given as Becchetti's legal representative claimed he is to put a £1m cash injection into the club in the next eight to 10 weeks to cover all debts.
Bobby Friedman, the barrister representing the Leyton Orient Fans’ Trust, also said a process to sell the club might be getting underway in that same time period.
But if the sum is not paid by June, Becchetti - who last year faced an extradition attempt by the Albanian government into a failed hydro-electric scheme in the country - could see the club he owns liquidated.
Fans outside court said Orient, at risk of dropping into the National League, remain in "mortal danger."
Adam Michaelson, the trust's legal adviser, told SunSport: “This is not good news, in fact it puts the club in mortal danger.
“Other people owed money may see this and want to attach themselves to the new petition — I would not be surprised if we owe a lot more debt than just this £60,000
“The infrastructure of the club has been collapsing for some time now, so I, along with the Fans Trust, call for Francesco Becchetti to get on with it and seek new owners to sell the club as soon as possible, or we face a real threat of liquidation next time around”.
‘Where there is harmony, may we bring discord. Where there is truth, may we bring error. Where there is faith, may we bring doubt. And where there is hope, may we bring despair’
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Other Dodgy Owners on 11:03 - Jun 7 with 2140 views
‘Where there is harmony, may we bring discord. Where there is truth, may we bring error. Where there is faith, may we bring doubt. And where there is hope, may we bring despair’
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Other Dodgy Owners on 14:23 - Jun 14 with 2107 views
Macclesfield Town's demise was signposted but that doesn't make it less painful
After 146 years a winding-up order means oblivion beckons for club that defied odds but was often a misstep from the brink
The announcement was shocking but registered as no surprise. Like the £500,000-plus the club owed its creditors, Macclesfield Town had been on borrowed time. After a long series of court dates and adjournments, Judge Sebastian Prentis, via a virtual hearing, wound up the club on Wednesday in a specialist insolvency and companies court.
It will be the fans who suffer. A Macclesfield Town supporter does not dream of the Champions League or signing Gareth Bale on loan but it is the shared camaraderie of icy afternoons on the Star Lane End or a 500-mile round trip by coach to Torquay that will be lost. And in their own way, Silkmen fans followed a club with much to be proud of, as a powerhouse of the non-league scene in the late-1980s, a Football League club against the odds after that and somewhere that gave three Black managers in Sol Campbell, Paul Ince and Keith Alexander opportunities.
There is little time to save any semblance of a local institution formed in 1874 and thus older than the Manchester giants that loom 20 miles up the A6. And few saviours. Joe Sealey, a local businessman, has been circling for months and was interviewed on Wednesday at the Moss Rose. He said he was in negotiations to buy another club, though he admitted “half a million pounds for a club of this stature is not bad”.
Stature? Sealey, the son of Les Sealey, the late former Manchester United goalkeeper, would be taking over a severely distressed asset, a hollowed-out shell. Putatively, the club is in the National League, having been relegated from League Two after a count-back of points per game and the EFL successfully challenging a ruling that had set Stevenage for the drop. The 17 points the Silkmen were deducted for repeatedly failing to pay their players cost the club their Football League status.
In the eyes of Macc fans, and taking into account the EFL and football authorities allowing the situation to snowball after multiple intimations of disaster, one person should shoulder the blame. Amar Alkadhi, a London-based Iraqi telecoms entrepreneur, has been involved with the club since the mid-2000s and was once viewed as a benevolent enough if not exactly spendthrift owner. Money had always been tight but it was success, a promotion from the National League at the end of the 2017-18 season, that was the beginning of the end.
A return to the Football League after six years was a huge achievement but two of the club’s mainstays were soon gone. Arighi Bianchi, the venerable furniture store that towers behind the train station and sells its wares to the bourgeoisie of London and Manchester, was removed as shirt sponsor in favour of Zaki Artist Management, a DJ booking agency based in Ibiza. And, even more unthinkably, “Mr Macclesfield” himself, John Askey, the manager, associated with the club since 1984, one of their finest ever players, walked out to join Shrewsbury.
That Askey had left for more money at Shrewsbury was the word, but the truth of his departure was spelled out in the court hearing on Tuesday. He was owed more than £170,000 by the club and by extension Alkadhi. Two seasons of farce followed, including Campbell’s 10 months at Moss Rose, which saw him rescue the club from relegation and yet walk away in August 2019, later citing a £180,000 debt for unpaid wages.
Even before Covid-19’s removal of match-day revenue and cash flow pulled the rug, extinction loomed large. In November, a home FA Cup first-round tie with Kingstonian was boycotted by fans and players; the Isthmian League side beat a group of youth-team teenagers 4-0 with more Macc fans outside the ground than in. And the points deductions piled up. Alkadhi, who is said to conduct his business affairs exclusively via WhatsApp, remained absent. “Amar Out” read the scoreboard after Macc’s 1-1 draw on Boxing Day with Grimsby, evidencing open rebellion behind the scenes.
Macclesfield’s demise, like that of Bury and with Wigan now also on the brink, spells out the difficulty of life in the shadows of United and City and amid the rising economies of scale of running even the smallest clubs in professional football. Sir Alex Ferguson, Rio Ferdinand and Wayne Rooney, whose brother John and cousin Tommy played for Macc, have been regular visitors to the Moss Rose but the stardust never quite rubbed off.
An average attendance of less than 2,000 was always among the lowest in the Football League, and the club’s two spells there have been of significant struggle against the tide, barring one promotion to the third tier under Sammy McIlroy that famously brought Manchester City to town in September 1998. Macclesfield have always walked a financial tightrope and been a misstep away from the brink.
The town of Macclesfield itself is, as the New Order drummer and Silkmen fan Stephen Morris put it, “a mill town that had lost the adjective ‘thriving’ somewhere along the way”. Its high street is pockmarked by boarded-up shops. The football club, like the old Majestic cinema and the many closed pubs on the London Road walk up to the Moss Rose, appears destined to become another lost community asset.
‘Where there is harmony, may we bring discord. Where there is truth, may we bring error. Where there is faith, may we bring doubt. And where there is hope, may we bring despair’
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Other Dodgy Owners on 14:41 - Jun 14 with 2105 views
EX-WATFORD CHAIRMAN BANNED INDEFINITELY FROM ENGLISH FOOTBALL
June 15 (Reuters) - Former Watford chairman Raffaele Riva has been banned from English football indefinitely after he admitted to breaching regulations over submitting a forged letter to the English Football League (EFL) in 2014.
PUBLISHED 15/06/2018 AT 04:21 GMT+1
An EFL disciplinary commission said the funding letter submitted during the club's change of ownership to Gino Pozzo was "not authentic". The EFL confirmed Riva would not be able to seek a review of the suspension until at least Nov. 2, 2026.
Riva has also been fined 50,000 pounds ($66,255) and must pay a further 65,000 pounds towards the costs of the EFL and the disciplinary commission hearing.
Watford were fined 4.3 million pounds by the EFL last August over the forged letter.
Watford have escaped a points deduction over a forged bank letter but have been fined £3.95 milllion plus £350,000 costs.
The letter, purporting to be from HSBC, was provided by Hornets Investments Ltd as proof of £7 million in funds that it needed to show as part of the takeover process of the club, but the EFL, which has imposed the fine, said it had been confirmed as a forgery.
The club pleaded guilty to the charges and the EFL said that it was satisfied that Gino Pozzo, the Watford owner, and the present directors were not aware that the letter had been forged.
Raffaele Riva, who resigned as Watford chairman after the scandal was revealed last year, has been charged by the EFL
‘Where there is harmony, may we bring discord. Where there is truth, may we bring error. Where there is faith, may we bring doubt. And where there is hope, may we bring despair’
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Other Dodgy Owners on 10:29 - Jun 18 with 2090 views
‘Where there is harmony, may we bring discord. Where there is truth, may we bring error. Where there is faith, may we bring doubt. And where there is hope, may we bring despair’
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Other Dodgy Owners on 10:42 - Jun 23 with 2049 views
There are so many more still within the system. The difficulty for these clubs is that there is no longer the money floating about to bail them out when the inevitable crash happens. Unfortunately the Bury and Macclesfield experience is awaiting more clubs big and small.
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Other Dodgy Owners on 17:46 - Jun 23 with 2041 views
No manager, not enough players: how Swindon Town were left to fall apart
The League Two club are in utter disarray three weeks before the new season with staff not having been paid in full
On Tuesday night, Swindon arrived at Hungerford Town with a squad containing five first-team players, a sobering reminder of the way the club has spectacularly nosedived since being crowned champions of League Two a little more than a year ago. With three weeks until the start of the new season, they are rudderless: without a manager, assistant manager, chief executive, director of football or a strength and conditioning coach. Worse still, the remaining players and staff are still awaiting June’s wages in full.
In February, the Swindon owner, Lee Power, who took temporary control of the team in 2015-16 after sacking Mark Cooper, said the club was on the brink of bankruptcy. At the centre of Swindon’s financial problems are a number of legal cases, one in the courts, one from the Football Association and now one from Swindon borough council. The council, which owns the County Ground, has not been paid rent since April last year and is seeking to recover a six-figure sum.
Meanwhile, the English Football League lists defaults in payments to HMRC and non-payment to football creditors among the reasons for Swindon’s transfer embargo.
Four people were tasked with managing the team last season, including John Sheridan, whose appointment was widely regarded as disastrous. Sheridan, critical of players and staff, lasted fewer than six months and for now the goalkeeping coach, Steve Mildenhall, is the de facto manager. The academy coach, Lee Peacock, the club’s former striker, is helping oversee first-team matters.
The start of pre-season was delayed and a squad featuring nine contracted first-team players is being supplemented with academy youngsters and trialists, one of whom last played in the ninth tier. Saturday’s friendly against Swansea City has been cancelled after a mutual agreement that the game would not benefit either party.
It is thought Swindon employees, as well as players whose contracts expired last month, received about 60% of their June pay on Wednesday and were told to expect the outstanding amount to be paid at the end of this month, when July wages are due.
Wages were paid a couple of days late during last season. It is thought money due to the club from the EFL was used to help pay and players’ staff for June. TrustSTFC, the supporters’ trust, is launching a hardship fund to help contribute towards unpaid staff wages.
Clem Morfuni, a minority shareholder who owns a 15% stake in Swindon’s holding company, Swinton Reds, has been trying to buy the club and has the backing of the trust. Morfuni, who owns the building services contractor Axis, is involved in a high court legal battle with Power over the ownership of the club. Morfuni’s application for approval to clear the EFL’s owners’ and directors’ test is thought to be progressing well.
Even the best-case scenario looks bleak. With 22 days until Swindon’s season begins at Scunthorpe they look set up to fail and, all the while, for players and staff communication has been nonexistent. In May, the defender Anthony Cheshire claimed he found out he was being released on Twitter.
“You’re always hearing rumours about things but no one knows what the truth is,” says one person who wishes to remain anonymous but has seen the club unravel from the inside. “It turns into Chinese whispers. Things get put into the WhatsApp group, everyone is asking ‘where did you hear that from?’ and it is just chaos. It is just not professional, that’s the nub of it.”
Swindon appointed the former Colchester manager John McGreal in May but he and his assistant, Rene Gilmartin, left within a month, citing their positions as untenable. Swindon signed the goalkeeper Jojo Wollacott and the defender Pierce Sweeney in June but the latter, whose two-year contract officially began at the start of this month, left by mutual consent 24 hours later and has since returned to Exeter.
Two days before McGreal’s departure, he sent an open letter to fans that detailed plans to sign six additional players to help push for promotion but acknowledged the club was in no position to do so “due to the ongoing court case regarding the ownership”. One prospective signing is even thought to have completed an in-house media interview under the impression he would be able to join but has since signed elsewhere.
The squad relegated from League One in April was unrecognisable from the one that got them there, with Eoin Doyle, Keshi Anderson, Kaiyne Woolery and Lloyd Isgrove among those to depart upon promotion under Richie Wellens, while the loanees Jerry Yates and Steven Benda stayed put at their parent clubs. Doyle, who scored 25 goals en route to promotion, turned down a one-year contract extension in favour of a three-year contract at Bolton, while a clutch of players agreed to stay on reduced terms. This week, last season’s player of the year, Akin Odimayo, joined Portsmouth on trial.
Those close to the club felt the writing was on the wall from the moment Wellens departed for Salford City in November. The exit of the popular assistant manager, Noel Hunt, was also considered a significant blow. The sale of winger Diallang Jaiyesimi six months into a three-year contract was equally galling.
Wellens galvanised a fractured club but former staff held longstanding concerns about the infrastructure behind the scenes. “We were promoted in spite of the way the club was being run, rather than because of it,” says another person at the club that season.
In League One and League Two more than 30% of club revenue is from gate receipts, but many staff and some players were placed on furlough when coronavirus hit during last season. Supporters have boycotted buying season tickets, one-off tickets or merchandise in a stand against Power’s ownership.
In April, the strength and conditioning coach, Jack Deaman, left the club without being replaced, so experienced first-team players moonlighted as coaches and led matchday warmups. Unsurprisingly, injuries started adding up.
“Opposition were laughing at us for taking our own warm-ups,” one person told the Guardian. “It was worse than Sunday League. Walking through the park the other day these guys were having cigarettes and beers, warming themselves up before a game, and that’s what it must have looked like.”
Before the final game of last season, by which point Swindon had already been relegated, players convened at the County Ground from 6.30am for a three-and-a-half-hour trip to Wigan for an early kick-off, digesting their pre-match meal — cereal and toast — on the bus journey north. The previous season, away trips that would take more than two hours resulted in an overnight stay but as the club cut its cloth that was increased to three hours last season.
“At times the place was such a shambles, you thought: ‘We deserve to get relegated for the way the club is being run.’”
‘Where there is harmony, may we bring discord. Where there is truth, may we bring error. Where there is faith, may we bring doubt. And where there is hope, may we bring despair’
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Other Dodgy Owners on 22:44 - Jul 28 with 1980 views
‘Where there is harmony, may we bring discord. Where there is truth, may we bring error. Where there is faith, may we bring doubt. And where there is hope, may we bring despair’
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Other Dodgy Owners on 19:44 - Aug 5 with 1934 views
Sounds like everyone's having fun over at Rochdale. Their Supporter's Trust have written to the EFL regarding homophobic comments made to the during a meeting with prospective new owners:
Trust contact EFL over comments
The Trust have contacted the EFL over homophobic, offensive and aggressive comments that were reportedly made towards the Club during an EFL meeting last week.
The following email has been sent to the EFL this morning:
It was reported last night at the Fans Forum last night that our prospective new owners were responsible for a number of comments during last week’s meeting with the EFL. From what was stated, these include:
- Calling the Rochdale AFC Board of Directors “Nancy boys”
- Said that the people of Rochdale were “small minded people”
- Expressed a desire to settle any dispute with a physical fight inside a boxing ring
It goes without saying that this has caused a great deal of concern within our fanbase. If these comments were said in the meeting, it would seem that their position is in a complete polar opposite to that of the EFL that has made a firm commitment to make “football welcoming for everyone” by embracing the LGBTQ+ community — something we at the Dale Trust are totally in support of. Furthermore, the boxing ring comments brings back dreadful memories football back in the 80’s that was blighted by hooliganism.
In light of these comments, we have a number of questions for the EFL that we would like answering as a result of these comments:
- Can you confirm that these comments were made in last week’s EFL meeting with Andy Curran and Darrel Rose?
- What action do you intend to take as a result of these comments?
- Will the EFL be taking these comments into account when coming to their decision whether Curran and Rose meet the criteria for the fit and proper person test?
- Is it not true that comments such as these completely contradict the diversity ethos demanded by all football governing bodies, and contravention by anyone, including anyone already with, or currently seeking approval for a controlling interest of any Club within the EFL, would automatically exclude them from such approval being granted?
As soon as we receive any reply from the EFL, we will update Supporters at the earliest opportunity.
The EFL have issued a statement on the Rochdale matter.
It looks like a textbook buck passing job to me:
EFL statement: Rochdale AFC
The EFL continues to work with Rochdale AFC, Morton House Mgt and First Form Construction Limited alongside a number of other individuals in relation to applications under the EFL’s Owners’ and Directors‘ Test.
Based on discussions to date, the EFL has reserved its position in respect of any matters arising out of the ongoing situation at the Club and will take the most appropriate action available to it under its Regulations.
Any allegations in relation to discriminatory comments are matters for the Football Association which can investigate any individual who is subject to the FA Rules at the time the comments were allegedly made.
The EFL will continue to work with the Club and relevant stakeholders as they seek to ensure a successful and viable long-term future for the Club and all those associated with it, particularly its players, staff, and supporters.
Oldham Athletic fans invade pitch during game and sit in centre circle to protest against owners
Oldham Athletic fans sat in the centre circle during their 3-0 home defeat in League Two against Barrow on Saturday.
Oldham Athletic players were forced to exit the pitch during their latest home game as fans invaded the pitch and sat in the centre circle.
Fans are unhappy at the ownership of Abdallah Lemsagam, and have staged protests in the last four home games with post-match pitch invasions. In the Carabao Cup win over Accrington last month, fans caused a short stoppage to the game by throwing tennis balls onto the pitch.
Latics have started the season in poor form, losing their first four games to sit bottom of the football league. A win over Sutton last week lifted them off the foot of the table, but on Saturday they were beaten 3-0 by Barrow at Boundary Park.
And that performance saw fans step up their protests, as a number of supporters invaded the pitch on the 65th minute of the clash with Barrow after the third goal went in.
Fans ran towards the centre circle, with some sitting down, prompting the referee to take the players off the field.
The supporters were removed and the game resumed, with Barrow taking the three points. A heavy police presence was seen after the mid-game protest, preventing a full-time invasion for a fifth home game in succession.
This week, two Oldham supporters group met with owner Lemsagam, with one, Push The Boundary, describing the relationship between him and the fans as 'untenable'. They intend to stage more protests to secure a change of ownership.
Oldham are 23rd in League Two after the result, with bottom-placed Sutton having two games in hand.
‘Where there is harmony, may we bring discord. Where there is truth, may we bring error. Where there is faith, may we bring doubt. And where there is hope, may we bring despair’
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Other Dodgy Owners on 10:41 - Sep 5 with 1842 views
‘Where there is harmony, may we bring discord. Where there is truth, may we bring error. Where there is faith, may we bring doubt. And where there is hope, may we bring despair’
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Other Dodgy Owners on 21:20 - Sep 15 with 1807 views
‘Where there is harmony, may we bring discord. Where there is truth, may we bring error. Where there is faith, may we bring doubt. And where there is hope, may we bring despair’
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Other Dodgy Owners on 10:09 - Oct 1 with 1781 views
‘Where there is harmony, may we bring discord. Where there is truth, may we bring error. Where there is faith, may we bring doubt. And where there is hope, may we bring despair’
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Other Dodgy Owners on 17:29 - Oct 10 with 1737 views
This type of issue is now prevalent in most leagues up and down football pyramid. From the National league to the Premiership there are at least nine clubs as suggested from local and national press struggling from poor ownership and or malpractice.
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Other Dodgy Owners on 20:39 - Oct 10 with 1732 views
‘Where there is harmony, may we bring discord. Where there is truth, may we bring error. Where there is faith, may we bring doubt. And where there is hope, may we bring despair’
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Other Dodgy Owners on 12:14 - Nov 3 with 1665 views
‘We never got that money’: the inside story of Bury’s road to financial ruin
We show how loans, a car park and a collapsed business helped drive Bury to the brink as a winding-up petition is adjourned
Bury’s historic 6-0 win in the 1903 FA Cup final was remembered last month when Manchester City eviscerated Watford by the same score, a jolting reminder of the gulf between these neighbouring clubs now, and what they represent about English football and modern Britain. While City have become a vehicle for Abu Dhabi oil wealth to harness the Premier League’s global power, Bury are in financial ruins, at the centre of a collapsed business which built student flats with fringe and fragile borrowings.
A winding-up petition against the club led by HMRC for unpaid tax was adjourned for a further six weeks on Wednesday, to allow time for a settlement of its debts or a sale. The owner, Steve Dale, who has complained since his takeover about the club’s dire finances, says he has paid the players to the end of March and half of April, intends to pay the rest of April’s wages this week, is planning some staff redundancies and is still bullishly vowing to avoid administration.
Dale bought the club for £1 in December from Stewart Day, a property developer who owned Bury from 2013, and subsidised the club with loans from his company, Mederco, which is now in administration.
Day told the Guardian that his property businesses were blown over by a national economic storm: high-street banks would not lend to a small company such as his, he said, so his financing relied heavily on Lendy, a “peer-to-peer” crowdfunding-type operation which is itself in administration and under investigation by the Financial Conduct Authority. Brexit chaos has further stalled bank investment and is deterring European students from coming to English universities, he said, so affecting demand for the newly built accommodation. The need since the Grenfell Tower fire to change the cladding on multi-storey buildings led to major problems for two of Day’s near-completed blocks in Huddersfield.
Gigg Lane, Bury’s home since 1885, has a mortgage on it for loans taken out during Day’s period of ownership, from a company called Capital Bridging Finance Solutions (“Capital”), based in Crosby. It has itself mortgaged the ground to a company registered in Malta, whose lenders in turn are eight companies registered in the British Virgin Islands. Dale says the loans on Gigg Lane now total £3.7m, accruing interest at almost £1,500 per day.
Amid the financial debris lies extraordinary detail about how these loans were arranged. The Guardian understands that in the contracts, Capital and Bury agreed that 40% of the money being borrowed would never come to the club. Instead, Capital paid it to an unnamed third party, as an “introduction fee”. Bury still owe in full the initial £1.6m borrowed in October 2017, and must continue to pay interest on it, but £640,000 did not go to the club; Capital paid it out as an introduction fee. A subsequent loan in February 2018, for £722,800, is understood also to have involved a 40% fee paid to a third party — £289,120.
The Guardian asked the director of Capital, Paul Dalton, who the third party was, why the fee was so high, and who the lenders were behind the BVI companies, but Dalton did not reply. Day said the 40% fees paid by Capital were in return for the loans being made, and it was “swings and roundabouts” because it enabled the interest rate to be low, at 7.5%.
“We never got that money,” he confirmed, “it was paid to people who introduced the money to Capital’s fund, like a commission — but then we had the 7.5% interest rate over five years, which was relatively cheap.”
Day took over Bury in May 2013 and at the time was seeking in his businesses to exploit the university building boom that followed the expansion of student loans and introduction of £9,000 annual fees. He came to rely heavily on Lendy, whose model — like other “peer-to-peer” lending — is to raise money for loans from multiple investors. Lendy began to suffer defaults, was put into special measures by the FCA in November 2018, and into administration in May with loans of £150m from 24,000 investors. Since Day left the club, several of his Mederco companies, building student blocks in Bradford, Huddersfield, Glasgow and Cardiff, have gone into administration owing tens of millions of pounds.
Day’s main Mederco company loaned £4.2m to Bury — to fund ongoing losses, he said — and investors, who have not seen rent they were promised, have called for it to be repaid. Mederco creditors also include people who bought car park spaces at Gigg Lane for £9,995 each, which were sold by Day and his co-director at Bury, Glenn Thomas, as “a strong investment proposition”, promising 9% net yield from annual rents for 24 years. Day said their idea was to develop facilities and host events, or build a new stadium, but the reality never rose to tally with their ambition.
Hundreds of people have lost money on student units they bought in blocks which have not been completed. Marcus Levine, a Leeds-based artist and investor in a Huddersfield scheme, said fellow investors include one terminally ill man, and another who invested the lump sum he received on early retirement. Another, Muhammad Rafiq, said he had invested his life savings of £30,000: “I have worked since I was 16, and I followed my parents’ advice to put my money into safe investments like property,” he said. “I cannot believe we stand to lose everything, because we are not secured.”
Rafiq’s MP, Sir David Amess, has made representations to the business secretary, Greg Clarke, about the Mederco collapses. Some investors have called for a Serious Fraud Office investigation into how the schemes were marketed and where the money went. Day, though, insists he has done nothing wrong and was a victim himself, principally of Lendy’s collapse.
“The last few months have been a nightmare,” he said. “I’m being highlighted because I owned a football club, but there are many developers in the same situation; you see part-built buildings everywhere. I’ve never wanted to lose anybody’s money or rip anybody off.”
Dale has consistently said the problems he inherited from Day were worse than discovered during his due diligence — Day strengthened the squad last summer and appointed Ryan Lowe as the manager, and Bury proceeded to achieve promotion from League Two with a team they literally now cannot afford to pay. But Dale has not won friends in Bury with his delays to paying staff, promise of redundancies, confrontational club statements, and his business track record selling the assets of companies in financial trouble. A public meeting addressed by James Frith, the MP for Bury North, resolved recently to support Capital putting the club into administration, thereby taking it out of Dale’s control. On Wednesday Frith tweeted his support for the adjournment, having said he had been in touch with two parties interested in buying the club, and called on Dale to sell.
Dominic Martinez, who with a small group of supporters has tried to sound the alarm for years about Bury’s financial state, says it is distressing to see them in such straits again.
“This is a cautionary tale, for Bury and other smaller clubs,” he said. “We can’t live beyond our means and rely on some benefactor to fund it; we are seeing the risks again now.”
Bury plunged into administration in 2002, as did many other Football League clubs, and donors worldwide gave money in return for having their names sentimentally affixed to the backs of seats. The name tags have long since faded at Gigg Lane, and perhaps the lessons too, and now the buckets are being rattled all over again.
‘Where there is harmony, may we bring discord. Where there is truth, may we bring error. Where there is faith, may we bring doubt. And where there is hope, may we bring despair’
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