It strikes me that there is a fine line between optimism and
delusion. The optimist may expect a positive outcome given favourable
conditions whereas someone who is deluded may expect a positive outcome despite
markedly unfavourable conditions. Sometimes it is difficult to tell whether
football supporters are optimists or are deluded; fans of Hereford United and
Salisbury City must have trodden that line a great deal in recent months.
On the final day of 2013-14 Conference Premier season[1]
Hereford United won 2-1 at Aldershot to finish one place outside the relegation
spots and the seven hundred or so Bulls fans who made the journey to Hampshire
breathed a collective sigh of relief. The preceding months had been fraught as
the club's very existence was in doubt. In December last year, struggling to
pay their wage bill and unable to meet their latest PAYE payment to Revenue and
Customs, Hereford appealed for help from fans to raise £35,000. This followed
the threat of administration which the club had fought off during the previous
season. In January the club announced that a winding up order had been made
against the club by HMRC for a debt of £36,500 despite the fact that the club
had raised £20,000 through donations and share sales and that the directors had
put in a further £35,000. Following these events fans naturally hoped for a
relatively calm summer in which the club, having assured its playing position
in the highest level of English non-League football, could put itself on an even
keel. In June the club were taken over by London businessman Tommy Agombar but
the club's perilous financial position saw them expelled by the Conference and
relegated to the Southern League.
To describe the events that engulfed the Edgar Street club in
the summer months would take more room than this blog allows, but suffice it to
say that the efforts to avert the financial crisis that arose in December last
year were the equivalent of a sticking
plaster being applied to a broken leg. Despite promises that creditors had
been, or would be, paid it appears that some cheques are still in the post.
Creditors included ex-manager Martin Foyle who issued a winding up petition
against the club, while groundsman Ian Pritchard walked out over unpaid wages
and alleged that back in December he had been instructed to flood the pitch to
cause a postponement. On the football front teams representing the club played
two matches on the same day. One was a mysterious friendly behind closed doors
in Yorkshire, against Turkish club Besiktas, which was lost 6-0 while a
Hereford United Supporters Team were beaten 6-2 by Ledbury Town, with over 600
Bulls fans present.
The local council initially refused to issue a safety
certificate for the ground and when they eventually did it was with a capacity
reduced to 1,000 spectators. Hereford's first Southern League game resulted in
a 2-0 home defeat to St Neots Town with 568 in the ground and an estimated 250
outside protesting about the club's management. The protestors got their wish
just four days later (well, part of it anyway) when it was confirmed that Mr
Agombar had failed the FA's fit and proper persons test and would have to walk
away from the club. Still, at least the Hereford fans had a game to protest at,
unlike Salisbury City's fans.
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| Hereford supporters protest about their club's new owners |
While Hereford were narrowly avoiding a relegation place
last season, Salisbury City finished in mid-table but the fun (if that is an appropriate term)
began in early June when it was first revealed that the club had a new owner,
Otail Touzar, and that they had signed a Saudi Prince, Prince Khalid Bin Bader
Alsaud. Touzar was described as a wealthy Moroccan businessman, although it
appears that the majority of his wealth was in his imagination. Prince Khalid
Bin Bader Alsaud meanwhile was not, as some might have thought, signing from a glamorous
side in Europe or a club in Saudi Arabia but from the slightly less thrilling
surroundings of Bromley Reserves, except that Salisbury's transfer embargo put
the kibosh on the deal.
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| Otail Touzar (second right) is unveiled as the new owner of Salisbury City. They could at least have taken the price tag off the shirt! |
It probably came as no surprise to anyone that things began
to unravel almost immediately. The Conference relegated Salisbury to the South
division for financial irregularities, and this just four years after the
Conference had expelled them altogether for similar reasons. Equally it can
have come as little surprise when City were later expelled from the Conference
completely due to their failure to pay their football creditors. The supposed
takeover of the club by a consortium left the actual ownership of the club in
some dispute; both the consortium and Otail Touzar claimed ownership and both
claimed that they had appealed against the club's expulsion from the
Conference. The FA heard an appeal from Touzar, although apparently those who
dispute his ownership tried to attend as well, being described by Touzar as
" a gang of idiots that was barking outside the FA offices." I say
that the FA heard an appeal from Touzar, but in fact he did not attend the
appeal meeting in person and attempts by the FA to conduct a conference call
with him failed when the connection was cut within a minute or so; the appeal
was dismissed[2].
The people who dispute Touzar's ownership of the club cannot have endeared
themselves to either the Conference or the FA, calling them "idiots"
and describing the fit and proper persons test[3]
as "pathetic and farcical", language hardly likely to persuade the
Conference to re-admit them, particularly since it was they who were so taken
in by Touzar, not the Conference, not the FA.
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| The only website in the world that contains no punctuation whatever. |
So with the season in full swing, Salisbury City have no
league in which to play, although the Wessex League have offered them some
degree of hope, provided that issues of ownership are resolved soon, which
seems unlikely.
At Conference level, one division below the Holy Grail of
the Football League, the game is an uneasy mixture of small and large clubs,
some of whom seem to have no idea into which category they fit. There are the
small clubs like Braintree Town, who know that they are a relatively small club
and cut their cloth accordingly. There are the large clubs like Bristol Rovers,
recently relegated from the Football League or Wrexham or Barnet who all may
realistically harbour ambitions to return to League Two. Then there are clubs
who live like a man living in a penthouse and driving a Ferrari while earning
the minimum wage, clubs who go full-time and pay top dollar to their players
while attracting tiny attendances. Unless they realise their dream of League
football these clubs inevitably implode when the money runs out, and it always
does run out sooner or later. Sadly the game is littered with clubs who lived
beyond their means and ultimately paid the price.
The Premier League may be awash with foreign owners prepared
to sink millions into a football club with the reasonable expectation that this
will buy them success on the pitch, but anyone approaching a non-League team
with promises to inject a King's ransom into the club, to recruit a top manager
and top class players should be treated with the utmost suspicion. There's an
old saying that if it seems too good to be true it probably is. Sadly, while
the optimist might hope something is true but reject it in the cold light of
day, the delusional will believe in spite of the evidence.
In the case of these two clubs it seems that the optimists
are to be found in Hereford and the deluded in Salisbury.
[1] In 2013-14 the Conference was sponsored by Skrill;
this season it is sponsored by Vanarama. To avoid confusion I have referred to
it throughout as simply the Conference.
[2] See
http://www.thefa.com/news/governance/2014/aug/salisbury-city-appeal-dismissed
for the full reasons.
[3] See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fit_and_proper_person_test
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