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erence share this share on facebook opens in new window facebook share on x opens in new window x share on reddit opens in new window reddit like loading posted in insolvency investors ownership stadium uncategorized tagged insolvency investors ownership stadium 2 comments the joy that was and may yet again be the abbey stadium posted by john beech on january 18 2011 perhaps not the obvious stadium to refer to as a joy but it has a special place in my personal history my very first football related memory is of being driven along the newmarket road as a child aged about 4 years and suddenly catching sight of this enticing building yes it was oddly enticing frequent family visits to my grandmother s in cambridge had no doubt made me blasé about the wonders of mediaeval architecture here though was a truly intriguing building what could be its purpose i should perhaps mention that my earliest years were spent in the rural surrey hampshire borders and to be honest haslemere recreation ground just didn t cut it this must have been in the very early fifties who knows perhaps just even in the abbey united era certainly they still played in the eastern counties league and it was to be roughly twenty years before they followed in the path of headington united now known as oxford united to the heights of the football league in 1970 replacing bradford park avenue in 1992 they made it to 5th place in what is now the championship but the last decade has been less kind to the club one strength of the club was owning their stadium that is until the fall to the conference in 2005 alongside going into administration brought a not untypical sell and lease back scenario for the abbey 1 the sale being to bideawhile a company owned by one of the club s directors in a less typical dimension to this ten years ago the fans formed a supporters trust cambridge fans united 2 and by 2003 the trust had raised 100 000 and was the club s third largest shareholder 3 in april 2005 the club on the strength of a proposed loan from dr johnny hon a club director made an offer of 2 2m to buy the abbey back again but bideawhile whose director john howard was still vice chairman of the club refused the offer bideawhile had bought the ground for 1 92m at the end of the previous november incidentally as cambridge fans united director brian attmore said at the time this is a kick in the teeth for all our supporters it puts united s future in the real jeopardy it is for the whole board to determine what is right for the club and not for one individual with his own commercial agenda this is precisely the conflict of interest we feared would happen 4 bideawhile ignored a petition signed by 3 000 fans 5 stating that they had long term plans to help the u s relocate to a new community stadium ah relocation long term well 13 days later bideawhile what an ironic name announced that football will be played at abbey stadium for 50 years unless the directors and shareholders feel the best thing is to relocate the ground is safe in the short term no matter what people may think 6 less than a week later the club filed for administration 7 dr johnny hon had resigned as a director 8 a fortnight before by november the club had managed to agree a cva but not without the involvement of then sports minister richard caborn 8 the following month there was talk of a possible groundshare and even merger with cambridge city 9 who had managed to climb as high as the conference south in 2004 but most would agree were the junior of the two sides perhaps a bristol rovers to a bristol city while no doubt this would have been anathema to both sets of fans it would have made good economic sense i ve advocated thinking the unthinkable before and cambridge is in my opinion better served by one bigger rather than two smaller clubs or perhaps that should by then be three histon were to win the southern league that season and who as i write are bottom of the conference national august 2006 saw some shakedowns in the board room 10 11 12 the new chairman lee power said the club would look at another attempt to buy the ground back from bideawhile 13 the pressure of having to pay rent was beginning to tell and by december the club was turning to its directors who were guarantors 14 in march a new us investor appeared on the scene 15 early in 2009 there was another flurry of activity with board room appointments 16 and 17 stability remained the mantra if not the reality finances remained a strain and in july manager gary brabin left 18 george rolls by then the chairman explained there have been disagreements between gary and myself which have festered over the summer gary has pressed the issue to sign more players when we can t brabin s successor martin ling lasted roughly a week having signed a three year contract 19 the club citing irreconcilable differences between martin ling and chairman george rolls the next day rolls quit the club 20 as did vice chairman terry baker rolls declared lots of fans won t want to hear this but i m sure i ll be back one day owning the club i made a lot of bad decisions but it hasn t put me off yes it wasn t good business and i had no other option but to stand down i ve got no regrets just happy memories i m not going to cry over anything i ll be back there 21 i suspect most fans would hope not martin ling would presumably hope not he was promptly reappointed manager 22 rolls meanwhile was firing off as if in an exit interview warning of a 900 000 shortfall in revenues they have to start living within their means it s a sad day for me if the club wants to keep gambling all the time i kept forewarning the fans cuts would have to take place if it meant upsetting managers along the way because they were over budget and trying to sign people i ll take that i interfered but i m sure the fans would rather have me interfere than six months time the club go into administration 23 in a surprise turn of events well to me at least this time last year who should come on board at the abbey stadium but gareth baldwin late of histon 24 showing a multiplicity of till i die approaches is of course the norm for players but such a switch at board level between two local rivals is somewhat rarer in this case it turns out he admitted a lifelong love of united 25 gosh he must have been tortured during his time at histon shortly his wife became secretary at cambridge united a role she had previously held at where else histon 26 a bombshell at the end of february was the news that bideawhile remember the company owned by united s then vice chairman john howard who had bought the stadium for 1 92m in december 2004 had sold the ground to grosvenor estates for wait for it 3 5m 27 and no that s not a typo be warned there s a name to watch out for if appointed as a director in a club near you j o h n h o w a r d the supporters trust were to be fair given the opportunity to match the 3 5m bid in a time frame of er 18 days 28 john howard had finally stepped down at the request of the rest of the board because of his blatant conflict of interests in august 2006 29 sadly if not unsurprisingly they failed to manage that but they did raise over 1m in that very short period 30 definitely a new paragraph just to give you time to let that sink in that brings us more or less up to date save for the news at the beginning of this month that cambridge united itself is up for sale 31 baldwin has expressed an interest in buying the club 32 as have those mythical beasties forgive my cynicism but i am a pompey fan foreign investors 33 last night cambridge fans united decided they too would seek to buy the club my source for this is twitter i ll post a link in comments once the minutes of the meeting are online present at the meeting was kevin rye of supporters direct he offered me the following thoughts cambridge united fans need to recognise that they re at something of a crossroads to my mind they have three choices they could either take the chance with the same tired model of ownership where a small group of directors including cfu continue to keep the ship afloat every year but basically manage long term decline this hasn t worked already despite the best efforts of those concerned or they could wait for the mythical white knight to appear the less said about that the better the final and only real option left on the table is community and supporter ownership yes it seems scary to some people but the chance to create a vibrant outward looking club harnessing the energies talent collective wisdom and finances of the several thousand cufc fans out there is surely too good an opportunity to turn down cambridge fans united certainly are in with a chance they have existed for ten years and have recently raised 1m at very short notice may joy yet again be found at the abbey stadium food for thought there for plymouth argyle fans and indeed for fans at any club that hasn t yet established a supporters trust plymouth fans have now done so 34 i appreciate and good luck to the argyle fans trust but how different their position might have been with ten year s experience behind them share this share on facebook opens in new window facebook share on x opens in new window x share on reddit opens in new window reddit like loading posted in assets benefactors insolvency investors ownership stadium trusts tagged assets benefactors insolvency investors ownership stadium supporters trust 6 comments lessons from plymouth posted by john beech on january 3 2011 the car crash that plymouth argyle is on the verge of turning into is a strange case yet many a club might well think that there but for the grace of god go they at the beginning of the nineties dan mccauley had become chairman with his predecessor peter bloom becoming vice chairman while the club did not have a particularly stable decade on the pitch three relegations in eight years seven managers the club was run reasonably stably if unsustainably on a traditional benefactor model shortly before mccauley finally stood down in 2001 debts were reported to be 2 7m with 1 8m owed to mccauley s rotolok holdings he was also advocating a new stadium the capacity of which was wound in from 23 000 to 18 000 but with scope to increase capacity as mccauley explained an 18 000 all seater stadium should be sufficient for us in the short term but it s important to have flexibility in the design to cater for success when plymouth argyle move up through the leagues sufficient is an odd choice of word average seasonal attendances throughout the decade had peaked at just over 9 000 in 1994 but had fallen to around the 5 300 mark the sort of figure mccauley was speaking of had not been seen at home park on a regular basis since the fifties 1 reaching the age of 65 in 2001 mccauley found buyers he felt would be good for the club the new board was led by local businessmen paul stapleton and peter jones and included the local mp michael foot and two london based businessmen nick warren and phil gill all pilgrim fans sources for the above paragraphs are newspapers mainly the western daily herald and are unavailable on the internet under the new regime stadium redevelopment proceeded but hit a snag when the council declined to carry on funding it 2 having already spent 2 6m it felt that it was difficult to justify further expenditure argyle vice chairman peter jones rather ungraciously argued people should not forget the council are the freeholder of the stadium given the fact that a revamped stadium will bring in more people more income and more rent they should be prepared to put in a proportion of the 5m we need from a business perspective the early years of the noughties were a success in 2004 they announced a profit for the third year running 3 and by 2005 the seasonal average attendance had reached almost 16 500 following a return to tier 2 for the first time since 1992 the ground was purchased from the council in december for 2 7m 4 how then did things start to go wrong the management of players proved problematic with continuing changes in who was manager the club managed to maintain their status in the championship until last summer that is but the fans started to drift away attendances falling to just over the 10 000 mark on average in february 2008 the club recorded a record annual loss of 715 000 5 not only were revenues down but the club had locked itself into some rather expensive player contracts the wages revenues ratio which in 2001 02 had been at a very healthy 43 1 had by 2007 08 risen to a rather unhealthy 74 4 in april 2008 the club announced a surprise new investor japan s k k shonan management corporation headed by yasuaki kagami who joined the argyle board 6 argyle chairman paul stapleton said we are excited about the future possible revenue streams from the far east in particular and expanding the horizons of plymouth argyle while this agreement has only just been concluded it demonstrates the considerable appeal that plymouth argyle and our region has for companies with a global reach i suspect that few outside plymouth shared this optimism japanese involvement increased when yasuhiko okudera was appointed argyle s president 7 and there was talk of japanese players coming to home park 8 by the summer of 2008 things were beginning to crumble the transfer budget was reported as overspent 9 by march 2009 non playing jobs were at risk 10 by the summer of that year there was talk of not only further investment from japan but also of a takeover 11 phill gill sold his shares to kagami 12 and by july kagami held 38 of the shares and his colleagues sir roy gardner and keith todd joined the board with holdings of 13 the trio thus holding a small majority the appearance of gardner in particular a former chairman of manchester united raised hopes for some stabilisation paul stapleton said of gardner he s going to bring a no nonsense common sense approach and a business attitude to everything we do 13 the challenge was certainly there though they had for example inherited a squad of over 30 players 14 there was to be no magic wand in december that year the club was placed under a transfer embargo 15 for what the club dismissed as historic debts and kagami rode to the rescue with a loan sic of 1 5m 16 kagami was meantime being sued for 84 000 by former director gill 17 2010 opened badly with the first of a series of winding up petitions from hmrc 18 in march there was the announcement that the club was to sell off the family silverware the only recently acquired home park 19 a new world was heralded nevertheless 20 involving a 46 000 2018 world cup stadium rather than repeat my thoughts on this see a posting i made at the time called are we going stark stadium bonkers the year s financial figures which featured a loss of 2 9m were described by gardner with the kind of understatement that football club chairmen specialise in as disappointing 21 the relegation to league 1 was...
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