The latest skirmish involving the world’s oldest professional football club came this week when Notts County Football Club Ltd appeared at number 117 in a list of 197 companies scheduled to be wound up in the high court.
Revenue & Customs, which is keener these days on football clubs paying their taxes on time, had issued a second petition in 12 months to put into liquidation the club formed 154 years ago this month at the George Hotel in Nottingham.
The court deadline, after a previous HMRC petition was fended off in May, appeared to prompt the club’s owner, Ray Trew, to sell, thereby ending a fraught six years since he bought it.
The Nottingham businessman Alan Hardy, who owns an interiors company, Paragon, agreed to take over the club for a price said to have come down to £3.5m, which includes a commitment to pay HMRC and other accumulated debts. Hardy, who said he was delighted, takes over a club one point above the League Two relegation zone, whose team were described as a charity case by the manager, John Sheridan, after losing 2-0 to Peterborough United in the FA Cup on Tuesday.
Trew, an accountant whose wife, Aileen, was also involved during these last years when the club has struggled and crowds have dwindled, said in the statement: “I have always given my all to the betterment of the world’s oldest football league club and whilst things haven’t always gone as I would have liked, I have enjoyed some incredibly memorable moments.”
In February 2010, Trew picked up the club with its priceless heritage and tidy Meadow Lane ground for £1, after Munto Finance, a firm that claimed to be backed by Middle East fortunes, turned out to be a notorious grand mirage. Notts County had splashed out immediately on signing Sven-Goran Eriksson as the director of football, Sol Campbell, Kasper Schmeichel and other players far above the club’s station, before the Munto veil lifted to reveal only Russell King, a businessman linked to a collapsed company, Belgravia.
The supporters’ trust, which had taken ownership of Notts County after another previous episode of financial crisis, had signed the club over to Munto on the basis of an apparent bank guarantee, which proved worthless, and promised pots of non-existent cash.
Eriksson walked away with two months’ money, complaining he had been duped, Schmeichel accepted a settlement and left, initially for Leeds, before, in 2011, moving to Leicester, with whom he won the Premier League last season. Trew, taking on debt and other huge wage commitments signed on the basis of Munto’s boasts, did see Notts County through to promotion as League Two champions that season, and to the maintenance of League One status for five seasons, before they were relegated last year.
While gratitude is due to him for saving the club from the Munto embarrassments, an air of misery and frustration descended on Meadow Lane as the club finished 17th in League Two last season. Trew has agreed the sale to Hardy after a grim run of six straight league defeats, including a 2-0 home defeat by Wycombe Wanderers on 10 December played in front of 3,680 souls.
Rancour from supporters on forums and social media has been stirred by Trew’s appointments of 11 managers in the six years since Eriksson walked away and Steve Cotterill initially took the job. Sheridan, appointed in May, is the third manager this year.
The club’s most recent accounts, for the year to 30 June 2015 declared accumulated losses of £14m, with Trew having written off £2m that he loaned the club by converting it to shares. The auditors noted the club was able to “continue in operational existence as a going concern” only with loans “from various sources”, including Trew.
Hardy, who owns and has refurbished the Nottinghamshire golf and country club, made his interest known during months of rumour about overseas buyers, but declined to pay a higher asking price until the deal agreed at the doors of the winding-up court this week.
David Hindley, the chair of the supporters’ trust before his successors took the decision to sign the club over to Munto, said it was a massive relief the sale to Hardy has been announced. “Ray Trew did save the club by taking on the debts from Munto Finance in 2010 but more recently this has been a pretty miserable time supporting the Pies,” Hindley said. “We must hope Alan Hardy brings sound vision and decisions to the club, can rebuild bridges, and be able to run the club sustainably.”
In recent times, Notts County have skidded into trouble when striving for imagined top-flight status or glory, which has never much featured in the club’s story through all eras. Notts County, who gave an original black and white kit to Juventus in their early days, embody a different core of football history: of endurance, survival and remarkable longevity. Everybody involved will hope from this moment on, no more winding-up petitions find their way down Meadow Lane.
