On a bleak night last November, the Northampton Town manager, Chris Wilder, stood pitch-side at Meadow Lane preparing for a post-match interview. His League Two side had just beaten Notts County but he could scarcely have looked less interested in, or pleased with, the result. When the BBC’s reporter from Radio Northampton inquired about the game, it quickly became clear he was quizzing a man with more important matters on his mind. “I’ll talk a little about football,” Wilder said. “And then I’ll talk a little bit more about other things.”
Other things. Important things. By the standards of the post-match blandishments to which football fans have become accustomed since the departure of José Mourinho, what followed was extraordinary. The 48-year-old from Sheffield embarked on a measured but impassioned 10-minute soliloquy during which he addressed the various financial horrors that were being visited on his club. He was not being paid. His staff were not being paid. The Cobblers were facing imminent oblivion as the subject of a winding-up order for an unpaid tax bill of £166,000.
Back home at Sixfields, the skeletal beginnings of what was supposed to be a new East Stand stood as a constant reminder of the £10.25m the club owed the borough council. Loaned the money for ground improvements, very little of it had been spent on refurbishment and the rest was missing. The one silver lining in this dark cloud? An offer from Wilder’s former chairman at Oxford United, Kelvin Thomas, who was willing to purchase the controlling stake of the Northampton chief executive chairman, David Cardoza.
“I can’t stand looking at that stand and I imagine all the supporters and the staff are the same,” said Wilder, of the barely-begun white elephant that had become a depressing symbol of a club mired in crisis. “I’ve not said anything because I’ve gone along with it and I’ve trusted that things would be looked after. What’s happened is an absolute shambles, a complete shambles and there’s [Thomas] who wants to take it forward. I just do not understand what is going on at this football club because it’s tearing us all apart. It can’t go on forever. This club needs the investment.”
Wilder’s courageous entreaty was heard around the country less than five months ago and a lot has happened in the interim. Off the field, Thomas took over the club on the understanding that its debt will be wiped out in exchange for the council acquiring land around Sixfields for development, while Cardoza has been arrested and released on bail by police investigating “alleged financial irregularities” in relation to the £10.25m loan. The outstanding tax bill has also been settled, while building work has resumed on the East Stand, which is being used but not yet finished.
It has been needed as the most implausible plot-line in an otherwise grim chapter in Northampton’s history has been the manner in which Wilder and his players somehow managed to ignore the off-field hoopla for which their club had been making headlines to secure promotion to League One with five games of the season to spare.
Last weekend’s draw against Bristol Rovers ensured Northampton became the first Football League club to win promotion this season, prompting scenes of delirium among loyal fans who, as recently as five months ago, were rattling buckets in an attempt to raise spare change for a club that owed the kind of sums you just do not find down the back of sofas. On Saturday, they were crowned champions with four games to go, drawing at Exeter while rivals slipped up.
“It’s all about putting smiles on the faces of the supporters, especially after the season we’ve had,” said a champagne-drenched Wilder last weekend. “It’s their club, I’ve always said that and we are there to look after it and do our best as employees. I’ve never gone along with the notion that players just come along and pick their money up and they move on, because you’ve seen the scenes at the end … of what we’ve tried to do by connecting with the supporters and them backing us in numbers right the way through. So we’re here to do our best and try to put out a team they can be proud of.”
Having seen their team secure promotion at a canter in the face of almost unbearable distraction, Northampton’s supporters have every right to be proud of their players but it is almost certainly their manager who deserves most plaudits for the November rallying cry that galvanised and united those with the best interests of the club at heart. Whether their manager, who has been linked with Bolton Wanderers, will be part of that future remains to be seen, but if he walks away Cobblers fans will remember him fondly. They may also ponder the fact the stand he used to hate looking at will soon be finished and in need of a name.
