Fan action fails to lift Bournemouth's gloom

Supporters' role in running 'community club' has not eased financial problems as pawning half-built stadium is mooted

A detail rather lost during the recent deliberations by the Ipswich Town midfielder Matt Holland about whether to accept the pay packet on offer from Aston Villa and uproot his young family to Birmingham was how desperately the fans of another club, AFC Bournemouth, were willing him to go. The Cherries, hailed as a groundbreaking "community club" when dragged out of a £5m receivership in 1997, are, five years on, back in a financial hole of about the same depth.

Having decided last year to leave their dilapidated Dean Court home and to build three sides of a new stadium, without sufficient finance firmly in place, they ran out of money. The builders, Barr, downed tools with the Fitness First Stadium unfinished, including conference and banqueting rooms designed to generate cash for the club.

In July, supporters staged a walkout during a pre-season friendly against Crystal Palace in protest at the then chairman Tony Swaisland's proposal to sell and lease back the new ground. That would have meant selling the ground to a property investment company, London and Henley, for around £4m, and renting it back for £360,000 a year. The idea, it is fair to say, was not resoundingly popular, and three weeks ago Swaisland, a former Brentford chairman, resigned, to be succeeded by Peter Philips, a long-standing Bournemouth fan. He has so far received pledges of £500,000 towards a planned share issue which he hopes will stave off the Doomsday prospect of the sale and leaseback.

As for Holland, he made his name in Bournemouth's midfield after signing on a free from West Ham in 1995. The £800,000 the club received from Ipswich in 1997 was then a vital boost to their recovery from receivership. A sell-on clause included in the transfer means Bournemouth are due 25 per cent of any fee Ipswich receive above £800,000 when they sell him. The mooted £4.5m move to Villa dangled the prospect of £900,000 for Bournemouth, which could have wiped out any sale and leaseback talk. But Holland agonised, then decided to stay at Portman Road, and Bournemouth returned to study the abyss. This week Mel Machin, the former Bournemouth manager who signed Holland, retired as director of football, after what he described as a "black year", which last season culminated in relegation to the Third Division.

Philips, the new chairman, is frank about the club's predicament, but determined to see a sound future: "We need to raise money via the share issue if we are to avoid the sale and leaseback. The response has been superb. We need to get Barr back in, finish the stadium, and generate revenue. Our creditors have been remarkably patient."

Barr are owed at least £1.2m if the three sides are to be finished. Lloyds Bank, whose £2.3m debt put the club in receivership five years ago, are still owed £650,000. Bournemouth Council gave a £250,000 grant towards the new ground but are owed the same amount, provided as a loan. The Football Foundation, football's charity funded by the Premier League, Football Association and public money, paid a grant of £2.75m, but a £250,000 loan advance is outstanding. The Foundation will have to give permission for any sale deal, which it is considering, but there is understood to be some dissatisfaction with the idea of selling the ground so soon after the club were given such a hefty grant.

Swaisland is himself owed £300,000 in loans, and £1.4m is owed to a businessman, Stanley Cohen, the club's president, along with £300,000 to a finance company of which Cohen was a director. These loans are secured on the ground and so could, legally, be called in if the ground were sold.

When the sale and leaseback proposal was announced, some supporters were concerned that the deal would allow Swaisland, who was chairman at the time, to pull his money out. Swaisland, though, said he had never charged interest on his loans, that he did originally want some of his money back, but subsequently made clear he would not demand any repayment until the club was on a "sound financial footing". Cohen, however, said he would "assess the situation and the club's viability" before deciding whether to ask for all of his money back.

"I believed the sale and leaseback would provide us with the finance to trade on," Swaisland said. "I don't want it, but can't see another solution. But as I've been portrayed by fans as the man selling the crown jewels, I thought it best for me to step down."

All of this is a somewhat depressing point for the club to have reached only five years after its rebirth, greeted around the lower divisions as a "supporter rescue", a community club which could provide a blueprint for other clubs' survival. In 2000, the Government established Supporters Direct to help supporters form mutual trusts and play an active role in their clubs, and Bournemouth was cited as an example, along with Northampton Town. Trevor Watkins, the supporter who became Bournemouth's chairman, was appointed a director of Supporters Direct.

This week Watkins, who resigned as chairman last year to make way for Swaisland, said that after a good first year in which money was raised and Matt Holland sold, Bournemouth's debts mounted again. "Supporter involvement is a solution, but unfortunately it does not alter the very difficult financial situation clubs are in."

Bournemouth have long been a selling club – their best side, the one in which Machin played in the 1970s with strikers Ted McDougall and Phil Boyer, managed by John Bond, was dismantled by Bond when he went to Norwich as manager and signed several of his protégés. The financial difficulties in 1997 followed a relatively golden patch under Harry Redknapp, who took the side to the old Second Division with a team including Ian Bishop, Shaun Teale and Gavin Peacock, before he went to West Ham in 1992.

Bournemouth still try to sell players but the transfer market and player production line have both dwindled. The club lost £1m in each of the last two years, and for three months last year lost more revenue by having to play home matches at Dorchester. With Dean Court crumbling, they opted to move, hoping that sponsorship deals and commercial income would make up the shortfall on the stadium. Peter Philips said he would have done the same, but added: "In retrospect the decision to build the stadium may look foolhardy."

Even Watkins' legacy to Bournemouth as a supporter-run, or community, club, has been questioned by some fans. Supporters Direct has, since 2000, promoted mutual bodies made up of fans with regular elections for officers, but at Bournemouth, three years earlier, a somewhat convoluted structure was established, with limited democracy, which has taken years to evolve.

In 1997, the supporters raised £150,000, while 15 wealthy individuals put up £500,000. The supporters' money was put into a trust fund, and though this money had been a small proportion of the total raised, the trust fund was nevertheless given control of the club in the shape of 51 per cent of the voting rights. There were no elections for directors of the Trust Fund; Watkins was appointed as one of two directors. He said this week the intention was always to introduce democracy, but in August 1999 some fans, frustrated at the lack of progress, formed an Independent Supporters' Association, then last year a Community Mutual to raise money for the new stadium. They struck a deal with the Trust Fund, which Watkins still chairs, which allows them two elected places on the Trust board, which can, in turn, elect three of its representatives on to the club's board.

"It overstated the case to call it a supporter rescue," said Andy Smith, chair of the ISA. "Democracy was slow to happen. There is gradual democratisation now, although I would like it to be faster."

Watkins was adamant that in 1997 they were consumed with the need to save the club, and that he and others involved were supporters and acted in supporters' best interests: "We didn't have the opportunity to introduce democracy at first but, as soon as we did, we brought it in through Community Mutual."

With Northampton in trouble, having come close to a takeover by Giovanni Di Stefano, the Italian lawyer who is proud to number the Serbian warlord Arkan and Slobodan Milosevic among his associates, such constitutional niceties are no protection from football's self-destructive economics. Bournemouth provides a glumly appropriate monument: the proposed hocking of a three-sided stadium, still not even finished. The current chairman is campaigning for a more positive vision, and the long-suffering fans are rallying round again. As at many clubs, they have a struggle on.

davidconn@freeuk.com