Outside Borough Park, the 2,500 capacity home of Workington AFC in the Conference North, the sixth tier in English football.

Photo credit: stevie odessa on Flickr, via the Pitch Invasion Photo Pool.

The traditional terracing at the home of Barrow AFC, who play in the Blue Square Premier, England's fifth tier.

Photo credit: stevie odessa on Flickr, via the Pitch Invasion Photo Pool.

AFC Wimbledon's mascot, Haydon the Womble, still has some energy despite participating in the Dons' fundraising walk earlier that day. AFC Wimbledon vs. Eastbourne, 13 March 2010.

Photo credit: Chalfont Don on Flickr, via the Pitch Invasion Photo Pool.

York City vs. Luton Town, Blue Square Premier, 16 February 2010.

Photo credit: nican45 on Flickr, via the Pitch Invasion Photo Pool.

The current impression so far is that Trusts or fan ownership largely works. If that were the case, perhaps Exeter wouldn’t be an isolated example. As Brian Burgess of Brentford has said, a lot depends on luck and the people you get involved with the Trust. Without decent people on board, the best-meaning business is liable to fail.

Trust-run clubs are also subject to the same financial constraints as other clubs, often more so given how reliant they are on membership. To contrast, this season Charlton Athletic’s directors have put in £7m to the club to fund their push for promotion. Exeter City’s Trust has put in £1m over five years. And with football very much a short-term immediate results driven business, Trust-run clubs will inevitably come under the same pressures to deliver.

Perhaps one of the saddest examples of this in recent years is at Notts County. The focus of recent months has been, rightly, on Munto, the consortium that took over the club and turned out to be based on thin air and British businessmen rather than rich Arabs. But what can easily be forgotten is that Munto was handed the keys to County by the previous owners, the Supporters’ Trust.

We’ve covered the financial disasters of County’s history before on Pitch Invasion, but it’s worth quickly summarising how the league’s oldest club could go from fan ownership to a smoke and mirrors consortium.

The Notts County Trust played a key part in rallying the fans and fundraising in 2003 following Albert Scardino’s disastrous reign before unassuming millionaire supporter Hadyn Green stepped in to save the club and take a 49% stake. In 2007, Green donated his shares to the Trust on the agreement that he would be paid £75,000 if the shares were sold on. Four months later, he died.

But the Magpies’ Supporters’ Trust could never really galvanise the club in the way Exeter or Brentford did. County languished at the wrong end of the League Two table, never quite getting a grip on the finances or ownership. Constant infighting and bitter disputes wore the board down. In April last year Trust chairman Jon Armstrong-Holmes survived a vote of no confidence from the members. It was a club and Trust trapped in inertia.

The Trust, or certainly Armstrong-Holmes, leapt on the offer from Munto Finance two months later and he embarked on a drive to convince Trust members of the value in handing the Trust’s 60% shareholding to Munto, describing their guarantees as “cast iron”, adding that Munto were among the most honourable people he had ever met. Members overwhelmingly voted for the Munto takeover and to write off the Trust’s loans to the club. We all know what happened next.

Perhaps even more depressing, though, is Stockport County, a side that could genuinely cease to exist at the end of this season. When The Hatters won promotion to League One two years ago, they were held up as yet further proof that Trust ownership was producing success. Less than twelve months later they were in administration with debts of £300,000. Since then, they have been operating under a transfer embargo.

The Stockport County Trust purchased the club for just £1 in 2005, but had one huge problem. Brian Kennedy, the millionaire businessman who owned both County and the Sale Sharks rugby team, retained ownership of Edgeley Park, meaning the Hatters saw huge swathes of potential matchday income denied to them. Limited incoming finances and a mounting unpaid tax bill, along with overspending in the promotion season, let to an inevitably sad conclusion.

County face being thrown out of the league at the end of the season if they are still in administration. At the current time of writing, former Manchester City player Jim Melrose has, apparently, finally had his consortium’s bid for the club accepted by the administrators but, after all that’s gone on at the club over previous seasons, Hatters fans know not to get their hopes up.

Cherry picking

Finally, a quick mention for Bournemouth, who, for a short-time were a community-owned club after the fans took over to rescue the Cherries in 2007. Here, perhaps, is a classic example of a club that badly needed a blank slate for such a takeover to be successful.

Bournemouth have been a perennial crisis club for over 15 years now and in 2007 the Cherries went into administration with debts of £4m. A supporter-backed takeover saved the club at the last minute after some serious bucket-rattling, but while the club was in the hands of the community, so was the debt. And it was that legacy that weighed down on the club.

Despite bouncing back at the first attempt in 2003 after relegation from League One the year before, the financial problems were growing and that year Bournemouth had to call in the PFA to help pay players wages. With debts spiraling and the stadium sold and leased back, the clubs members voted in 2007 to change the constitution that prevented any one person owning more than 10% of the club, as Jeff Mostyn and Steve Sly took control at Dean Court.

What followed was administration in February 2008, with the club’s debts at around £5.8m. Bournemouth were hit with a 10 point deduction, followed by a further 17 points the season after. They narrowly avoided relegation to the Conference and this season have been operating under a seemingly endless transfer embargo.

Meanwhile, ownership was passed from pillar to post as a range of bids for the club collapsed at the last minute before the Sport-6 consortium took over, only for events to unwind even quicker as the debts mounted up. Munto Finance were rumoured to be sniffing around at one point.

To detail the past eighteen months at Bournemouth is a blog post in itself but, despite resigning during the Sport-6 debacle, Mostyn is still involved with the club as part of a fresh consortium, while ex-Dorchester Town chairman Eddie Mitchell is now the Cherries new chair.

Mitchell claims to have reduced the debt from £1.8m to £800,000 since taking charge but financial details are thin on the ground. Meanwhile, the club faces yet another winding up order. Some jobs, it seems, are beyond both supporter owners or would-be white knights.

The fan who took over from the Trust

But not every former Trust-owned club is in dire straights, even if the move away from Trust ownership has been controversial. York City were saved by their Trust in 2003 after former chairman John Batchelor had comprehensively asset-stripped the Minstermen. Many members battled heroically to keep their club alive as a team that had been through so much finally came home to its fans.

But since 2006, York City have been under the ownership of JM Packing, who own 75% of the shares, with the Trust holding the remaining 25%. The company is the family business of Jason McGill and his sister Sophie, dyed in the wool York supporters and active members of the Trust’s rescue effort back in 2003.

McGill became chairman but three years later argued that the Trust could no longer take the club forward as well as a professionally backed business and made an offer to buy a majority stake in York. Certainly the club was struggling at the time, with relegation to the Conference North a possibility. Under the terms of the deal, JM Packing would put in £1m a year for five years as loans.

When the club sells their ground, Bootham Crescent, as it is contractually bound to do within nine years under the terms of a £2 million loan from the Football Foundatio,n repayment of the £1 million principal to JM Packaging will be waived. But they will still receive the interest on their loan.

Supporters were divided at the time, but plans for the stadium remain on track and York are looking like genuine contenders for promotion back to the Football League this season. Should York get promotion, a new stadium and secure future, then the JM Packaging takeover may seem like an astute piece of business, while the Trust still retain a piece of ownership.

The odd experiment

For all the achievements of Trust run clubs, as well as their respective failures, the club that’s probably generated most column inches with regard to fan ownership is Ebbsfleet United, which is definitely not a Trust-run club, but could easily edge towards that model if the will was there. And despite the blaze of publicity that greeted MyFootballClub.co.uk when they brought Fleet, it’s debatable whether you could describe Ebbsfleet as fan owned currently.

The idea was a simple one: members would sign up to MyFC for £35 a year. The website would then buy a club, funded via the subscriptions, and members would vote on everything from the playing budget to the kit to transfers to picking the team. In theory, it was a footballing utopia; an antidote to the Premier League. In reality, it has been somewhat of a car crash.

Currently MyFC’s membership, after the latest round of renewals, stands at just over 4,000, down from a high of 32,000 in February 2008, and down from around 9,000 members this time last year. You don’t need a degree in maths to work out that this leaves the Fleet with a serious funding shortfall.

In reality, MyFC’s proposition was always going to be a risky venture for Fleet, albeit not for the owner, former journalist Will Brooks. Yes, the cash from the takeover was badly needed by a financially struggling club and, yes, Ebbsfleet won the FA Trophy soon after the takeover, but those are rare high points.

The problem with MyFC is taking a bunch of fans who have no loyalty to the club, promising them too much (picking the team and other innovations), failing to deliver but still budgeting for a decent number of renewals (and this budget can only be done on a yearly basis, making long-term planning difficult). As the membership has dwindled so have the Fleet’s fortunes on and off the pitch.

Tellingly, the current number of MyFC subscriptions is higher than many Trust memberships, including Exeter. But Exeter are in a much more stable financial position, annual losses notwithstanding, than Fleet, which suggests a successful Trust-run club is more than just letting fans run the club — it goes deeper than that. Trust members do not pick the team nor sign the players, or any other gimmick, but they do have a huge say in the way their club is run, democratically. And there lies the difference.

In some respects, Aaron Ramsey, Stoke City and Arsenal should all consider themselves lucky, unlikely as that seems right now. Ramsey, for all the horror of his horrible injury, is a young player who may recover and go onto have a successful career. Stoke and Arsenal both have insurance to cover serious, career-threatening injuries to players. Marcus Hallows and Ashton United are not so lucky.

Back in March 2005, Hallows was plying his trade for Altrincham, then of the Blue Square North, when his career was ended in a horrific fashion. Shortly after coming on as a sub against Ashton United in a regular league match, an Ashton United player by the name of Danny White made a late block tackle on Hallows, breaking his right leg.

The injury was so severe that it took half an hour for an ambulance to attend and treat Hallows. His heart stopped on the way to the hospital and, although he was revived, his footballing career was over.

Hallows, now 35 and working in sales and as an Elvis impersonator, sued both Ashton United and Danny White. Two weeks ago, five years after the tackle, Judge Armitage found in favour of Hallows and deemed the challenge to be reckless, ordering Ashton to pay £32,000. With legal fees, the club face a bill for £130,000 – money they simply don’t have.

But this goes further than a non-league team potentially going to the wall, or discussion around yet another bad tackle. It is no exaggeration that the Hallows ruling could have a huge effect on non-league football and potentially radically alter or even kill some areas of the game.

This ruling now sets a precedent for non-league where any player who has suffered a serious injury could potentially claim retrospective damages against the player and club, if that player was under contract. And in many cases, insurance for this simply doesn’t exist.

At non-league level the insurance cover for a club is beyond what many of them can afford. The Unibond League, where Ashton currently play, have tried to organise quotes for group insurance cover but the costs are so high that many teams don’t have the reserves of cash to pay this.

This is not the Premier League, where insurance is mandatory. This is non-league where a few thousand or even hundred pounds can be the difference between success and extinction.

Very few clubs at non-league level have public liability policies and even fewer have a policy that covers player-to-player liability. Even then, there is no guarantee they will be able to claim for injuries caused by dangerous or deliberate tackles. And very few clubs will be able to afford this.

Unlike in Norway or Germany, where insurance and policy schemes are part of the administration of the game, there is no scheme in place at non-league level in Britain, despite warnings for many years that insurance, or lack of it, was a ticking time-bomb.

The future could see clubs, or players, refusing to play due to lack of insurance. Some players may decide the cost of having to arrange their own policies against injuries to both themselves and opponents is not worth the hassle or simply too expensive, while smaller clubs may refuse to take on players without adequate insurance. Meanwhile, there’s ever chance of further litigation from low-earning players whose careers have been curtailed by injury.

Several solicitors have called for the FA to roll out a national scheme for levels of football to help clubs insure against potential litigation, but that won’t come in time to save Ashton United.

Ashton chairman Dave Aspinall believes the club can appeal on points of law, but will need £9,000 to do so; money, again, that the club doesn’t have. But they may have a case for appeal.

At the time of the incident the referee was five yards from the ball and did not give a free kick. Altrincham did not support Hallows in his lawsuit and their manager, Graham Heathcote, has described it as “one of hundreds” seen across the country over the course of the weekend. There is still hope for Ashton if they can raise money for an appeal.

Meanwhile, it’s hard to blame Hallows in all of this. Here is a man who has nearly died, suffered a serious injury and saw his career finished. After all he’s been through, you can understand why he is putting his needs above football. Many of us would do the same.

Aaron Ramsey will probably play again and, in the meantime, expect plenty of hand-wringing and discussion about whether or not to clamp down on tackles. If Ashton United are unsuccessful in their appeal, non-league may not need their own clamp down – any kind of full-blooded tackle could long become a thing of the past.

When two clubs’ long, drawn-out crises both reach their denouements the same day — with Portsmouth FC entering administration, and Chester City FC expelled from the Football Conference — it’s worth paying attention to what the supporters have to say in response as they are left picking up the pieces, and consider the lessons we might learn from them.

First, Portsmouth’s Supporters’ Trust was careful to recognise the broader impact of the club’s collapse — not just on the fans, but on the staff and on local businesses still owed money by a club whose revenue was in the tens of millions last year. They made the point that the lack of transparency in the club’s dealings had been a serious problem. In their press release, they said:

Portsmouth City Football Club Limited has today confirmed that it has entered into administration. Although this brings an initial nine point deduction it does give the club the opportunity to rebuild.

Sadly administration will have a negative impact on local businesses that are now unlikely to receive the money they’re owed. We also feel for the staff who have devotedly served the Company and whose jobs are now at risk.

We now urge all Pompey fans to unite together and show to the World what this club means to its fans and its community.

We do understand the difficult job that Andrew Andronikou has ahead of him as Administrator, and as an organisation the Supporters’ Trust is willing to provide support to him in working towards a more stable future for the football club.

The next owner of our historic club needs to understand the passion of the Pompey fans and communicate and co-operate with them with greater transparency.

This club belongs to its fans and its community, it’s this reason that Portsmouth Football Club will never die.

Meanwhile, when a club that has existed for 125 years reaches the sorry state that Chester City have, it’s no wonder their supporters, organised in the City Fans United (CFU) Supporters’ Trust, ask how the football authorities could have allowed such poor and shady business practices to destroy their club.The Football Conference, after expunging Chester’s record from the Blue Square Premier records this season, said that “Friday’s events are unparalleled in the history of our national sport and it is with much regret these circumstances have evolved” (as if the Conference themselves had not played their own cretinous part in that “evolution”).

In their press release about the news, the CFU said:

Today the member clubs of the Football Conference have voted to expel Chester City FC from the competition.  City Fans United are dismayed and saddened that this situation has been allowed to occur, however we have previously stated our belief that years of financial mismanagement meant that this decision was inevitable. We are angry that Chester  City FC was allowed to fall into such a sorry state and we call upon the  football authorities to review their rules on the ownership and financial  control of football clubs, before the supporters of another football club are  forced to endure the pain felt by fans of Chester City FC.

Both sets of supporters are right to emphasise that their clubs will go on — in whatever hopefully reformed or possibly entirely new forms — but also to suggest that lessons can be learned in both how clubs communicate with fans and that the football authorities, starting at the top with the governing body in the Football Association, need to look at how this has happened at two clubs so different yet united in the almost comedic level of mismanagement that has seen both sent crashing down, while all those in charge of the game who should have taken action stood around paralysed.

Just when Chester City fans thought their club might finally be put out of its misery in its present state — its ownership having wrecked the club’s finances to the extent that they could not field a team, thus now facing a vote on expulsion from the Blue Square Premier — things have taken a turn for the even more bizarre. Last week, Chester’s supporters’ trust said they hoped they would be given the chance to start the club over,  but now it seems a Danish consortium claiming to be saviours might make things even worse.

Owner Stephen Vaughan Junior (who acquired the club from his father, skirting rules banishing him from owning a club) revealed to chesterfirst that:

A deal has been done with a Denmark-based consortium, Chester projekt.dk, subject to legal issues being agreed.

“I was one of three people from Chester City who met members of the Conference board at a meeting in London on Friday where the club presented cash forecasts and funding projections in a bid to safeguard the club from being expelled from the league.
“The club admitted it had breached five rules including rule 8.6 which mentions expulsion, and the Conference board have now recommended that member clubs of the Conference Premier Division will vote to expel Chester City from the competition.

“The Vaughan family will today contact the Football Conference and inform them that we will defer full payment until June 2011 and ensure that full funding will be made available to pay all of our outstanding creditors, i.e. rent, revenue and all players wages and players arrears, and other football creditors.

“We will make an application to the Football Conference for them to reconsider their position so that we can fulfil the remainder of our fixtures.”

Now, let’s check out this Danish group “Chester projekt.dk” via their own website, which they’ve perhaps unhelpfully for themselves translated into English via rather garbled English. Check out this gem on their page about “Our Ambitions”:

Our ambitions

Of course we won’t interfere in strictly sporting affairs such as who’s in the starting eleven and so on. However, it’s the owners of the club who will approve new player contracts, hiring of staff and so forth, so in that respect we’ll have the final saying.

Of course we won’t be in charge of the day-to-day operation of the club; we will need to hire some skilled people to do that (there is already a lot of people employed at the club – we just need to find out if they are the right ones). This is where the CFU will come in to the picture; the fan club will really be able to contribute with a lot, be it fundraising, knowledge of the local area and so on.

We have a limit of 10 shares which each investor are allowed to own. This limit ensures that it will be a more democratically elected board of directors and this will therefore reflect the common stance of the shareholders. This has been put in place due to the fact that we don’t want one person to dictate the entire future of the club.

The CFU mentioned is City Fans United, the Chester City Supporters’ Trust.

Last week, the Chester Project.dk website said: “Unfortunately there has been some miscommunication between us and CFU. It appeared here on our website that CFU was behind us 100%. They have their own option to save the club, but we keep them informed on a daily basis and we will meet with them this weekend to discuss options for future collaboration. They are very important in this project – no fans, no club.”

The Danish consortium did indeed meet with the Trust this weekend. And it certainly doesn’t sound like the supporters want anything to do with them, from a press release yesterday on the CFU’s site:

Members of a Danish consortium met representatives of the CFU yesterday before they met the club. It was made clear to them that any rescue bid would need the support of the fans, the wider community, and a viable Business Plan. We were not satisfied with the very brief report we had after the meeting with the club.

In our opinion the Danish consortium also have no adequate business plan or strategy for running the club on a day to day basis. They do not have adequate finances to cover the current debt, and have no plans for community involvement.

We are saying clearly and directly to the Danish consortium: On Thursday you stated that if we did not wish you to continue with your bid, you would not proceed. We are saying that we do not wish you to proceed with your bid. We would however welcome you to be part of an exciting journey with us as we rebuild our club in our own vision. But if you proceed without us, you are proceeding against us with all that entails.

I think that’s pretty clear: “On Thursday you stated that if we did not wish you to continue with your bid, you would not proceed. We are saying that we do not wish you to proceed with your bid.”

Despite this opposition, today the Chester Chronicle reports that “Chester Projekt.dk have reached an agreement with the Vaughan family to buy their 100% stake in the Football Conference outfit.”

Obviously, the Danish consortium have no actual respect at all for the wishes or plans of the supporters for the club; at the least, they could stop pretending they care.

Two Hundred Percent has the transcript of an interview with the man leading the consortium, Palle Rasmussen. It’s google translated from Danish, but I think this version of sums up the fantastic and hideous situation the club and its supporters are in:

Yes, so the news came out a little before intended, and some people its on TV2 with red ears.

Well, all that stands in my presence mail today. This will be my last blog. From tomorrow, our forum on the legs, and only people who have paid for the project is included in the debate.

There has been too many new flap hats today, this is a serious undertaking; prepared operating budgets, capital raised and every detail thought through.

And in terms of fan support:

CFU is a new fan club founded on 4 months ago with the sole aim would start their own club up and leave the existing bankruptcy. Fortunately, more than 100 true fans let me know by email that there will come people on battens. And that the CFU is “old but sour.” I can only recognize: Yesterday TV2 and I was invited to the football festival of CFU in Chester. We had counted on club jerseys and “pep in Sweeping” – but came down to a game of bingo for 100 persons aged 50 +. It was so bad that TV2 and I subsequently chose to slip away again without filming.

And just to repeat the words from our attorney, who acted 20 football clubs for the last 8 years: Fans can boycott but always comes back. Therefore: We are not the press of a fanfraktion how official they may be. Therefore: We are not the press of a fanfraktion how official they may be. In our operating model, we expect yet not with so many spectators at the start; money can/should include retrieved in a newly created youth amateur division and a football academy + many other new projects I am GAME to reveal to you all in the closed forum.

Thank you for this time – and to all faithful chesterprojekt.dk investors: I will be contacted tomorrow + Tuesday with an “entry ticket” to our closed forum.

Ciao

Palle

“Too many new flap hats” indeed, Palle.

This week, Chester City FC supporters called for their own club to be put out of its misery and wound up, so they could start over under their own democratic ownership — to ensure they would never again be at the whim of owners who do not have the club’s best interests at heart.

To be forced to the extreme of calling for your club to be put out of business and having to begin again at the lower reaches of the English pyramid system is hardly a decision to be taken lightly. But the beauty of the English set-up is that such a drastic action can be taken yet still fans can have hope for their new club to rise again to former heights, and this time under an ownership system that does not put the club at the mercy of selfish individuals.

Take AFC Wimbledon, famously formed in the aftermath of the franchising of their club to Milton Keynes, an unforgiveable crime against football perpetrated by club owner Pete Winkelman with an eventual, killer rubber stamp from the Football Association as Wimbledon became the Milton Keynes Dons.

The fans’ new club began in the Combined Counties League, the nether regions of English football, but four promotions in seven seasons see them now in the Conference National, the fifth tier of the game and within touching distance of the Football League. They have their own stadium, and crowds that sometimes surpass those they had in the top tier of English football a decade ago.

And so Niall Couper, a former member of the AFC Wimbledon Trust Board, suggests Portsmouth follow the same path in a piece today in the Independent:

I’m an AFC Wimbledon  fan. I will always remember being in the room when a bunch of naive South Londoners filled in a London FA form to formally register the club. Eight years on and that same club is now plying its trade in the Conference having been promoted four times.

Yes, I’d be lying if I said I don’t miss turning over the likes of Liverpool, Manchester United and, most of all, Chelsea – but since AFC Wimbledon emerged from an FA Commission’s decision to allow my club to be stolen away eight years ago I have gained so much more.

I now support a club bedded in the local community. It is run by the fans and for the fans. Gone are the days of dodgy owners – and Pompey have had more than their fair share of those. Gone are the days of players with huge egos. Each new AFC Wimbledon player undergoes an initiation into the club that stresses its ethos, its commitment to fan ownership and its fervent opposition to football franchising. I seriously doubt Sol Campbell ever underwent such a similar experience at Fratton Park.

AFC Wimbledon also owns its own ground – bought by the fans – and now gets attendances around the 4,000 mark. Indeed, when we played Luton earlier this season our attendance was higher than the equivalent fixture years ago in the top flight.

Yes, there are huge logistic problems in setting up your own club, but there is help to be found through the likes of Supporters Direct, the masterminds of the growing Supporters Trust movement across the country.

Pompey fans should get in touch with them now, get organised and go for it. After all, Wimbledon were never the biggest club – and look what we have achieved. Portsmouth are a far bigger club than we ever were – just imagine what AFC Portsmouth could do.

Pioneers that they were, in some ways the decision to start over for Wimbledon fans was made if not easy, but logical for them by the move of their club to Milton Keynes. But their progress sets an example in the context of what would be an even harder decision for Pompey fans in some ways.  Just as Chester City’s Supporters’ Trust this week called for their club to begin again with the help of Supporters Direct, it may be time for Portsmouth fans to consider similar, drastic action.

Last week, we mentioned a unique (as far as we know, anyway) initiative by Blue Square Premier side Mansfield Town to let supporters set their own entrance price for their game against Gateshead on Saturday at Field Mill.

On the face of it, it was a big success. Attendance more than doubled from the previous game, with over 7,000 showing up. Many gave more than the previous standard ticket price, with gate receipts expected to be bumper for the club.

For many fans, it was a reminder of better days at Field Mill, Mansfield’s home since 1909.

The club has a loyal hardcore base, with 2,747 season ticket holders, but this initiative aimed to bring new and old fans outside of this base to Field Mill: the average attendance of the club over the past three seasons has been hovering around 3,000 since their relegation from the Football League in 2008.

Unfortunately, Mansfield lost the game 2-0, but that’s not the point here. Hopefully many of those who showed up feel re-engaged by the club’s effort to get them out to a game, whatever they could afford to give on the day.

This initiative by the new owners should be applauded. Mansfield have been through a lot: the current owners, Mansfield supporters Andrew Perry, Andrew Saunders and Steve Middleton, purchased the club from the deservedly unpopular Keith Haslam a couple of years ago.

This was shortly after Haslam came close to selling the club to John Batchelor, who had an insane plan to rename the club Harchester United after the Dream Team television drama. Seriously (Batchelor also once wanted to drive York City, who he drove into the ground, York City Soccer Club to attract American interest).

From soap opera to sanity, it’s looking up for Stags fans.