As a result, the Italian Supporters’ Trust movement has mushroomed, and three organizations have been created with the help of Supporters Direct and their Italian collaborators. Of course, ensuring that these organisations met Supporters Direct’s aims and values required months of behind the scenes meetings, research and education. The fact that these new Trusts developed over the Summer shows why they are so special. Traditionally a season of relaxation, hope and expectation for fans (but increasingly one where thousands of them have to face up to the rumours surrounding their own club’s financial problems), their emergence reflects the level of desire for change amongst Italian football fans.

During the last few months, fans of S.S Cavese 1919, F.B.C. Unione Venezia and U.S. Ancona 1905 provided a tangible response, a hint of hope, a signal that something is changing; even in Italy. Just a few years ago, it would have been risky to place any faith in an Italian Supporters’ Trust movement. Several initiatives, grounded not in fandom but in money-making or political interests, had failed in previous years. The Italian culture of fan ownership is still in its infancy, compared with that of other European countries. But many supporters have become frustrated by what they have seen happen to their clubs, frustrated by their inability to help — until now. Thanks to the Internet, an echo of what has become commonplace elsewhere in Europe is beginning to be heard, and interest in fan ownership is a major part of this development. At the aforementioned three clubs, a total of 3000 supporters decided to take action — and in a few weeks achieved results to be proud of.

By law, Italian professional clubs must be the equivalent of English public or private limited companies, and semi-professional or amateur clubs have chosen this structure as well. Therefore control of clubs, from the top to the bottom of the pyramid, has traditionally been concentrated in the hands of private, individual owners. Fans have always been expected to accept decisions from above, despite the ever-present threat of mass protests. The average Italian football fan is also generally considered a stupid, vulgar and uneducated person (of course, there are also fans of this type in other countries!). This widespread perception has presented a major challenge for the new trust movement, but its first steps have been promising. With legal assistance from Supporters Direct, the first groups chose to structure themselves as associations — a simple, democratic and not for profit organisation, which allows members (i.e fans) to buy and own shares through the trust.

Let’s have a closer look at these three trusts, which are now officially Supporters Direct affiliates. They all aim to be involved in the running of their club, to be represented on the board, and in the end to become shareholders, as well as to be active in the community and in social initiatives under their club colours.

SOGNO CAVESE

Cavese currently compete in Girone B of the Lega Pro Prima Divisione, so it’s a professional club. Their status came under serious threat last Summer, when the club risked going out of existence because of a deep financial crisis. It was saved at the last moment, thanks to the actions of many fans and citizens, who donated more than €200,000. This wasn’t the first desperate moment in the history of Cavese, and the supporters decided to do something to protect their beloved club. The footballing environment in Cava dei Tirreni is complicated, but Sogno Cavese has rapidly become a reference point for everyone who cares about the club; thanks to their credibility, transparency and independence. The trust was launched at the beginning of July, includes fans from every section of the stadium and has 600 members, including local hero Rino Santin, who was the manager during the club’s golden era.

When all the people who had given money during the preseason fundraising were asked to choose a representative, the trust Chairman won the election hands down, and is now on the club’s board, with advisory, proactive and checking functions.

“Through Sogno Cavese, we want to become protagonists in our own history. The unbreakable bond between a town and its population, a footballing history that stretches back to 1919, and the passion for the club shirt are the reasons behind our decision to start a supporters’ trust”, says board member Giuseppe Abbamonte. “To us, Cavese is more than a mere football team: it embodies our passion, our love for the local area, and respect for our history. As an integral part of the community, we believe that the club should be governed by democratic principles, and based on participation and representation. We’re committing ourselves with passion, and setting aside self-interest. We are aware we’re not the only ones who have chosen to do this, and we hope that our dream [the Italian word for which is 'sogno'] will soon become a reality.”

VENEZIA UNITED

One of Italy’s most famous cities, Venice was also among the first to produce an alternative model for running the local football club, Venezia. It wasn’t implemented but left as a legacy the idea that it is possible for fans to collaborate with local institutions and businesses. In the Summer of 2009 the club was unable to weather yet another crisis, and thus was relegated from Lega Pro Prima Divisione to the amateur Serie D, where it competes today. As a result of this, the fans decided that they wanted to have an important role in the new era, and to help the club become successful and sustainable. At the beginning of July they founded Venezia United. The trust now has some 1200 members, including important figures from the local sporting and civil arena, as well as the team captain.

Their goals for the future are ambitious: they want to double in membership size over the next three months, and to add €50,000 to their capital by the end of 2010. They also hope to buy some of the shares that are due to be issued soon, following the owner’s announcement that he can no longer be responsible for the running of the club. Local institutions gave – and are still giving – their help, but it’s not sufficient and at the time of writing, no credible buyer has emerged. Venezia United needs to be part of the future ownership structure, in order to let their opinions on how the club should be run going forward be heard; and acted upon.

“More than 1100 members in just over three months is quite a number, and it indicates that the route being taken is the right one. Now comes the challenging task of broadening our focus, reducing the influence of militant supporters, and beginning to work on the economic realities affecting our project”, says Chairman Franco Vianello Moro. “Our goal is still some way off, but the scope of the commitment that we have made has been recognised by the Town Council, as well as the FBC Unione Venezia- with whom we are discussing a possible position on the club board, initially as auditors.”

SOSTENIAMOLANCONA

Ancona was one of the clubs to suffer the most last Summer: it wasn’t accepted into Serie B (where it finished 17^th last season) and was sent down to the regional Eccellenza. SOSTENIAMOLANCONA (let’s support Ancona) was born at the end of August, and the fans were heavily involved in the early development of the new club. They voted on the new name, the colours, and the stadium. The trust now has around 800 members gathered under the motto “our passion can’t be relegated” — sentiments which have been borne out by the average attendance of 3500 fans for each home game.

The trust is working closely with the club, and has two elected representatives on the board. The present owner has already announced that if the club are promoted at the end of this season it will become a limited company and SOSTENIAMOLANCONA will take possession of 17% of the shares. He will retain 34% and sell the remaining 49% on the market. This arrangement ensures that the Trust will continue to have a crucial role in the decision-making process.

“Our association is truly the result of spontaneous action, precipitated by a desperate situation. The project has grown step by step, with widespread fan involvement. Now I’m more convinced than ever that the supporters are what really counts”, said chairman David Miani. “It was important for us to try and bring about change, not just to talk. We really tried to do something different for our passion, for our club, in its difficult moment. We wanted to be able to say that when needed, we did everything that we could possibly do. It seemed impossible but now we are 800-strong, we have two auditors on the club board, we’re working towards a brighter future; and we are reviving the people’s passion for the club, even in a very low league”.

Supporters Direct is also in touch with other fan groups in Italy, including myRoma (an AS Roma fan group with more than 300 members and 0.0045% of the club’s shares), Modena Sport Club co-operative (more than 150 members), and Il Mio Potenza association (more than 100 members). A new initiative in Brescia is also expected over the next few months.

The Italian movement for fan involvement and ownership is part of a wider movement that is growing across Europe with the help of Supporters Direct; which includes clubs from several countries such as the United Kingdom, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Greece and Israel. Each country clearly has its own particular contexts and problems, but it has become clear that the factors which unite the fans are far more numerous than those which divide them. The sense of being part of a wider movement is a source of pride and confidence for all concerned.

The Stirling Albion Supporters Trust has agreed a £300,000 deal to clear debts and make a one-off payment to Peter McKenzie, chairman for 26 years.

McKenzie, 84, has agreed to write off the £1.2m loan that was due to him.

This marks a successful end to an imaginative and successful campaign by the Stirling Albion Supporters’ Trust to buy the club: they have used new tools such as a community website that would put most official clubs’ efforts to shame, traditional local fund-raising and even media stunts to attract attention: the Trust’s two most famous of its 2,000 members are Cristiano Ronaldo and Andy Murray (from nearby Dunblane).

The Trust was founded in 2002, as a response to growing concern about the club’s debts, and originally had an awkward relationship with the club, as their About page explains:

The Trust was originally conceived in 2002 and was established by a small group of diehard Stirling Albion supporters who were concerned at the growing debt appearing within the Club’s Annual Accounts. The Trust was seen as an ideal vehicle through which financial support could be given to the Club from money raised through membership subscriptions and fundraising activities.

It was also seen as a means of raising awareness within the local community of the existence of a senior Scottish football club in its midst and as an important two-way channel of communication between football supporters and the Club’s Directors.

However, despite the best efforts of the Trust to engage with the Directors, all ideas advanced for the betterment of the Club fell upon stony ground and tangible offers of assistance were not taken up.

This relationship, though, gradually changed due to some enlightened moves on the parts of both the club’s ownership and the Trust: the club accepted an offer from the Trust for the supporters’ to produce the match programme each week, embedding them into the consciousness of fans every game. The Trust even began selling official Stirling Albion merchandise at the Trust’s shop in the centre of Stirling, according to the Trust, “thought to mark the first time that a football supporters’ trust has opened a retail outlet in a town or city centre in the UK.” In May 2009, the Trust launched its campaign to buy Stirling Albion.

The Trust’s page on history shows their smart play of tying their ambition to put the club in the hands of the local supporting community to the region’s past role in Scottish independence: it begins not with the founding of the football club, but with William Wallace:

Many centuries ago two heroes fought for Scottish Independence from the English King Edward I. Their two great victories came on the same soil in the small town (now city) of Stirling. The bridge across the River Forth was where any real army could cross to invade Northern Scotland and this bridge was overlooked by the mighty Stirling Castle (above) making this town the key to the kingdom. These men were William Wallace and King Robert the Bruce.

William Wallace was brought to the world’s attention through the movie Braveheart. His exploits though were well known within Scotland and the ex-pat Scottish communities around the world. Wallace himself was born around 1270 in Elderslie, Renfrewshire. His family were in the lower level of the countries ruling classes.

This tie-in is appropriate: the club’s badge (below) depicts the Wallace Monument at its centre, a monument suitably paid for largely by public subscription as Scottish national identity resurged in the nineteenth century.

The Trust also worked to gain the support of the local business community, offering them membership for just £75, and signing up dozens of them, which surely trickled into local consciousness and earned the trust legitimacy — it will also help them with sponsorship and development in the area moving forward, now they are in charge of the club.

The task for Stirling Albion’s Supporters’ Trust is now not an easy one, but they do have a rare opportunity to use positive momentum from what seems to be a friendly takeover, and one that leaves the Trust in a position to succeed: according to the BBC report, the Trust’s purchase has cleared the club’s debts, and 84 year-old former owner Peter McKenzie has written off a £1.2m loan owed to him.

Supporters’ trusts’ often end up taking over clubs laden with debt and in impossible situations to manage; it appears Stirling’s Trust may be in a position to move the club forward; on the field, the club won the Scottish Second Division last season, and so will play in the First Division this year. They play at a modern venue, Forthbank Stadium, opened in 1993 and owned by the local council.

The fans now own the club, and this means that the Trust’s members will have the following rights, according to the Trust’s FAQ:

• Voting rights on major club decisions from deciding who should be our president to deciding what kits we use.
• A weekly manager’s video update.
• Match highlights sent to your inbox every week
• Automatic entry in a fortnightly draw to win four seats in the directors box
• Automatic entry in a fortnightly draw to win two seats on the team bus for an away match
• Automatic entry in the annual prize draw to win major prizes
• 10% discount on club merchandise
• Weekly draw to nominate a club mascot for each home game
• Local discounts to attract you to visit the club and the city.

We will be watching Stirling Albion carefully to see if the momentum from a superbly executed takeover campaign is followed-up by a model example of a how a Trust can run a club for the benefit of its fans and the local community.

While there have been proposals about ‘azionaraito popolare’ (popular shareholding) for several years and at various levels of the Italian football pyramid, Thursday’s event was the biggest step forward so far for supporter ownership in Italy.

The launch meeting, held incongruously in the heart of the fascist-era EUR district, was a chance for organiser Walter Campanile and his team to reveal their plans for the first two years of activity. The priority from the start has been the purchase of shares to give supporters a voice in the running of the club, but other ideas include improving communications (notoriously poor at AS Roma), reworking ticket sales arrangements, promoting initiatives which will get young fans more involved, and trying to solve the problems created by the government’s fan ID card proposal, the controversial ‘Tessera del Tifoso’. One of the key aims which Campanile has identified is that of involving overseas supporters: Roma fans can be found in France, Greece, the UK, Indonesia, Australia, the USA, Saudi Arabia… why not involve them too? Many overseas fans would jump at the chance to get involved in running the club they love. Of course they will strengthen the project financially but beyond that, the trust aims to build a genuine sense of a global supporters’ community. The international dimension influenced the name chosen for the trust, MyRoma, which was selected by users of the website.

Antonia Hagemann, of Supporters’ Direct Europe, had flown over from London to participate in the meeting (while I got the chance to practice my English to Italian interpreting skills, endeavouring to turn her speech into some kind of comprehensible Italian for the audience!). Her first observation was that this was the most elegant occasion of its kind she’d ever attended to: no replica shirts here, just chic Italian tailoring all the way! She spoke about the importance of pressure on clubs over governance both from below – ie through Supporters’ Trusts like MyRoma – and from above, through SD itself and from bodies like UEFA and the European Commission. Support from SD has been vital for Campanile’s team and it is very clear that while many distinctively Italian – or even distinctively Roman – touches have been incorporated, the basic model to be adopted is one imported from abroad. The lawyers have closely studied other European structures, in particular those from Spain and Germany, and Campanile has been on a variety of visits both to the Arsenal Supporters’ Trust and to an international conference in Brussels to meet other fans further down the same road.

Inspiration and encouragement came from Jens Wagner, vice-chairman of the trust at HSV Hamburg (where the club is 100% owned by the fans), who spoke about the ways in which trusts can improve relationships with the club. Beyond the obvious priorities of stability and good governance, he addressed issues like rights for disabled fans, programmes for attracting young supporters and the role of fans in upholding & maintaining club traditions. His experience was clearly fascinating for the assembled fans, demonstrating the potential that supporter ownership really offers. On the other hand the audience were perhaps a little disconcerted by Wagner’s casual, indeed rather deadpan announcement that the Hamburg trust’s measures had included the creation of a dedicated supporters’ graveyard. That might be an import too far.

As for the 83 founder members who made up the Constituent Assembly (one for each year of Roma’s history), these were romanisti chosen from all walks of life to create as representative as possible a cross-section of the club’s support. The name which grabbed most attention was that of legendary player Giacomo Losi, nick-named ‘Core de Roma’ (386 appearances for AS Roma, 1954-69). The list includes members of parliament, presidents of fan clubs, office workers, computer programmers, actors, shop owners, lawyers, barbers, singers, graphic designers, air traffic controllers, playwrights, factory workers, university professors, historic leaders of the main ultras groups from the Curva Sud: all these and more besides are represented among the 83 founder members, to reflect the democratic, inclusive aspirations of the Trust.

Next up come practicalities: the association needs a headquarters, a bank account and some kind of secretarial services before it can start enrolling paying members. In the short term, MyRoma will be run by an appointed steering committee of lawyers, accountants and administers, with Campanile as President. Once the association is up and running, elections will be held for all roles. The impression given right from the start has been that this is a serious project, and a large group of people have volunteered considerable amounts of their time and expertise already. Annual membership doesn’t come cheap, at €150 per adult (though there are reductions for overseas members and under-18s). While this is understandable given the need to raise cash to buy shares, it’s possible that this may prove a deterrent to some possible members, especially given the tough economic climate in Italy at the moment – and it’s worth noting that at Hamburg, members only pay €48 a year. Only time will tell whether this pricing policy works out or whether it proves simply too expensive – let’s hope not.

After the meeting and a brief Q&A session the new trust’s board and founder members adjourned downstairs for a short ‘brindisi’ or toast. As local press photographers milled around in the spring sunshine, we were offered nibbles and a prudent half glass of prosecco (well, it was only Thursday lunchtime). A cautious and low-key celebration perhaps, but one which reflects the reality that we were celebrating only the beginning of something, and as yet nothing more. In many ways the hardest work still lies ahead.

The new Trust’s website is at MyRoma.it but is still being assembled. Complete documentation is online in Italian, English versions are imminent, with French and Spanish translations to follow.

Yesterday, we looked at how the idea of fan ownership has received serious attention in recent weeks, with the growing profiles of supporters’ trusts at English clubs. Today, wrapping up our weeklong series, we look at the the practicalities of cash, stadiums and regulations in fan ownership schemes.

In England, even if the will is there for fan ownership, there are huge practicalities to work around. The relationship between the Trust and the board is a key one. In Arsenal’s case, they have a good working relationship, whereas the Manchester United Supporters’ Trust have been a large driving force behind the Green and Gold protests.

And just because the Trust has the best interests of the team at heart, it doesn’t mean they’re prepared to throw their hard raised money at a club without due care, or that the relationship between club and trust is always smooth. At St Albans, the Saints Trust recently very pointedly rejected a request from the board to inject £10k into the club, firing a perfect riposte to the directors with an open letter.

At Merthyr Tydfil, last year saw the chairman and the Trust locked in a messy battle over cash for the club, while regimes past at Southampton have used PR methods to rubbish the Saints Trust in the past.

Clearly, there is a publicity battle to be fought, and one where a chairman with a good PR team or the ear of the local paper may have the upper hand. Getting a dialogue with the club is a hard job for any Trust.

Stadiums

There is also the issue of stadiums to consider. It’s no coincidence that both Brentford’s ex-vice chairman Brian Burgess and Exeter’s current vice-chair Julian Tagg have both told Pitch Invasion that a new or rebuilt stadium is key to the club’s future.

It’s also no coincidence that one of the most high-profile failures of the Trust movement, Stockport County, have suffered because they didn’t own their own stadium. As Dave Boyle says: “In Stockport’s case, they didn’t get a penny of the money spent on drinks and pies during their own matches, let alone during the rest of the week.”

It’s a situation Oxford United can well appreciate, while Crystal Palace’s financial position was hampered by the complex ground ownership arrangement. For Portsmouth, a small stadium for the Premier League has hurt their earning potential (although you suspect a larger Fratton Park wouldn’t have prevented the losses from mounting up), while Wimbledon simply had their stadium sold with no home to go to.

But Boyle also has words of caution for those clubs who do own their stadium. “There is a downside to owning your ground, as many clubs have used the asset value to borrow money to pay off other losses, in other words using the capital value of the ground to shore up revenue losses. You can’t do that if you don’t own the ground, and that to me is the real thing to avoid.

“It’s a short-term fix for long-term problems, so I’m all in favour of clubs having the rights over income at the club but not at all keen on them having the right to borrow against the value of it. The other issue is that plenty of people are attracted to football clubs because they own land and its pretty cheap. A club which didn’t own its land – or at least couldn’t use it for anything other than football and couldn’t borrow against it – would be a poison pill for the speculators and asset strippers who continue to plague lower-level football. Bees United are looking at some innovative ways in which that might be achieved and we’re helping them with those.”

And one area where all are in agreement is the need for regulation in football. “The biggest issue is finance,” says Brian Burgess, former chair of Brentford’s Bees United trust. “Just how do you finance a competitive playing budget when you haven’t got access to non-football income of one kind or another, whether it’s generated by a new stadium with lots of revenue earning facilities, or whether it’s sponsorship or TV money or just soft loans or equity from wealthy individuals?”

Towards a Level Playing Field

Concerns about how clubs can be kept on something like a level playing field whoever owns it have even started coming from the footballing authorities themselves. Lord Triesman and Lord Mahwinny have both talked about the need for clubs to cut debt-fueled spending. Others recognise that the way financial matters are currently structured in football risk sending even more clubs into administration or, worse, liquidation.

For Burgess, the move to change has to come from the top and he can see evidence of this: “UEFA are bringing in laws now so that in three years time a club wanting to compete in the Champions League or the Europa League will be required to show they’re breaking even.

“That’ll be a challenge for some of the clubs, and that’ll be a challenge for UEFA to enforce it. Time will tell but UEFA are going firmly down that route and they’ve just set up a football fans compliance panel, and Brian Lomax, the previous chairman of Supporters’ Direct, is on that panel. They’ve got three years to try and get things lined up so clubs will comply with that.

“That’s top down pressure from Europe. That, perhaps combined with the bottom-up pressure from supporters and Supporters’ Trusts, might mean the leagues tighten up regulation and introduce some form of salary cap, which they have in the Conference and League Two. A combination of these trends might change the world sufficiently for Supporters’ Trusts to be able to flourish.”

Regulating Football

Currently, there are several sympathetic politicians in the government towards the need for further regulation in football.

Cabinet minister Andy Burnham is a former chair of Supporters’ Direct while the current Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, Ben Bradshaw, is also the MP for Exeter. While Bradshaw isn’t as directly linked to the movement as Burnham is, he did supply a lot of help and support to Exeter City back in 2003 and understands how a Trust run club could work.

That could all change after the general election, where the Conservatives may well be in charge. Even if Labour gets in, there’s no guarantee Burham or Bradshaw will still be MPs or will have as much influence. The Conservatives will, as likely, have bigger priorities to deal with as an incoming administration and their natural leanings are towards the free market ideals of the Premier League. But if there’s a big development at a club like, say, Liverpool or Manchester United, who knows what their response will be.

Maintaining harmony

But, away from the Premier League and the wider issues, those clubs under Trust ownership have ongoing daily challenges. As Exeter City’s vice-chairman Julian Tagg says “any progress has to be within the ethos of the Trust.” It’s a tough balance.

Exeter are struggling towards the bottom of League One having enjoyed two promotions in successive seasons. And although the Trust, as owners, aren’t quite the same as the club (the directors), when things aren’t going well the Trust will come in for criticism too, some of it justified, some of it not.

At times it can be easy to forget that here is a group of fans who stepped in to save their club from dying and has turned it from a team with a losing attitude to one with a positive one. But that was some years ago now, in 2003. Today the challenge to to keep that membership growing, engaged and, most of all informed.

Any Trust club will recognise at least part of the criticism by the Scarborough fan in the comments on Tuesday’s article. But as a club gets more successful and, hoepfully, more professional, how does that Trust ethos marry with a professionalism that demands a drive for profit and success?

Perhaps more teams will follow Brentford’s lead and enter into a hybrid model with a wealthy benefactor. Brentford will have £1m a year for the next five years. Exeter City’s Trust put in a million into the club over five years.

Brian Burgess can see these sorts of deals becoming more common. “I think that’s quite a good model for other Trusts,” he says, “because we have to live in the real world. The economics of football as such mean it’s very difficult to compete under the current regime with the big clubs and cubs who’ve got wealthy supporters putting in loads of money. So you need to do this sort of deal and at least we’ve got some safeguards in with the golden share in particularly.”

But while Brentford are keen to show this model can work, Dave Boyle isn’t quite so sure, although he recognises that the Bees were largely forced down this route because many of their plans had to be torn up due to the recession.

“I’m not sure the relationship is sustainable in the medium term,” says Boyle. “I have a problem with the benefactor model in general, so I’d be very reticent about suggesting a hybrid was possible.

“I think we need to move football benefaction out of the category of the trophy asset and into something looking like charitable or arts donations. When people give money to those enterprises, they do so for a warm glow in their hearts, some publicity, and often because they care.

“In football, it always begins with similar language, about someone’s affinity for the club, but soon transpires that they have total control of the club’s policy, the donation was actually a loan and by the end it turns out that it looked a lot more like a calculated business decision or speculative investment gone wrong.”

Perhaps a compromise is in order, such as at Swansea, where the Trust had a huge hand in saving the club and still retains influence and a seat on the board. Or perhaps, such as in the case of Arsenal, it best acts as a watchdog for the fans and ensures the club maintains good communication with supporters’ representatives.

Whatever the future for Supporters’ Trusts and fan ownerships, it promises to be a busy one. Maybe the present focus on fan ownership will prove to be a passing fad, or perhaps it will go from strength to strength, as Vic Crescit of Arsenal’s trust hopes:

“Generally I believe fan ownership, including majority fan ownership and board membership, will be commonplace in the future. I think we’ll look back in 20 years and wonder what all the fuss was about. The level of disaffection and alienation of fans will either be recognised and dealt with or the game will wither and die as a mass spectator activity. It’s as simple as that. I’m optimistic that it’ll be the former.”

When this week-long series on fan ownership was conceived a few months ago, it was practically unthinkable that the dominant headlines in recent weeks would be about a potential supporters’ takeover of England’s biggest football club.

Yet, at the time of writing, the Manchester United Supporters’ Trust (MUST) has seen membership rise to around 128,000 since the wealthy Red Knights group announced their intention to take over the club with the help of the fans. At the other end of the pyramid, Chester City look set to start again under Supporters’ Trust ownership, and trusts across the land are ever more prominent in the media.

Fan ownership, then, is more relevant in English football than it has ever been, yet it also stands at a crossroads. Will we see the idea of Trust ownership take hold across the English leagues and many more clubs going into the hands of their supporters? Or, when we revisit articles from this period five years on, will it be a curious footnote as the billionaire single owner model reigns supreme?

And what of those clubs already under fan control? Will Brentford revert fully to the wealthy benefactor model? Will Exeter’s rapid rise through the ranks be the undoing of their fan ownership? Will AFC Wimbledon resolve their ground issue? And if a member from a Trust the size of Scarborough comments on here that there is a two-tier membership, what hope is there for a model that involves all fans?

Where, then, does fan ownership go from here?

Fan Ownership vs. the Benefactor Model

Whether the Trust movement takes off or not in the Premier League, the free market idea that billionaire owners are the best way forward has taken one hell of a kicking over the past 12 months. The Glazers at Manchester United, Hicks and Gillett at Liverpool, Mike Ashley at Newcastle and any one of the myriad of owners at Pompey have all galvanised the respective supporter bases at each club in opposition.

For Dave Boyle, the CEO of Supporters’ Direct, it’s not a surprise that the fans are starting to think towards a different ownership model. “I think there were two types of negative response to supporter ownership this time last year,” he says.

“The first was that it was only for the little clubs but with the discussion around Man Utd that’s not really tenable anymore, which in itself is on top of increasing understanding of the way German clubs work.

“The second response was that people could see some advantages to supporter ownership, but couldn’t see what the problem was that meant it was a solution worth pursuing. Linked to that was the idea that the current model delivered cash for player expenditure in an effective and efficient manner.”

It is Manchester United who are currently making the most waves in this area, and for Boyle, the whole saga has opened fans’ eyes to the dealings of the boardroom.

“It seems to me that a lot of people didn’t know how much the Glazer business plan bleeds them dry and how risky it is to the club in the medium-term and beyond. That information has been the catalyst for everything which happened subsequently. But the ground work was done back in the years leading up to the takeover in the campaigns against the club’s various takeovers, and in the anger which was fuelled by the inflation-busting ticket prices.

“But shy of sequestration of the club they need to be bought out, and that means people with money need to come to the table, and clearly, what one might like – 100% mutual ownership – must be balanced against the real world pressures. I’m hopeful that something can come together which will both lessen the need for the club to be so rapacious in its treatment of its supporters, and means that the club has a very strong, inalienable voice for the supporters’ trust.

“Ideally, I’d like to see the a situation where there is a year-on-year increase in the proportion of the club under the trust’s control through a levy on season tickets and merchandise, so the supporters whose revenue drives the club are given increasing ownership of it. That would seem to be both a narrative that fits the rhetoric and would be the only way to ensure that out of this sorry mess, something truly wonderful could emerge.”

But United will be one of the lucky clubs who can call upon a vast global fanbase, should they go down the supporter-owned route. Like Barcelona, the modern-day incarnation of Newton Heath FC will be unlikely to want for cash. Many other clubs are Premier League level may not be able to do the same.

It’s also worth pointing out that if United were to succeed as a fan-owned club in the cash-rich Premier League, they would first need to establish a Trust with a membership of millions rather than hundreds of thousands. Unlike lower league clubs with more modest ambitions, United fans will be unlikely to want to balance a commitment to fan ownership with a modest level of success on the pitch.

The Greatest League in the World

At the other end of the table, Portsmouth’s Trust are engaged in a battle for the very survival of their club. Soundings have already been made to the Conference about re-starting Pompey down the football pyramid, should the worst happen at the end of this season. They could also be joined by their opponents from the 2008 FA Cup Final – Cardiff City have been handed yet another postponement at the High Court as they look to pay huge unpaid tax bills.

Elsewhere, other Premier League chairmen look nervously at their finances. Bill Kenwright has already said Everton need a billionaire if they are to compete, while Eddie Davies at Bolton has just become the club’s main banker. Relegation would hit the Trotters hard.

For Vic Crescit from Arsenal’s Supporters’ Trust, in the context of all this, it’s ever more evident that having an active Trust is vital for any Premier League club.

“The Manchester United Supporters’ Trust has played an indispensable role along with the Independent Manchester United Supporters’ Association in holding the Glazers to account,” says Crescit. “The current campaign simply wouldn’t be happening without them.

“Fulham very probably would have lost their historic Craven Cottage ground if it hadn’t been for the Fulham Supporters’ Trust. Pompey would probably be out of business today if it weren’t for the work of the recently-established Pompey Supporters’ Trust. Arsenal would probably be in sole ownership of either Stan Kroenke or Alisher Usmanov if it weren’t for the Arsenal Supporters’ Trust.”

Crescit points to Spain where, in 1994, the law was changed to require all clubs to convert themselves into Sports Limited Companies. Only four clubs – Barcelona, Real Madrid, Athletic Bilbao and Osasuna – were financially stable enough to avoid this and remain owned by the fans. The rest of La Liga have seen their debts increase tenfold.

“The commercialisation of professional Spanish football is a failed experiment,” says Crescit. “Valencia currently has debts of nearly €600 million (US$810 million). That’s simply unsustainable and living proof that private ownership isn’t the panecea it was made out to be.”

As a concept, then, the Trust movement is currently riding a wave of momentum. But in the final piece of our series on fan ownership tomorrow, we will look at the practicalities of this from the perspective of the bottom line.

Analysing the supporter-ownership model, as we’ve been doing over the past few days, is fine, but it’s no substitute for getting stuck in and looking at the experience of the challenges first hand, as we look at today. Brian Burgess has been involved with Brentford’s Supporters’ Trust from the early days, sat as vice-chairman of the club and was recently elected to the Supporters’ Direct board. Gary Andrews headed to Griffin Park to meet him.

If part of a successful football club is down to luck that the right people inhabit the boardroom, then Brentford can feel luckier than most that Brian Burgess decided to get involved with their supporters’ trust, Bees United. It may have not always been plain sailing for the Bees since the Trust took over but, for the time being, the club’s future and ground is assured. Pitch Invasion caught up with Brian at Griffin Park following his recent election to the Supporters’ Direct board.

There’s a nice anecdote that gives you a clue to Brian Burgess’ way of viewing the boardroom at Brentford. Soon after Bees United assumed control of Brentford in 2006, a friend of the family congratulated him on taking over as vice-chairman. “You own your football club!” she said, excitedly. “No,” he corrected her. “The fans own my football club.”

I remind Brian of this as we settle into the directors bar at Griffin Park. Typically, rather than reminisce about the takeover, he uses it to to illustrate why the fans are so important in the running of Brentford.

“That’s right,” he nods. “The club members vote on issues. There’s a good example of that this summer. Because of the financial costs of competing in League One and the teams we have to compete with this season – the Leeds and the Charltons – the club needed a lot more cash and we couldn’t really borrow any more. The club has borrowed up to its limit. The debts are secured against the value of Griffin Park.

“It really needed a cash injection which the Supporters’ Trust just doesn’t have and cannot provide. A deal was done by Bees United with a very wealthy supporter called Matthew Benham who had already lent us significant sums of money to refinance our previous debts. I think he’d refinanced around four million pounds worth of debt, which is interest free, he took out a loan from Barclays that was two million, for example. So, instead of paying interest on that two million we have that interest free, which has been a huge boost to the club’s operating expenditure.

“But that wasn’t enough so he’s agreed to put more money in as preference shares. He’s agreed to put in a million pounds a year for the next five years. During that period Bees United will retain the majority shareholding. At the end of it there are options, so there are three possible outcomes of what could happen at the end of five years. For five years at least the situation is stable, it’s stable financially, it’s stable in terms of the ownership model because Bees United will be the majority shareholder.

“No one was able to sign that deal until we’d had a vote of the members, so all 1700 voting members had a say in that and 1200 of them voted in it, which is around 70%”

That’s a pretty impressive level of engagement, I say, given the apathy and disinterest many fans have in the off-the-pitch actions, let alone the idea of voting.

“Yes, and 99% of them voted in favour of the deal,” he says. “But the point is it was the fans, those members, who were in control of the situation. If they didn’t want to take this money from the wealthy supporter, if they didn’t want that deal, they could have voted it down. The point is, the club can’t be sold now without the approval of the members.”

Burgess’ may have now relinquished his vice-chairmanship but he still remains a key part of Bees United and recently was elected to the board of the nationwide organisation Supporters’ Direct. Indeed, his interest in fan ownership started back in 1967, when he was a young Bees supporter growing up in Hounslow. At the time Brentford’s owner was Jack Dunnett, a Labour MP for Nottingham, who decided he’d rather own Notts County than the Bees, and decided the best way to dispose of the club was to sell it to QPR. Brentford FC would have ceased to exist.

Although Burgess was too young to get involved in the campaign to save Brentford, the idea that supporters should own their club stuck with him and was the driving force behind him signing up to Bees United in 2001 when the club was, yet again, going through one of their regular periods of financial crisis and losing Griffin Park was a real possibility.

Burgess was living and working in the Midlands at the time and getting heavily involved wasn’t practical, but he soon moved into a consultancy role and returned to London. At the same time, Bees United were looking at possible plans for a new stadium. With a background in engineering, Burgess thought he could help and stood for election to the Trust board. Within a year, he’d been elected chairman.

At that time, there was an option agreement with Ron Noades, the majority shareholder, to buy the club for two pounds providing the Trust also relieved Noades of the bank guarantees he’d used to fund the club, which totaled around four million.

After several years of raising the cash needed to buy the club off Noades, the Trust finally took control on January 20th 2006. Burgess took the role of vice-chairman after tracking down former BBC Director General Greg Dyke, a Brentford and Manchester United fan who’d been on the board at Old Trafford, and persuaded him to take over as chairman.

All the time, though, the Trust had their eye on a new stadium. Often when new owners come in and talk about a new ground, it’s cause for eye-rolling. But in Brentford’s case, it’s acutely needed.

“All the time the long-term strategy was to try and develop the new stadium because we knew we’d never really be sustainable as a business here at Griffin Park. We budget to lose around half a million pounds a year in order to give us even a reasonable playing budget, let alone one that can compete in League One. There’s no commercial facilities here, nothing.

“It’s very difficult for us to earn any kind of serious revenue because there are no corporate boxes, no hospitality suites. During the week we don’t have conferencing and banqueting facilities that would enable us to make commercial revenue. It’s always been the plan to build a new stadium. I’ve been working on it all the way through and at the end of 2007 we did a deal with Barratts to buy this site at Lionel Road and it was obvious then it would become a full-time job.

“We formed a new subsidiary called Brentford FC Lionel Road limited just to focus on the stadium and that subsidiary, 99% of the shares are held by Brentford FC and the other 1% is a golden share for Bees United so that the site can’t be developed for anything else without Bees United’s approval. The idea of that golden share is to give Bees United a veto over that project being scuppered in years to come by the property developer – it’s got to be used as a stadium.”

But a mixture of the recession, a crash in the housing market affecting the new stadium – “Having got so close, it’s desperately disappointing the external economic environment has put a hold on it” – and bad manager choices took their toll on the Bees and held up the stadium, which is where the Matthew Benham deal comes in.

“We started on a high and it went downhill quite seriously for a couple of years – it just shows the importance of having a manager who can spend your budget wisely. I think if you’ve got a good manager you’ve got to give him a budget that’s good enough to compete – no one can work miracles without a sufficient budget. But beyond that, throwing an ever bigger budget at the playing squad doesn’t bring you success unless the manager is really good, so you need both.

“You need the manager and you need a sufficient budget and we had neither for a couple of seasons. Since we’ve got Andy Scott, Andy obviously has done a really good job with a limited budget, got us up as Champions last year.

“Now the standard’s higher, we’re playing against bigger clubs like Leeds, Norwich, Southampton and Charlton and you need more money. Bees United couldn’t raise the kind of money we needed to compete. If we had serious aspirations to get promoted from this league into the Championship you need the Matthew Benham deal, we needed that extra million pounds a year.”

Although the Benham deal creates a Trust-single owner hybrid, Burgess is adamant this is the best deal for the Bees and can see other clubs following suit. “I think it’s quite a good model for other Trusts because we have to live in the real world. The economics of football as much mean it’s very difficult to compete under the current regime with the big clubs and clubs who’ve got wealthy supporters putting in loads of money. So you need to do this sort of deal and at least we’ve got some safeguards in with the golden share particularly.”

One area where Burgess will readily hold his hands up to getting it wrong is in his choice of managers. After Martin Allen left in 2006, Brentford went through three managers in one season, when Leroy Rosenior, Scott Fitzgerald and Terry Butcher all took the hotseat as the Bees struggled at the wrong end of the table and eventually went down to League Two.

“We didn’t have anyone on the board, including me, who really had a clue on how to pick a good football manager. It’s such a big decision. If I had to say ‘what is the one single most important decision a football club board has to take, it’s the choice of the manager. And obviously we got it wrong three times.

“The fourth time we got it right! We could have appointed Andy Scott the first time and avoided three disasters and two years of relegation. Had we got Andy Scott first time round, perhaps we’d have been if not in the Championship, at least pressing for it now. So it set us back a couple of years.”

Burgess is not fond of the culture that calls for managerial sackings every ten minutes but recognises this is part of supporter expectations. “I think in general, there won’t be a majority of supporters who would support taking a long-term view and saying that’s it’s much better that the club survives even if it has to go down to the Conference, rebuild and come back up again – it’s actually much better to be sustainable and running sensibly, than it is to try and get lots of money from somewhere and push for success.

“Trust members might make the long term view. Not all of them though – I think even some of them would want to take the short term view. But you’re always going to be under pressure to get short-term results, not to accept relegation as part of a longer-term strategy. So the short-term aspirations of supporters for success is always a limiting factor, I think, in terms of how sustainably you can run the club.”

Unsurprisingly, Burgess also calls owners who throw vast sums of money at clubs “unsustainable” but also recognises that as long as this continues, smaller clubs are limited as to how far they can compete, but he is also a mixture of realistic and optimistic as to how far Supporters’ Trusts can go.

“One glib answer is it can go as far as Barcelona and Real Madrid because they’re owned by their fans, so in a way there’s no limit. However, you have to look at where you’re starting from and the days where Wimbledon came into the league and were able to rise up into the Premier League and win the FA Cup — in those days anything was possible. And it could be lovely to see AFC Wimbledon do that again.

“But for clubs like us with legacy and debt that we’ve got and the legacy of people on the board who are there not because they believe in the Trust model but because they put money into the club previously and are entitled to a seat on the board you’ve got that legacy that holds you back from fully exploiting the trust model.

“The biggest issue is finance – just how do you finance a competitive playing budget when you haven’t got access to non-football income of one kind or another, whether it’s generated by a new stadium with lots of revenue earning facilities, or whether it’s sponsorship or TV money or just soft loans or equity from wealthy individuals?  I think the best hope for the Supporters’ Trust movement is if the regulatory regime changes.

“I was very interested to read Lord Mawhinny’s speech recently saying that things had to chance, the distribution of wealth, the totally unequal distribution of wealth between the big clubs and the smaller clubs couldn’t really continue, something had to be done to try and even it up otherwise too many of the smaller clubs would go to the wall.”

But for all the talk of what Supporters’ Trusts can achieve, Burgess is quick to point to a very specific legacy of Bees United: putting a roof on the Ealing Terrace, a project that had been talked about to Brentford for around 20 years, and one the Trust-owned club managed in two. It was, as Burgess puts it, physical evidence that the club was progressing.

Even so, the new stadium at Lionel Road remains a key part of Brentford’s future and one Burgess sees as the key if the club is to progress. “I don’t accept there that there’s any limit as long as we get a new stadium. I’ve always accepted we’ll never really succeed above League One if we stay at Griffin Park.

“I first got involved to help out on the new stadium, and that’s always been part of this. It was a strategy when we took over, it’s the strategy now, I don’t really see any alternative to having a new stadium on a new site, which generates a lot more income back on match days and non-match days. But if we get that then I think, well I’d like to think, we can create another Barcelona. I don’t see that we have to limit our ambition.

“It will take time, maybe generations, but as long as we’re financially sustainable in a new stadium with non-football revenue generating facilities, I think it can be done.”

As we’re leaving, Brian insists on taking me to his office so I can get an aerial view of the new stadium. It’s gloomy but the shape of the area that needs developing can be just about made out. Will it have the same intimacy as Griffin Park, I wonder, a stadium where the fans are close to the pitch creating a cathedral of noise? Absolutely, he assures me. This intimacy was one of the top demands Brentford fans put on a new ground. Lionel Road, he says, will not be another identikit stadium.

At Brian’s urging, I walk a different route back to the train station, past the proposed Lionel Road development. What currently resides there is a mixture of waste and industrial land. It is not particularly attractive to look at but it’s easy to see how this could be transformed into something far more useful. It is, perhaps, an apt metaphor for the Trust movement as a whole.

In today’s installment of our week-long examination of fan ownership, we turn to Germany. The Bundesliga is often held up as an ideal example of this and a model that English clubs should follow. But, as Terry Duffelen reports, while there is much to admire about the German model, it would be a mistake to see it as a panacea for all football’s problems.

You know when English football is in trouble when it looks to Germany for guidance. Certainly, there is much to be admired about the structure and rules that govern club ownership and management in Germany. However, like all management models, it is not perfect.

Put simply, football clubs in Germany are sporting associations. Many were formed many years before football was fully codified, as gymnastic clubs. They are not businesses per se although elements of the club can be run as such. The most apparent advantage to this is that any surplus generated by a club stays within the club and is not used to pay off someone else’s debt or to swell the coffers of a non football business.

The basis of the German model is the 50+1 rule whereby a minimum of 51% of the club must be owned by club members. This still allows for considerable investment opportunities for private business to invest while preventing them from having overall control of the direction of the club. A Bundesliga club board is made up of delegates selected by the shareholders. That way the supporter membership associations or Mutterveiren have a direct say on the management of the club.

The benefits to this method are clear, especially to English supporters who long for an end to the days where English clubs are subject to the whims and excesses of individual owners or uncaring capitalists who use their club to clear their own debts. Corporate interest is curtailed by the interests of the supporters. As long as the supporters have the best interest of the club at heart, that club is unlikely to allow itself to become mismanaged.

Lizenzierungsordnung

Working alongside this model are the DFL’s rules of governance, the Lizenzierungsordnung. These rules regulate the finances of clubs, control the levels of debt that each club should has and imposes restrictions on the amount of money clubs can spend of player’s wages, a major issue in England but also a perceived criticism of the German game and its inability to compete at European level (a view I don’t necessarily subscribe to, but that is another argument). Failure to comply with these regulations can result in the club’s licence being withdrawn and them not being able to participate in the Bundesliga.

It should be said, however, that concerns exist about the tightness of the rules and as to what extent they are are enforced because German football is not without its problems.

For example, in recent years Borussia Dortmund have racked up considerable debt following their glory years in the Champions League. Meanwhile, their neighbours and fierce rivals, Schalke, are currently feeling the pinch with stories coming out in the the German media of tight financial constraints and even talk of bankruptcy. The city of Leipzig, despite a brand new stadium built for the 2006 World Cup, has seen a succession of professional clubs that go to the wall.

So the 50+1 approach to club ownership is not necessarily a guarantee of good governance and Bundesliga clubs are still quite capable of having eyes that are too big for their stomachs. Furthermore, it has critics from within. Hannover 96 President Martin Kind is among them. He argues that Hannover would be well placed to compete for honours and thereby make the Bundesliga more competitive, if he could attract more investors by giving them a larger slice of the pie.

There are also exceptions and anomalies. Bayer Leverkusen and the Wolfsburg club have their genesis as factory clubs owned by Bayer and Volswagen respectively. Hoffenheim’s rise through the leagues to the Winter Championship in 2008 was funded entirely by former player and software billionaire Dietmar Hopp. To use a crude expression, were Hopp to get hit by a bus tomorrow, would Hoffenheim be able to continue investing at the same levels without his benevolence?

And of course there is the recent intervention by Red Bull who are the latest to try and bring sustainable top flight football to Leipzig. Opinion of the energy drink supplier’s involvement in professional sport is so polarised that they should consider buying Marmite. They took control of SSV Markranstädt, a club located not far from the city who play in a regional league in the fifth tier of German football last year. Red Bull are not whole owners of the club and are not are they permitted to incorporate their brand into the club’s name as they have done in Austria, the US and Brazil. However, they have changed the club’s name to RB Leipzig, changed the kits to reflect Red Bull’s aggressive branding strategy and are top of the league. The club plan to move to the Zentralstadion in Lepzig and have ambitions to play in the Bundesliga in a few years time.

The cases of Hoffenheim and RB Leipzig demonstrate that despite majority supporter ownership, neither club would be able to achieve what they have without considerable corporate backing. The price that has been paid is the the identity of both clubs has been transformed and one can only imagine that were either party to withdraw their investment, the clubs could find themselves faced with liabilities that they could not meet. Under this model it is still quite likely that German clubs could end up in the same boat as Portsmouth. It should be stressed however, that German football’s rules on spending as a percentage of turnover should reduce the possibility of this taking place.

It is important, then, not to over romanticise the German system. Bundesliga clubs do overspend. The league is still recovering from the excesses of the late 90′s and the demise of the Kirch corporation followed by the collapse of the corresponding TV deal that left a number of clubs in the hole. Bayern Munich’s FC Hollywood years were operated under the same rules as today. At one time Luca Toni was the highest paid player on the planet at Bayern. German football is quite capable of getting carried away.

Having said that, the system does seem to work overall and with a broad consensus within the game. The Bundesliga is not the most glamorous league in the world. However, it continues to turn a profit, has the highest attendances in Europe and among the lowest ticket prices. The existence of subsidised attendance costs, terracing and access to free football on TV can be directly attributed to supporter’s influence in the club’s decision making.

This sort of legitimate intervention by supporters is unheard of in modern English football. As a model for the future of the Premier and Football Leagues, you could do far worse. But what is more important, in my opinion, is that the leagues operate within strict financial parameters laid down by well put together and vigorously enforced rules that encourage good governance and fiscal responsibility.

Terry Duffelen is the creator of the Onion Bag and writes a weekly blog about the Bundesliga on Some People Are On The Pitch.

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.

Photo by James Vickery

Go to an Exeter City away game and chances are you’ll hear Grecians fans singing “We own our football club” to the home support. It’s a powerful reminder of just how close the bond is between supporters and their club as City fans revel in their status as one of the few supporter-owned clubs in the country, and one of the most successful.

The Devon club may have become an unintentional poster child for the Supporters Trust movement but, as their vice-chairman Julian Tagg noted yesterday, there is no blueprint for a fan-run club at their current level of League One, far less the Premier League. It is an issue The Red Knights will no doubt be picking over, along with any other top-flight or Championship Supporters’ Trust that harbours ambitions of owning their own club.

Exeter City: the poster child

Whenever the example of Supporters’ Trusts come up, Exeter City are the obvious place to start. The Devon side may only occasionally trouble the back pages of national newspapers, but they’re also the leading example of a successful Trust.

Created, initially, to find funds to buy striker Gary Alexander, the Trust, like so many others, came into its own when the club was at its lowest ebb. In the spring of 2003, Exeter had been relegated out of the Football League and were staring oblivion in the face. Their chair and vice-chair, John Russell and Mike Lewis, had just been arrested for fraud (Russell was later convicted and jailed for this), the debts were mounting and saviours were in short supply.

The Trust were invited to take over the day-to-day running of the club and embarked on a period of intensive fire-fighting. They managed to negotiate the purchase of shares from former chair Ivor Doble at the 11th hour meaning the fans were truly in charge of the club. Had this not been completed, the Trust had a press release drawn up saying they could no longer continue to fund City and the 100-year-old club would have, most likely, been liquidated.

But while Trust members were happy to raise large sums of money, which saved the club in the long-term, much of their current success can be put down to luck or, more specifically, the moment Tony Cascarino drew them away to Manchester United in the 3rd round of the FA Cup. The money from this, and the replay, generated around £1m, enough to pay off a large chunk of Exeter’s debts.

From there the club has gone from strength to strength. After losing the Conference playoff final in 2007, they went one better the following year before securing back-to-back promotions as runners up in League Two. Heady times indeed.

Off the pitch, the Trust was slowly evolving as well, from fire-fighters into a more professional outfit. Exeter fans with experience in the city were brought onto the board, while Denise Watts, a single mum, took over as chair of first the Trust, then the club. This was the ethos of the Trust in a nutshell – any fan could join, stand for election and find themselves shaping Exeter’s future.

But promotion to a higher level has brought a new set of challenges. “At the moment we’re the second smaller club in the division in terms of the number of people our ground can take,” says Julian Tagg, the club’s vice-chair and one of the original Trust members who pitched in at boardroom level in 2003.

“We look at the rugby club [Exeter Chiefs]. They’ve boosted attendences and, via that and their facilities, leisure dollars spent at the ground. This is something, with the current stadium, we can’t quite match. There’s a lot of work to be done now in how we structure the club and how we maintain that Trust ethos, and how we rebuild the stadium to bring in new finance to the club.”

The stadium issue is one of the most pressing concerns for Exeter. Their Old Grandstand is on its last legs and badly needs replacing, the uncovered away terrace needs work and the whole pitch needs moving and relaying before any of this work can be done. The Grecians are reasonably fortunate in that while they don’t own their ground, the local council leases, meaning development, while slow, is possible.

For the time being, though, the club’s attention is also taken up by Exeter’s relegation battle at the foot of League One and while Tagg is confident they can survive, he knows their success on the pitch is tied into major off the pitch activity.

“We can compete in this league,” he says, “and we may even get into the league above, all things being equal. My ambition is always took look at Crewe as an example – much of their success has been down to youth.

“If we can complete our stadium then we can sit down and think about how we go from there, but we can’t do this overnight. Everybody wants instant success – that’s what causes their downfall – and as long as people can be patient, we can get there but we have to do it gradually.

“We sold four young players and it took ten years of work on them before it came to fruition. That’s not short-term at all. If we start with them at eight, nine, ten, who knows what could happen.”

It’s something that has been borne out by the club’s most recent accounts, when they announced losses of £227,000 between June 2008 and May 2009, although taking into account depreciation, the trading deficit stands at £67,092. This includes the sale of youngster George Friend to Wolves for around £350,000. Since then two more youth graduates have departed – Dean Moxey for Derby and Danny Seaborne to Southampton, both for six-figure sums.

Strangely, the club would have been better, financially speaking, to avoid promotion. The Grecians earned just £10,000 from finishing second in League Two. With bonus payments this meant Exeter would have been better off reaching the playoffs or missing out on promotion all together.

The clubs debts stand at £1.8m, although much of this is soft loans from the Supporters’ Trust. Even so, this shows what a hard job a sensible, relatively run supporter-owned club has in the lower leagues. Not that Tagg would ever consider selling up.

“An offer to buy the club would be something the members would have to vote on, and you never say never, but to me the only reason we’d do this is is we’ve failed and I’ve not got involved to preside over that. We’ll do the best we possibly can.

“If someone were to come along and they were genuinely philanthropic and loved the club then we may consider this, but I’d prefer that we stayed in the hands of the supporters.”

Brentford: The hybrid club

When Exeter gained promotion last season, the club that pipped them to first place was another fan-owned club, Brentford. Supporter power, for one season at least, ruled at the top of League Two. But while Exeter have stuck resolutely to the Trust model, Brentford have gone down the philanthropic route and found a rich fan willing to sit alongside the Trust, Bees United, at boardroom level.

Hit hard by the recession and the increased costs of League One, as well as plans for a desperately-needed new stadium, and at their borrowing limit, Bees United realised they needed a significant cash injection to compete and struck a deal with wealthy supporter Matthew Benham, who had already lent £4m to the club to help manage their debt.

Under the terms of the new deal, Benham will put in a million pounds a year for the next five years, while Bees United remain the majority shareholder, giving Brentford a form of financial stability. At the end of this period, Bees United can either buy Benham out and repay his loans, or Benham can exercise an option to become a majority shareholder, with Bees United becoming a minority stakeholder.

However, the Trust would also retain a Golden Share to ensure that Griffin Park could not be sold without their permission and the proposed new stadium at Lionel Road is not affected. Crucially, this deal had to be approved by the membership and 70% of Bees United members voted on the issue, with 99% agreeing to the move.

For Brian Burgess, former vice-chairman of the club and an active member of the Trust, the deal is a sensible one, and something he can see being replicated at other clubs. “I think that’s quite a good model for other Trusts because we have to live in the real world,” he says.

“The economics of football as such mean it’s very difficult to compete under the current regime with the big clubs and cubs who’ve got wealthy supporters putting in loads of money. So you need to do this sort of deal and at least we’ve got some safeguards in with the golden share in particular.”

Without it, Burgess doesn’t believe Brentford would have been able to compete. “The standard’s higher, we’re playing against bigger clubs like Leeds, Norwich, Southampton and Charlton and you need more money. Bees United couldn’t raise the kind of money we needed to compete. If we had serious aspirations to get promoted from this league into the Championship you need the Matthew Benham deal, we needed that extra million pounds a year.

“That doesn’t guarantee that we will get promoted, but the plan is to work towards getting promoted in the next four years and have a new stadium in the fifth year so we can progress from there. Without that million pounds a year, I think we’d struggle in League One and, of course, the danger is that we’d have got relegated again. In League Two because you’ve got smaller teams with lower away support, you just don’t get the revenue. You tend to get into a downward spiral. Obviously we want to get into a virtuous upward spiral.”

Bees United was formed in 2001 in response to worries over the future of Griffin Park and in 2006 the Trust brought the club from then-chairman Ron Noades for two pounds, although a condition of this was they relieved Noades’ company of the £4.5m owed in loans to the banks.

Former BBC director general Greg Dyke, a Brentford and Manchester United fan, was installed as chairman with Burgess as his deputy and although the club was relegated from League One in 2007, they managed to bounce back under young manager Andy Scott. In the meantime, Burgess and Bees United were, like Julian Tagg at Exeter, turning their attentions to their stadium, and rapidly concluded that it needed replacing.

“We knew we’d never really be sustainable as a business here at Griffin Park,” says Burgess. “We budget to lose around half a million pounds a year in order to give us even a reasonable playing budget, let alone one that can compete in League One. There’s no commercial facilities here, nothing. It’s very difficult for us to earn any kind of serious revenue because there are no corporate boxes, no hospitality suites.

“During the week we don’t have conferencing and banqueting facilities that would enable us to make commercial revenue. It’s always been the plan to build a new stadium. I’ve been working on it all the way through and at the end of 2007 we did a deal with Barratts to buy this site at Lionel Road and it was obvious then it would become a full-time job.”

The recession and the housing market crash knocked plans for the new stadium back from the original date of 2012, but it still remains on course as Brentford look to prove that Trusts and wealthy investors can co-exist comfortably at boardroom level.

The new clubs

Further down the chain comes two very unique success stories: AFC Wimbledon and FC United of Manchester. Both these clubs were formed out of protest – the Dons from the football league’s decision to relocate the original Wimbledon to Milton Keynes, while FCUM was a reaction to the Glazers takeover of Manchester United and a desire for United supporters to get back to their roots and ensure that ordinary supporters weren’t priced out of watching their team.

Both have enjoyed impressive rises through the non-league pyramid. Since their formation in 2002, AFC Wimbledon have risen from the Combined Counties League to the Blue Square Premier, including back-to-back promotions in recent seasons, and are currently still in the hunt for a play-off spot. Similarly, FC United won promotion three times in their first three seasons before stalling at the Unibond Premier.

It is, perhaps, no coincidence that both Wimbledon and FC United have enjoyed success at lower league levels. They both started with a blank slate – there was no burden of history or, indeed, historic debts and both had a ready made community and Trust ethos in place (the Dons Trust structure and values can be read here). What’s more, the crowds they were attracting gave them a significant financial advantage when competing in the lower leagues, where income is often scarce.

In many respects, both these clubs can be seen as being the purest and most successful wholly Trust-owned teams (even Exeter City have other minor non-fan shareholders) but as both teams climb the leagues and compete at a higher level, new problems arise. Just as the blank canvas benefitted these clubs at the start, so it also means each promotion is a further step into the unknown.

Chief among these issues is the now-common theme of the stadium. AFC Wimbledon currently groundshare with Kingstonian, although the Dons actually own Kingsmeadow Stadium, while FC United are tenants at Bury’s Gigg Lane. But as the Dons rise up the league, the looming question is whether they continue at Kingsmeadow or look to build a new stadium in the borough of Merton, their spiritual home.

This ties in with the debate about how best for the club to progress as a whole. Gone are they days when the old Wimbledon could rise from non-league to the top flight and win the FA Cup, but if AFC have aspirations to continue their climb up the football pyramid, there will be a level, as Exeter and Brentford have found, where Trust money can only fund so far. For the time being, though, Dons fans are enjoying their status in the Conference.

FC United are a slightly different case as they have no ‘spiritual’ home (unless you count Old Trafford) but are well aware that their own stadium is key to future progression. Currently rental on Gigg Lane is around £5,000 per match. The Rebels have recently submitted plans for a 4,000 capacity stadium to a supportive Manchester City Council (unlike Merton Borough Council, who are lukewarm on a Dons return) and will be looking to the end of their lease at Bury in 2011 as a rough timescale. A ground of their own will give them greater opportunity for matchday and non-matchday revenue.

What FCUM and AFC Wimbledon both have, though, that many clubs can’t buy is a stable well-run board and a genuine sense of community and belonging to the club. And in non-league, where many sides are an unexpected bill away from crisis, that counts for a lot.

The phoenix from the flames

As Dave Lister once said to the hologram Rimmer in Red Dwarf: “Cheer up, death isn’t what it used to be,” and that could equally apply to football clubs teetering on the brink today. If your club went out of business years ago, that was the end – or if a new club was set up with the same name, it would take decades to get back to where you once were as Aldershot and Accrington Stanley can testify.

But if a club collapses financially today, there is light at the end of the tunnel and often the Supporters’ Trust is waiting in the wings to reform the club and put it on a more even keel, giving fans the opportunity to run their club as opposed to an owner with big promises but smaller pockets.

Dave Boyle, CEO of Supporters’ Direct, is one of those who urges fans not to despair if it looks as if their club is going to the wall. “The idea that the worse thing that can happen to a club is that it be liquidated isn’t as strong as it was,” he says.

“Fans would be told of this horrible prospect of the club disappearing and then accept whatever sharp practice, ground sale, asset strip was put forward as the least worst option. Even if that didn’t happen, they’d fundraise like crazy trying to keep the club afloat when their money and energy were never going to do the job.

“But thanks to those trusts and those clubs, we know in fact what people always knew in their heart of hearts – that football in a given community isn’t about the limited company formed to play it in an organised football league. If that company were to be liquidated, football would survive in the community. And, thanks to the success enjoyed by those clubs and the enjoyment their fans have in owning their own team, we see a lot of people being very sanguine indeed about keeping a busted flush of a small town team alive.”

Perhaps the leading example of this is AFC Telford, who were formed out of the ashes of Conference side Telford United. The Bucks were liquidated in 2004 when the chairman and owner, Andrew Shaw, got into business difficulties and had to put his entire empire into administration. But no sooner had United ceased to exist, the Trust was waiting in the wings to create the phoenix club.

Having secured use of Telford United’s New Bucks Head ground, the club was placed in the Northern League Division One. Within three years they were playing in the Conference North, with crowds averaging around 2,000. Far from killing the support for football in the town, Telford United’s demise actually re-energised support. The town rallied round and created a community club that was far more engaged with its supporters. In both potential and execution, AFC Telford are the best possible advert for a supporter-owned phoenix club.

Scarborough Athletic are another example of the supporters rallying to keep professional football in the town after the original club, Scarborough FC went bust in 2007 with debts of £2.5m. Again, a new club rose from the ashes under the management of the Supporters’ Trust, although the Seadogs have fell further than many reformed teams and, after one promotion, currently play in the Northern Counties East Football League Premier Division, groundsharing with neighbours Bridlington.

Tomorrow, we will look at those who’ve not quite been the same kind of resounding successes the Trust movement was hoping for.

Slowly, a behind-the-scenes footballing revolution is growing. Whether it’s Portsmouth’s ongoing demise, the Glazers burdening Manchester United with hundreds of millions of pounds with of debt, Hicks and Gillett at Liverpool, Ashley at Newcastle or, lower down, the Vaughan family taking Chester City to the wall, the spotlight has well and truly turned on the owners. And with fans becoming more alarmed at the mismanagement of their clubs at boardroom level, supporters are asking whether it’s time that the fans took control of their clubs.

Fan ownership, on the surface, seems sensible and logical. These are people who, unlike, say, the Glazers, have the best interest of their club at heart and care passionately about keeping their team alive and successful. Barcelona are often cited as the ideal for any fan-owned club to aim for, while other Europhiles will point to the Bundesliga’s ownership model, where 51% of the club is owned by supporters.

If only it were that simple. Barcelona’s ownership is a unique mix of football, politics and cultural identity, while the Bundesliga has regulation in place securing the fans’ shareholding, and even then this isn’t as clear cut as it sounds. English football operates on very different lines, where the free market reigns. The conditions are quite distinct.

Then there are the clubs who’ve already been owned by their supporters. Exeter City, the leading light in the Trust movement, is adjusting to a higher level, Brentford have moved towards a hybrid model, while AFC Wimbledon face serious choices should they get promotion to the league. Then there’s Notts County and Stockport County, two teams where Trusts have tried and failed.

But with Manchester United and Liverpool fans, and others, pushing for more fan involvement at boardroom level, it’s time to ask if supporter ownership really is the way forward, or whether English football doomed to stick with the sugar daddy model. Over the course of the week, we’ll be examining the concept of Trusts, fan ownership and looking where the ownership model should go next.

The birth of a movement

Each Trust is different, and each was born in a different way. In Exeter City’s case, it was a group of fans who wanted to club together to raise enough money to buy the striker Gary Alexander. For Brentford, it was due to concern over the possibility of losing their ground, Griffin Park, to developers. Newcastle United’s Trust came from their Supporters Club as they looked to find an organised body to represent the interests of the fans. In AFC Wimbledon’s case, their club had been moved to Milton Keynes and, in many suppporters’ eyes, simply ceased to exist, and so on.

But there’s a fundamental thought behind the Trust movement: that supporter ownership is a good thing, whether this is representation at boardroom level or outright ownership. For Brian Burgess, ex-vice-chairman of Brentford and recent electee to the board of Supporters’ Direct, this is a principle that was picked up at an early age.

His involvement was triggered by an incident back in 1967, when Jack Dunnet, the then Brentford owner, attempted to sell the club to QPR and put the Bees out of business. “There was uproar among supporters and public meetings. I was too young to go to these but there was always talk in the newspapers that this was wrong – an individual selling the club – it’s our club and the supporters should own it.

“The club was sold to a consortium of businessmen, who saved it, but I remembered that idea – the idea that supporters should own the club and it shouldn’t be up for sale.”

Nearly 35 years later Burgess joined the newly-formed Brentford Supporters Trust, Bees United, seeing it as an opportunity to realise that dream and in 2006 Bees United took control of Brentford. They are still the majority shareholder, although have entered into a hybrid model with a wealthy supporter as they look to build a new stadium.

Brentford are still a rarity, though, and currently sit in League One, along with Exeter City, a completely Trust run club. After that, you have to look to non-league to find other supporter-owned clubs, such as AFC Wimbledon, Telford United and FC United or Manchester.

Going to the top

But this doesn’t mean that Trusts can’t play a huge part at a higher level. Since the media started turning their attentions to the Glazer buy out of Manchester United and the £716m debt they’ve saddled the club with, the Manchester United Supporters’ Trust (MUST) have emerged as key players in both the spread of the Green and Gold campaign and the movement for fan ownership.

If this seems like a pipe dream, last week the Red Knights, a group of wealthy Manchester United fans, met to discuss a possible takeover of the club from the Glazers. It was no coincidence that a key part of this statement was a call to United supporters worldwide to support them. And this involved working closely with MUST.

Duncan Drasdo, the Chief Executive of MUST, called the Red Knights launch “hugely welcome” and in a joint statement said: “Initially the Red Knight Group has effectively set a challenge to Manchester United supporters to demonstrate they wish to see an alternative ownership proposal developed. In the first instance supporters are being asked to do this simply by joining the free online membership of the Supporters Trust (MUST) and swelling its ranks to an initial target of at least 100,000.” To put this into perspective, Exeter City, currently the most successful Trust-run club, has just over 3,000 members.

Even when there is no apparent urgency for fans to band together for their club, the Trust movement is often working behind the scenes both with the club and as a watchdog on the boardroom. Arsenal and Tottenham Hotspur may be bitter rivals on the pitch, yet off it the aims of their Trusts are remarkably similar.

For Arsenal, this can be summed up in three words: Ownership, representation and influence. The mission statement may be wordier at Spurs but the ideals are the same – an ongoing positive dialogue between fans and the board, supporter representation at board level, and contributing to the future success of Tottenham.

The Arsenal Supporters’ Trust formed in 2003 and Vic Crescit, a long-time member, thinks recent events at Ashburton Grove have vindicated the decision to form a Trust. “The Trust was proved absolutely right in setting up when it did. In recent years we’ve seen the ownership of the club transformed. Stan Kroenke, the owner of the MLS’s Colorado Rapids,  is now the single biggest shareholder, behind him is the Russian/Uzbek Alisher Usmanov on just over 26%.

“Then comes Danny Fiszman on 16% and Lady Nina Bracewell-Smith on 15.9%. They account for around 88% of the shares between them. Around 11% is in the hands of small shareholders like me. Around 1% of the shares are “orphan” shares where the owners have died before selling them or passing them on or can’t be traced.

“The Trust owns a small number of shares held mutually in trust for its members, plus it groups together all the shares owned personally by members. By combining in this way AST has a far bigger influence in the club than the small shareholders would operating on their own in isolation.”

Although the formation of the Trust was initially viewed with suspicion at Arsenal, after the board came in for criticism over the financing of the Emirates, they opened a dialogue with the Trust and the relationship has been good since, although the Trust continues to keep a close eye on boardroom developments.

The challenges of answering to the fans

Although each Trust has different aims – ranging from outright ownership to simply fostering better links between fans and the club – all have a commitment to an open and democratic relationship with the supporters. There are regular elections for members to hold the Trust board to account. It is, in essence, how any democracy should work.

Offering help and guidance is Supporters Direct, an organisation that came out of the government’s football taskforce report in 1999. They may be just over ten years old, but SD have done as much to instigate fan ownership as anybody. Committed to a greater level of fan ownership, democracy and general accountability in football, and other sports, they have steadily grown in influence offering advice on everything from governance and ownership to finances. Accreditation from Supporters Direct is a sign a Trust is to be taken seriously.

But more than this, the organisation is putting serious pressure on the authorities for a more sustainable model. As their CEO Dave Boyle says: “In football’s version of the tortoise and the hare, the hare wins the race and its only two years’ later that the hare’s house is repossessed by the bank for the loans taken out to get bionic implants, which is scant consolation for the tortoise who was sacked halfway through the race. Or, as an economist might put it, all the incentives are in the wrong place.”

But while there is still a serious imbalance in football, Boyle sees plenty of progress over the past decade. “Thanks to the work of AFC Wimbledon, AFC Telford, FC United and Scarborough Athletic, the idea that the worse thing that can happen to a club is that it be liquidated isn’t as strong as it was. Fans would be told of this horrible prospect of the club disappearing and then accept whatever sharp practice, ground sale, asset strip was put forward as the least worst option. Even if that didn’t happen, they’d fundraise like crazy trying to keep the club afloat when their money and energy were never going to d the job.

“But thanks to those trusts and those clubs, we know in fact what people always knew in their heart of hearts – that football in a given community isn’t about the limited company formed to play it in an organised football league. If that company were to be liquidated, football would survive in the community.

“And, thanks to the success enjoyed by those clubs and the enjoyment their fans have in owning their own team, we see a lot of people being very sanguine indeed about keeping a busted flush of a small town team alive. In a nutshell, the worst that could happen used to be liquidation; now people understand that liquidation can be a cause for rebirth as a new, better type of club.”

There is no better place to illustrate this than the recent goings on at Chester City, but many other clubs have seen that rebirth can be a positive thing, to say nothing of those fans who’ve taken the initiative and have not only saved their club but made a better fist of it than previous owners. As Boyle says: “There were people who aren’t in favour of this approach to the game, who said at the start that it shouldn’t happen, and couldn’t happen.

“But that notion – that fans are too stupid / ignorant / passionate to be involved is a hard one to make in public, so they’d said instead that it was a lovely idea, but ultimately unworkable. Thanks to the work of the trust up and down the country, that’s not an argument borne out by the evidence.”

Owning a club, though, comes with its own issues, not least managing fan expectations. Exeter City are a prime example of this – the club was taken over by the Trust in 2003 after their relegation from the football league following the disastrous reign of convicted fraudster John Russell. Since then they’ve stabilised and have won two promotions over the last two seasons.

The club may now be struggling down the wrong end of League One, but for vice-chairman Julian Tagg, a long-time Trust member who has served on the board since the takeover, the pressure on the board is nothing new.

“There’s always been a pressure,” he says, “and that hasn’t changed. The pressure comes from the Trust ethos of running the club and the demands of our membership, as well as the situation of the club. We’ve got to be creative in our approach – we can’t just employ extra people.

“There’s also the question of can we find a way to become competitive. We’re at a level now where there really is no blueprint for how we do things.”

But it’s not just the challenge of League One that Tagg and the Exeter City board have to deal with – it’s also having over 3,000 members, all of whom have an opinion on how the club should be run.

“The club and Trust rolls into one,” says Tagg. “The Trust directors own the club and they, in turn, are bound to the membership, so we’re always going to be dynamic in how we approach the club and how we want to protect the club.

“What we’re really trying to do is to find a balance between an being an operator and a professional club. How we look after these people [the Trust membership] is so precious. That’s why we started in the first place and now the club isn’t in trouble, we have to make sure of its future.”

Brian Burgess has experienced similar issues with Brentford and says much of it is down to making clear the different responsibilities of the Trust and the club board. Even then, there is still the question of where does the line between the Trust and club come in.

Burgess says: “We had to say: ‘Look, if the performances on the pitch are bad, if the manager needs to be changed, that’s the job of the football club not the Bees United board.’ But, of course, as the majority shareholder, you’re interested in the company being run properly, so you’re going to try and want to influence the football club board to do the right thing. And there’s always been a tension in there and a learning curve about how you manage that relationship. To what extent is it arm’s length, to what extent is it right to exert influence, what’s the best way to assert your influence?

“I think it comes down to individuals. If you’re got good individuals that people trust and they’re open, as far as they can be in terms of confidentiality, then it’s a lot easier. When things are going well, it’s a lot easier. When things go badly then there’s criticism and that’s when it’s really difficult.

“We appoint people and let them get on with the job. If they do a good job, that’s great, if they don’t, ultimately, we sack them. That’s how it is – in any business, although it’s more short term than any other, I guess.”

Where do we go from here?

The whole idea of Trusts and fan ownership is hugely complex. As Tagg says, there is currently no blueprint for a fan run club in League One, let alone the Premier League. And while eyes are cast at Barcelona and the Bundesliga, English football comes with its own unique set of challenges for supporters who want to run their club.

Over the rest of this week, we’ll be looking at the successes and failures of the Trust movement, as well as the challenges that lie ahead, the foreign models and in-depth interviews with some of those closely involved with the movement.

But one thing, above all, that is striking about the Trust movement is the ability of fans to put aside their differences and work together for the good of the club; the idea that clubs should belong in the hands of supporters not money men. It’s an idea that would have been laughed out of town ten, perhaps even five, years ago.

As Andy Walsh from FC United of Manchester said at a recent Beyond The Debt rally, rivalries between supporters of football clubs are an artificial construct which masks. the true enemies of football supporters – the people that run the game itself.

Or, as Crescit puts it somewhat more succinctly: “I don’t ever want my football club to become a rich man’s train set nor get rich quick scam. We’ve all seen what happens when we allow the financial tail to wag the productive dog in the world economy.”