The problems at York City have now become a full-blown crisis after the supporters’ trust said it has had to step in to pay a shortfall in the wages of players and staff.
The trust, run by volunteers, said it “met a substantial £50,000 payroll shortfall” today (Friday).
And it also emerged that the trust’s club takeover has stalled – with no investor in place ready to meet the Tuesday (4 April) deadline.
In an update that will deeply concern every City fan, the trust said today that club chairman Glen Henderson didn’t provide the funds to pay staff.
This has not been verified by York City FC.
We asked for their response. A club spokesperson said: “At this moment the club are not able to make a comment on this matter.”
The trust statement continued: “This understandably caused significant upset and worry for the football club’s valued employees.
“Like all of us, the club’s hard-working staff and players have mortgages, rent, bills to pay and families to feed. They deserve to be paid in full and on time.”
The trust’s board members Alastair Smith and Mike Brown agreed the payments to cover the wages.
“In the past two months, the trust have now made a total contribution to the club’s payroll of £145,000,” it said.
The trust says its reserves are now depleted. It is appealing for donations so they can “provide further emergency funding to the football club in the future”.
You can donate here.
Takeover extension plea
The trust’s hopes to find a new investor to buy out Glen Henderson’s 51% shareholding is also in tatters, it emerged today.
The deadline to buy him out was 4 April. It is “extremely unlikely” that this will happen.
In its statement the trust said: “We are extremely disappointed that after working around the clock for the past three months, the trust have twice agreed legal contracts with parties only for them to subsequently withdraw at the 11th hour for various reasons.”
They alleged that Mr Henderson had tried to make his own deals with prospective buyers. Again we have no comment as yet from the chairman or the club.
The trust said this, along with other factors “cast a seed of doubt for one of the parties that resulted in their withdrawal from the process. The trust are taking legal advice with respect to this unwelcome intervention in a constituted process and associated breaches of confidence.
“This has been extremely frustrating for all those who have given a huge amount of their time and expertise throughout the process.”
They have pleaded with Mr Henderson to extend the takeover deadline for “three to four weeks in order that investors can continue to complete their due diligence”.
The trust said Mr Henderson has put forward alternative proposals, but described them as “preposterous” and claimed that “no investor or the trust could ever accept the terms”.
“We repeat our call to Glen Henderson to give a little more time for a takeover deal to be completed. Not only do we believe that this would be in the best interests of the football club, but also Glen himself.”
To reiterate, we asked the club for a response but it said it couldn’t comment at this stage.
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