The Daily: 5th July 2023

There remains no end in sight to the agony of Southend United.

When Ron Martin first became involved at Southend United 25 years ago this year, a new stadium was more or less the first subject to cross his lips. But a quarter of a century on, the club seems to be in a tailspin of disarray from which there seems to be no signs of recovery and that new stadium is no closer whatsoever to materialising. At this rate, there will be no club to occupy this new stadium, should it ever move beyond being Martin’s big idea.

The 2022/23 season ended with the club at a crossroads. Financial pressures were clearly continuing to build, as could be seen from the club’s failure to pay their players and staff on time in both March and April, while HMRC had issued yet another winding up petition against them over unpaid taxes. The winding up court hearing ended in an eight-week deferral and another appearance on the 12th July. A previous one had only been adjourned when the club made a payment of £1.4m at the start of March. 

The end of last season did finally bring one of the club’s longer-running sagas a little closer to completion, with the publication of annual accounts for the 2019/20 and 2020/21 seasons. They made for grim reading (in no small part on account of the pandemic), with revenue having fallen by 20% over the two seasons and the club having lost £1.1m against a turnover of £5.1m in 2020 and having lost £1m against a turnover of £4m the following year.

Of course, 2021 already feels like a long time ago for supporters of a club that has been playing non-league football since then, and for whom short-term matters are playing very much in the forefront of the mind at the moment. And the get-out clause from all of this, the one thing most likely to give the club half a chance of getting themselves back on an even keel and perhaps even back to where they were, a takeover, seemed to be back on the menu. 

Initial reports may have overplayed their hands a little. Martin had finally put the club up for sale in March, and there has been interest from local businessmen Simon Jackson and Kristofer Tremains from Kimura Capital. It was initially reported that they’d managed to secure exclusivity in the sales negotiations and this led to slightly breathless talk of Ray Winstone joining the board and The Rock being involved in a plan to try and emulate the success of Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney in monetising the Wrexham story.

But in the weeks since the story hit the headlines, this all seems to have rolled back a little. The previous story, when first published in the Southend Echo on the 12th June, contained reference to the new group having “exclusivity” over the sale, but this was subsequently removed from the story. Otherwise things have gone back to being relatively quiet on the takeover front, which has only led to things starting to get louder on forums and social media as that 12th July date in the diary continued to loom larger and larger in the club’s immediate field of vision.

So what are the options here, then? Well, that depends on what the exact situation is, and no-one really seems to know the answer to that question just yet. Ron Martin may well have put the club up for sale but there’s been pretty much radio silence on that subject for the last few weeks and the obvious concern is that due diligence of the club has thrown up something that is giving the potential buyers cause for concern.

Administration remains a possibility, even if only as a last resort in the event of being unable but while Martin would be removed from control of the club in one sense in this eventuality, should he turn out to be its biggest creditor he may even get the final say on who the new buyer might be and what the terms of any sale might be. 

Of course, administration is a high risk game. The alternative to exiting with a CVA in place is liquidation, and the insolvency practitioner managing the club’s affairs has to act in the best interests of creditors rather than club’s itself. Redundancies would be likely. Cost-cutting may need to be heavy. 

And someone would have to ensure that the money was available for the club to continue as a going concern while the club was in these measures. The number of football clubs who’ve come through administration can lead to the impression that this isn’t a serious state of affairs, that there are few costs to the club itself, but this doesn’t always have to be the way. It’s categorically not a decision that can be taken lightly.

In a week’s time comes the next chapter in the story, with a return to the High Court over that confounded winding up petition. At this stage in proceedings, it’s difficult to say with confidence which way this all ends up. By the start of the new National League season, Southend United could be under new ownership and looking forward to a new era.

Or the 25 years of Ron Martin and Fossetts Farm could be continuing to rumble on with no end in sight to the problems that have plagued this club for a very long time indeed, while the possibility of Southend United not even being able to start the new season does, sorry to say, remain on the table.

In the meantime, the news vacuum will continue to be filled by speculation for as long as those dealing with the proposed takeover remain silent on the subject. Perhaps, just perhaps, it’s time to set some minds at ease and offer a public statement on a matter that has been causing supporters considerable concern for longer than anyone should have to be subjected to this level of uncertainty.

Readers of this newsletter may well be wondering where the hot takes on the Andy Pilley and Fleetwood Town situation are this morning. Rest assured, reader, there’s a long read on that particular can of worms coming tomorrow morning.