Search: ' mergers'

The Northamptonshire marriage has already made it into (and out of) the Football League; now an east London club with roots in four others are riding high in the Conference. David Stubbs watches the battle of the mergers

There’s always that great Saturday afternoon matchday sense you get that you’re approaching a stadium. Suddenly, as you walk into the station, you realise you’re part of a steadily growing crowd. The pace has quickened, with everyone walking with a slightly cocky, anticipatory gait. You squeeze on to the District Line, a hitherto empty carriage now bulging. Then, two stops down, everyone ups and pours out of the carriages en masse. Everyone, that is, except you. For the stop is Upton Park. They’re all off to West Ham v Watford, whereas you are heading further up the line, towards Dagenham East. And now, as the train pushes on, you’re alone in the carriage, except for another bloke and a dog. And they’re getting off at Upney.

Read more…

Bedfordshire is in shock at some dramatic upheavels, writes Neil Rose

It was all going so well. After a decade of decline, Luton Town were on the up. A high-profile manager had won promotion from the Third Division and followed it with a good season in the Second. A Luton legend was his right-hand man. The wealthy owner clearly loved the club. Then, in a dizzying week, Joe Kinnear, Mick Harford and Mike Watson-Challis all went.

Read more…

After 70 years, Tooting & Mitcham United are moving home. Andy Lyons reports

A Ryman League First Division fixture be­tween Tooting & Mitcham United and Wealdstone wouldn’t normally draw a thousand peo­ple, or anywhere near. Most of the crowd on April 20 had come specifically to see the last competitive match at Sandy Lane, Too­ting’s home since 1932 and the last of the big non-League grounds left in London. Chair­man John Buffoni has taken the brave step of striking a business deal with Ron Noades, as a re­sult of which the club will begin next season at a new stadium built on Crystal Palace’s old training ground two miles away across south London.

Read more…

Anthony Hobbs talks QPR – what's gone wrong in recent years, bad signings and mergers

What has been the main reason for the club’s steady decline over the past few seasons?
The then chairman Richard Thompson failed to invest in the squad six or seven years ago, at a time when a moderate outlay might have paid dividends through revenue generators such as UEFA Cup qualification (don’t laugh, we weren’t that far away). His successor, Chris Wright, was much more willing to invest at first. Sadly, he and his managers almost seemed a bit too desperate to buy players and show­ed all the judgement of the bloke who bought £70,000 worth of Rail­track shares the day before they went belly-up.

Read more…

With the club failing to find somewhere suitable to relocate, the owners seem intent on cutting their losses. Ole P Pedersen explains how businessman usually expect to get their own way – but in football that's not neccessarily the case

As Wimbledon’s Norwegian owners suffer another setback in their quest for relocating the club, the battles over the club’s future have not caused much of a stir with the media in Norway. VG, Scandinavia’s biggest daily, noted in passing that Bjorn Rune Gjelsten, the main owner of Wimbledon, had again failed to move the club from its humble surroundings to “more prosperous and forward-thinking communities”.

Read more…