Owning a club is frightening... it broke my heart what they did to poor Bury... it’s a disgrace

“So, I sold my property in Portugal for £160,000 and took out a second mortgage on my house for £300,000. My testimonial money – which Sir Alex Ferguson helped raise by bringing Manchester United here – that went. As did my pension.

“It’s the worst thing I ever did. I put my family at risk. I remember walking around my kitchen with a cup of tea at 4am, not having slept, wondering how I was going to do it.

“In the end, I pulled something out. But some of the strokes... I’d sell anything. I sold cars, sold houses...

“Our wage bill was £ 150,000 per month. In the end, I took my motherin-law’s deeds to Barclays Bank so they would give me an overdraft. I then got in with Big Ron (right) and we got this ‘Big Ron Manager’ series up and running. I got loads of stick for that – but I received £150,000 for it.

“And that was so important nt because that programme was seen by the current owner, who lived in Spain, and he bought the club from me.

“And the day he did it was like a double-decker bus and Boeing ng

747 had been lifted off my shoulders. My wife, who has been with me for 41 years, said she loved me so much that she would live down the river in a tent – she doesn’t know how f***ing close she came...”

A And so what does Fry (above) th think of Steve Dale, who took Bury to the wall, Ken Anderson at Bolton, who took them to the b brink, the Oyston family at B Blackpool, Coventry City’s fac faceless owners?

He said: “It breaks my heart to see what happened to Bury – he couldn’t give a f***. How they got that through the Football League’s financial processes, I will never know.

“How they owed £1million in income tax, I will never know. How they were able to use Manchester City’s training ground for 22 months without paying a tanner, I will never know. Scandalous.

“It’s disgraceful people like that are involved in football. OK, so the players did the business on the pitch. But the staff weren’t getting paid. The caterers weren’t being paid. It’s wrong.”

So what should Rick Parry, the incoming chairman of the Football League, turn his attention to?

He said: “My big fear is Bury have gone and, like a pack of cards, another 12 of us will drop out. So we have to have stronger fit-and-proper-persons tests.

“The people who work in non-league are my unsung heroes because they do it for the love of the game. They are being betrayed, they really are.

“And the Football League needs to sort it out – or more will follow Bury.”