Board duo insist new director is a good fit
Sandgrounders pair offer assurances to supporters over appointment of Tony Evans
IAN Kyle and Liam Watson have assured Southport supporters that new director Tony Evans is a good fit for the club.
Sandgrounders fans had questioned the appointment of the Liverpool-based businessman given his association with a failed attempted takeover of Stockport County in 2011.
Evans had arrived at Edgeley Park in July that year laying out plans to see the club return to the Football League. However, he resigned as a director just a few months later after club chairman Lord Snape raised questions over the details of the proposed deal.
However, Kyle, Watson and Evans appeared on the club’s Zoom update to answer supporters’ concerns at the weekend.
And Evans said his arrival at Southport – where a successful board is already in place – presented a completely different set of circumstances to his brief time at Stockport.
Explaining why the County deal never came about, he said: “The football club was in a hell of a worse state than what was advertised and the deal kept getting changed as a consequence of new things that we unearthed when we did our due diligence.
“I feel our time at Stockport was undervalued – a lot of players that were brought through under our tenure went on to play as high as the Championship.
“We left that club in a hell of a better state than when we entered it.
“We recapitalised it and put a long-term sponsor in place and I added to the playing squad budget that had been set the previous year.
“That football club has gone from strength to strength since then, benefiting from player sales, so I’ve got nothing to be embarrassed over or scrutinised over where Stockport County are concerned.”
Evans said the experience had been valuable one.
“A scouser coming into a football club as a young lad probably set a few eyebrows up at the time, and rightly so because it was well before my time!” he said. “But I learnt a lot from the experience at Stockport County and I am very grateful for being given the opportunity and if things were different and we could have found a resolution to it then I’ve no doubt we would have had many good experiences with the club.”
And his arrival as an older and wiser director at
Haig Avenue bears little resemblance to his chapter at Stockport.
“Southport has a successful team already – Liam, Ian, Pottsy (Stephen Porter) – I am just joining an already existing team which has a plan in place which I buy into ultimately,” he said.
“There is a plan in place for the club which has been discussed over the last few years as part of my friendship with Liam and I buy into the team, I buy into what they are about, I buy into the community of what the football club represents and how important it is to people, certainly after a time of what we’ve been through and what we’re still going through and hopefully coming out of.
“It’s important people have a community base where they can come in, support something and get involved, it’s fantatsic and it’s what I’m about as a human being. I’d like to see if I can benefit the
Tony Evans football club in any way.”
Evans said he hoped to bring in addtional revenue streams and more advertising through his contacts in business while his links to amateur football in Liverpool and other cities could reap rewards for the club.
Kyle, who joined the board in 2017, said similar questions from supporters were asked of him upon his appointment – but assured fans over the new arrival.
“It’s a very similar scenario – a lot of questions were asked about what relationships I did or didn’t have with people involved with football. Some of those people I actually had to Google to find out who they were!” he said.
“There is always going to be an element of uncertainty when anyone comes into the football club and this is why, to be fair, Liam and I have spent a lot of time talking to Tony so that the way we move forward and everything we do is done in a very sensible manner. There’s been no kind of rushing into this on either side, we’ve had lots of chats and we know who Tony is and what he can bring to the table.
“We have relied massively on our current sponsors for the last twelve to eighteen months to get us through and we will always be grateful for that and hopefully those relationships will continue to grow.
“But Tony has links to companies we could never dream of talking to.”
And Watson, whose friendship with Evans over the last few years led to the latter developing an interest in Southport, said the new director bought into what the club was all about.
“Obviously
Tony
is going to bring a lot of business acumen to the board, he’s been a regular visitor to the Pure Stadium for the last few years and has been to a lot of away games,” said Watson.
“He’s taken a lot of interest in the club and probably understands what we have been trying to do for the last couple of years.
“It’s vitally important that we’re all working off the same page, that we want to go forward and do things in a certain way which is going to be beneficial to the football club.
“He buys into that and we’ve said all along that we need to strengthen the board and strengthen the squad, so at this moment in time this is the first strengthening of the board and takes us into the summer.”
I’m joining an already existing team which has a plan in place