Football League shows its teeth over Bury but can still improve its rules
For supporters of clubs in crisis who have repeatedly accused the English Football League of weak governance in recent years, it was striking to see the league issue an ultimatum on Monday and finally, determinedly, stick to it. Bury, in League One, were subjected to a last-resort measure, of having Saturday’s opening fixture suspended, on the grounds that the owner, Steve Dale, has not provided the required information to show how the stricken club will be funded.
Dale hit back with a characteristically beefy, pugnacious statement on Tuesday, arguing the EFL was “ignoring the facts”, he had indeed sent full “proof of funds”, and accusing it of issuing an “incendiary statement for no gain to anybody other than to discredit Bury FC and it’s [sic] board”.
This sorry mess and financial collapse, a genuine jeopardy now to the existence of a club established in 1885, a member of the Football League for 125 years, has highlighted a hole in the EFL rules designed to protect clubs’ viability. The league’s position, denied by Dale, is he has never provided full proof of funds, as specifically required by its regulations, either before or after his £1 takeover in December. With the opening match against MK Dons at Gigg Lane just days away, the board, led by the executive chair Debbie Jevans, could not approve the club as safe to start.
This requirement that prospective owners at least show they have the money to run a club, coupled with the owners and directors “fit and proper persons” test – a most basic character self-certification – are about the only protections supporters have when their clubs are in the process of being taken over.
The “fit and proper person test”, introduced in 2004 after years of resistance to it by the Premier and Football Leagues, in effect only bars people who have unspent criminal convictions for dishonesty, or are currently disqualified directors or bankrupt. The unambitious nature of that quality control has always been a complaint of supporters who find their owner behaving disgracefully or outrageously, and regulations were passed last summer to also bar people whose conduct has been shown to be “clearly damaging to the standing and reputation of the wider profession and the game of football”.
But in a process subject to forensic legal challenge on every word by expensively paid lawyers for people determined to take over clubs, the detail of that new regulation has not yet been worked up, so the test remains basic.
The requirement that a new owner shows he has the money to fund a club is the only other vital step in the process, and there have been times when the EFL has in effect said publicly it has blocked a takeover because it has not been satisfied the money is truly there. In the case of Bury, it is the EFL’s version of events that Dale never provided full, satisfactory proof of funds as required under these regulations, but he nevertheless took over the club and remains the owner. According to Companies House, he is also Bury’s sole director – there is no board.
Descending into the wording of the rules, a weakness is that while a new owner must submit all relevant financial information before a takeover or at the latest within 10 working days, he can be barred for failing the “fit and proper person test” but not for failing to provide proof of funds. The league can refuse to approve a takeover where a person has engaged with the process in advance but apparently not where, as with Bury – whose then owner, Stewart Day, was in financial difficulties – Dale’s takeover was concluded quickly without going through the league’s requirements first.
The penalty for failing to provide the necessary information after a takeover is a player registration embargo, to which Bury are subject, and there is scope for other measures, but the takeover itself stands.
Hence Bury, a club of precious heritage with a core of supporters loyally resisting Manchester’s Premier League temptations 10 miles to the south, find themselves in a paralysed standoff, the future very uncertain. When the volleys from Dale have been responded to and the crisis at Gigg Lane somehow concluded, the EFL needs to have a firm review of its rules, too.