Want to run a football club?

Do you feel you could do a better job than your current chairman? There are a legion of fans of various clubs that believe that the fans should own the club they support. Over the years I've managed to experience this at Rushden when Max Griggs (who formed our club) could no longer afford to run the club and handed it over to the Supporters trust, along with a generous donation to keep the club running for the next couple of seasons.

Safe to say it was a bit of a disaster. The fans had hoped for a more openly run club, but it ended up feeling like a closed system, the people who ran the club did not communicate well with those they represented. Even worse the club proved not to be financially viable in the state that it had been inherited and those who were installed on the board did not have the knowledge to bring the club onto a more steady footing. This lead to the club teetering close to the brink after relegation out of the league. Fortunately for us we had a saviour come along in the form of Keith Cousins and the club is now run better and in a better state financially.

Billy Sharpe: One of the few good things to happen under the trust at Rushden

While those who had a go at running the club obviously did a valiant job it showed that unless you have the knowledge to run a football club you shouldn't rush into owning one. A large group of Liverpool fans wish to purchase their club believing they would be able to turn into into some kind of fans utopia, with a completely transparent system of running the club. Problem is nothing in football is transparent. In fact it probably goes for every sport but most prominently Football is a closed community, dodgy dealings with agents occur every season and we don't truly know the extent of how deals are hammered out. Some deals need to be kept secret at least for a period of time in order to stop those involved pulling out, and in the case of some high paid players to avoid them the embarrassment of their true salaries becoming public.

In Spain many of the top clubs have been owned by the fans for a long time, but they have well established ways of running the clubs and those who are elected to run the clubs have helpers around them and are mostly used to running businesses thus allowing them to integrate into running a club easily. Even at those clubs there is little transparency for the fans, all transfers end up surrounded by huge amounts of secrecy and the finances of the club are not fully known. It's all necessary in the world of football. Even the latest football club run by members of the public, Ebbsfleet United, is now struggling. They were taken over by MyFC last year and are run in a revolutionary way, with members having a say in the running of the team as well as they club, but this is now unraveling as those who paid their £35 initially seem to be reluctant to renew their subscription and the club is struggling to get a budget for the next year together.

MyFC looked to revolutionise the way clubs are run

The idea of creating a club truly for the fans is a far fetched one these days, even those who believe that FC United of Manchester is truly open are living in denial. One day it may happen, but in this day and age the idea is just not realistic.

The sadness of 9

Your football team doesn't win 9-0 very often, I can guarantee that no matter who you support. The last time it happened to my memory was Dagenham's humiliation to Hereford back in the 2003/4 season. In normal circumstances I would be using this blog to lord it over any readers who's club failed to score more than a paltry six goals over the weekend. This time though the situation does not allow for that. On Friday night Weymouth informed their first team players that they were free to look for other clubs if they had an offer, they also could not afford the insurance to play those who remained. This forced them to field their youth team, and unfortunately answer those who on clubs message boards question whether fielding the youth team would do better than the uncaring overpaid Prima Donna's who are under achieving in the first team.

Man of the match Domo Pulls off another save

Weymouth's youngsters will have walked out onto the pitch at the Wessex stadium full in the knowledge that they faced the seemingly impossible. To describe what followed as men against boys would be unfortunately apt. Rushden found the target 16 times, with nine of them finding their way past man of the match Domo. The very fact that the 16 year old Domo was man of the match said it all about the Professional way the Diamonds went about their task. It almost seems cruel the way it ended but had, as some have suggested, Andy Burgess and co got to three goals and then spent the rest of the match passing it around it would have been surely worse for their young opponents. Despite the cruel scoreine Weymouth fans had a lot of praise for all but one of the visiting team. Dale Roberts; Rushdens young keeper, applauded every save that his opposite number pulled off, and ran over to congratulate him at the final whistle. The fans all gave the youngsters a standing ovation come the end of the match.

This was a sad moment for the home fans, but there is always a good side to everything. For Rushden this should give a much needed confidence boost after the upheaval of Garry Hill's resignation, and having not won since the game against Northwich in 2008. For Weymouth it has highlighted their plight to a much greater audience than before, their messageboard has been inundated by football fans from all across the country wishing them well and their appeals to raise money have had their takings dramatically improve. The youngsters will learn from this, they will gradually get stronger as the games pass and shouldn't lose by that margin every week.

Weymouth fans are trying to help raise the 300k needed to pay off debts

There is nothing pleasurable about a football club going out of business, and there are all too many clubs in a perilous situation in the Blue Square premier. Northwich have just got back into her ground having been locked out two months ago, York are in a lot of debt and rumours abound about many of the other clubs. People focus on those league clubs going into administration, but drop out of the league and you can see that clubs are in much much more trouble. Action needs to be taken, the result yesterday sparked interest, I just hope it can spark action.