Thought for the week
Fingers crossed for Accrington Stanley. The League Two club are due in the High Court to face a winding-up order brought by HM Customs and Revenue over an unpaid £308,000 tax bill. Let's hope history does not repeat itself and this is not a case of "back to the 1960s" for the Lancashire club.
At the time of writing the feeling was that Accrington would scramble together sufficient pennies from assorted jam jars and escape by the skin of their teeth. Certainly Dave O'Neill, the club's chairman, was in defiant mood at the start of the week.
"A few fans have said they are not sleeping," he said. "Let me do the not sleeping. Yes of course we are going to do it, we are going to meet it [the bill]. On a scale of one to 10 we are now a nine. The bank transfers will be done on Tuesday."
So far so confident – but then O'Neill admitted: "A guy who promised us £25,000 let us down so we are a little short at the moment."
Hats off though to the 67 fans from the Save Our Stanley campaign who walked from Accrington to Spotland at the weekend to raise £10,000 towards the tax bill before watching Stanley win 2-1 at Rochdale in what threatened to be the visitors' final game.
Afterwards John Coleman, Accrington Stanley's long-serving manager who believes he works to the Football League's smallest budget, proved pride personified. "There is a lot going on off the field," he said. "The players have had problems with their wages but they have put it all behind them. They have big hearts and even bigger attitudes."
There is a horrible element of deja vu in all this. After all the original Accrington Stanley – formed in 1891 and Football League members from 1921 to 1962 – folded under a debt mountain in 1966 after spending four seasons languishing in the Lancashire combination. Two years later a new club was re-born and began climbing its way back up the non-league pyramid.
Finally, in 2006, Accrington Stanley returned to League Two – ironically replacing Oxford United, the team they had lost their League place to back in March 1962 when they resigned due to debts of almost £64,000.
No one wants to see them wound up but Accrington's latest brush with extinction highlights the perilous financial tight-rope so many clubs are currently walking. Since Eric Whalley, the owner who steered the club through the last 14 seasons, stepped down and moved to Chester earlier this year things suddenly seem to have gone awry. But scrape beneath the surface and several League Two rivals will be privately fretting about similarly fragile finances.
How Stanley could do with producing another Brett Ormerod. When the non-league Accrington sold the forward to Blackpool for £50,000 in 1997 they sensibly inserted a sell-on clause entitling them to 25% of any resulting fee. So when Ormerod eventually moved on to Southampton for £1m, the resultant £250,000 facilitated Accrington's ascent towards League Two.
Stanley lie halfway between Burnley and Blackburn but some locals believe the intense rivalry generated by those two Premier League giants leaves little room for the re-direction of emotions to a League Two minnow.
In a world where Lancashire schoolchildren are almost always going to be drawn to Rovers or Burnley, if not even bigger clubs in Manchester or Liverpool, does it not seem inevitable that one day – possibly quite soon – Leagues Two and maybe even One will be forced to turn semi-professional?
Ones to watch out for: Southend United and a son of Southend
Just to continue this week's depressing theme, Southend of League One have been dealing with winding-up order of their own. The latest news is that their hearing, originally scheduled for Wednesday, has been postponed by a week until 4 November, but that HMRC are now seeking to have the club placed in administration. "HMRC's hostile action is not only unwelcome but also destructive," was how the Shrimpers' chairman, Ron Martin, reacted to the news. "We are not looking to escape any debts (indeed we wish to ensure we pay in full) and will be able to, given a further short respite, settle the indebtedness."
Southend have been rather opaque about their troubles and have only just admitted that, for the past four weeks, they have been operating under a Football League transfer embargo which has left long-serving manager Steve Tilson with just 12 senior players.
Peter Taylor endured an unhappy spell in charge at Roots Hall some years ago before going on to greater things with England Under-21s in particular. Taylor, who still lives in the Southend area, is a fine coach and man manager who finds himself at a loose end after leaving Wycombe. He could though be poised to become Roy Keane's new assistant at Ipswich. With the Championship side still to win a league game this season, recruiting Taylor might just save the former Manchester United captain's job. It certainly promises to be the smartest thing Keane has done for quite a while.
Goal of the weekend
Terrell Forbes' winner for Yeovil in their 2-1 win at Bristol Rovers. Forbes, a defender, had gone 10 seasons and 368 games without scoring. "I've never been so happy," said Forbes. "The ball popped in off my knee so now I don't want to wash my knee." It seems some things in life really are worth waiting for.
Games to look out for
Tonight (Carling Cup)
Barnsley v Manchester United – Can Barnsley's Mark Robins undo his former Old Trafford manager, Sir Alex Ferguson?
Wednesday (Carling Cup)
Manchester City v Scunthorpe – The League Cup's answer to David v Goliath.
Saturday (Championship)
Ipswich v Derby: Can Roy Keane get his first win at the expense of his old friend and former Nottingham Forest team-mate Nigel Clough?
Saturday (Championship)
Middlesbrough v Plymouth – Gordon Strachan, aka Chesney (Coronation Street viewers will understand why) takes charge of Boro for the first time. Is Strachan the right manager for Boro?
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