Northampton Town FC - #SaveOurCobblers
Good Morning All
Its with regret that I am posting for this reason on your fans forum.
Northampton Town FC are at risk of going out of business in 2 weeks time. We face a winding up petition on the 16th November for an unpaid tax bill. We also find ourselves owing a massive 10Million pound loan to our local council which was taken out for stadium redevelopment, which has mysteriously gone missing in our property developing chairmans pockets David Cardoza.
I personally have followed the cobblers across land and sea of the UK, visiting the majority of the 92 football league clubs. I ask in hope that you can help us with raising awareness to our cause with help growing publicity on social media. We have a twitter page @saveourcobblers and are using the hashtags #SaveOurCobblers & #SaveNTFC
Finally, I ask if you can all dig deep for as little or as much as you can. We have a fund raising page which is https://crowdfunding.justgiving.com/ntfctrust , we've set a target of £100,000 but unfortunately whats needed is substantially more! We are currently just over £13,500.
Thank you for your time reading this, and we do hope to be still in existence come Christmas!!
Thanks
NTFC Supporters.
Comments
I hope that you guys manage to get yourselves out of this mess, football is a business nowadays and it's such a shame to see how quickly the money side of the game has crept into the lower leagues.
Surely the Council are culpable here lending such a huge sum of council tax payers money to a professional football club in the current financial climate. There also seems to have been insufficient monitoring of the use of the loan monies. In light of their apparent mismanagement of public funds, the Council should be doing all it can to save the club.
The quicker fans take charge of their clubs the better. I can see a lot of clubs heading this way before 2020. All the best Cobblers.
More sad news for Northampton Town was the recent passing of Brian Lomax, the founding father of Supporters Direct and influential in the popularisation of fan-ownership of clubs.
http://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2015/nov/02/brian-lomax-death-supporters-direct-northampton-town
And where has the money actually gone? http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-northamptonshire-34750400
Ahh I see...
What a read and a relief we are a fan owned Club.
These vultures have no place in Football, just greedy so called Business people. Many more Clubs will have a bunch vultures on their boards, so good luck with it.
Wow - you have been well and truly shafted. I can't see an out here for NTFC - the council are on your backs if you miss a council tax payment - owing them millions would be a nightmare. Good luck getting some cash together as a fan owned phoenix club seems like the only real solution after you go bust.
I wonder if Northamptonshire Council will have questions to answer, after apparently (if the facts in the article are correct) allowing a significant amount of taxpayers money to be transferred into private hands in exchange for not very much at all.
What a shit pit of financial snakes that lot has turned out to be if there is truth in that article?
If the directors of the club has used the club as a vehicle to borrow funds and then appropriate those funds (public funds or otherwise), that would be embezzlement.
Effectively it is Council Tax payers money that has been lost. If I was a resident, I would want answers from the chief officers of the Council but no doubt it will be swept under the carpet as usual.