At the top of the football tree, this week, the talk will be of the $6 billion proposed take-over of Manchester United. At the bottom, near the roots, lawyers will be finalising another deal for a 120-year-old club that once kicked Liverpool out of the FA Cup – yet, in 2023, it stood on the brink of oblivion .
A fallen giant
Once Worcester City was one of the top non-league sides in the country that knocked on the door of the Football League in the 1970s. As recently as 2014, the club booted Coventry City out of the FA Cup, yet in the last decade the once proud club has been in freefall. It is a club with no ground, little hope and virtually no money in a city better known, these days, for making Worcestershire Sauce rather than playing football.
Down among the dead men.
This season the blue-and-white stripes of Worcester City will be down among the dead men of semi-professional football, in the Hellenic League, playing the likes of Hereford Lads Club and Tuffley Rovers – a million miles from the billionaires of Old Trafford.
In the Hellenic league, even a great team wouldn’t fetch enough to buy a watch for a Manchester United star.
Yet, a saviour is on the horizon in a takeover story that could have come straight out of the 1970s.
A football man with money
Simon Lancaster is a football man who has worked in the grass roots game for years. He supported Worcester City, since he was a child; so did his father. His grandfather was a season ticket holder in the 1940s.
Lancaster is a son of Worcester come good. He has built-up an insurance brokerage, from scratch, into an international business turning over millions of pounds. Revenue that grew 10% last year, even in these troubled economic times.
“They were losing money.”
On May 24, Lancaster made an impassioned speech at a meeting at Worcestershire Cricket Club to convince 77 fans – who owned 51% of the club – to transfer their ownership to him.
The fans may have had pride in the ownership of their club, but didn’t have two halfpennies to rub together.
“They’ve got no assets and they were losing money; they were due to run out of money this year. I didn’t give them any money for it, but I did make some commitments moving forward,” he says. One of the most important of those commitments is a six-figure sum every season for the next three years to keep the club running.
“They needed to hand over to someone who could put some cash in, but not only that it was also a bit of a rudderless ship really, it needed some guidance, some leadership and some drive and some energy.”
76-1 in favour of salvation
The fans voted 76 in favour, with only one against, of giving Lancaster ownership of the club.
“I didn’t convince one of them!” jokes Lancaster with his trademark robust humour. That is what he will need as he faces a rebuilding job that makes the resurrection of rundown Wrexham by Hollywood mogul Ryan Reynolds look easy.
“I’m no Ryan Reynolds! But from where we were, when I came in, the only way is up. To be honest, you couldn’t go any lower with the finances and the football,” he says.
“Many fans told me we’ve stayed away for many years, it has been so badly run , it is such a poor show. They say now we know it has got some good leadership and stuff is happening, we will be all over it.”
Worcester City 2 Liverpool 1
What a contrast to the glory days of January 1959 when Worcester City dumped promotion chasing second division side Liverpool out of the third round of the FA Cup on a freezing afternoon at their St George’s Lane ground.
Many of the Worcester City players had been working in the morning of the game. Soldiers of the Worcestershire Regiment marched to the game from their barracks outside the city and got in free with their uniforms. Many shops closed down for the day as 15,000 people squeezed into the ground to celebrate a 2-1 win.
The humiliating defeat was bitter-sweet for Liverpool. The board sacked the manager in the wake of the defeat and ushered in the glory era of Bill Shankly, who led Liverpool into Europe.
Worcester City may have lost to Sheffield United in the fourth round before 17,000 – nearly a quarter of the city’s population- at St George’s Lane, but at least invested the gate money wisely in floodlights and a new stand.
Ironically, Lancaster is also a Liverpool supporter.
“People often mention that Worcester defeat to me,” he laughs.
Right now, Lancaster has a much further to go than Shankly did in 1959 with a fraction of the money and without a ground – the club rents a glorified park pitch from the Worcestershire Football Association on the fringes of the city, with a tiny capacity.
New sponsorship.
One of the first moves Lancaster made was to sign up 15 sponsors to post a 100% increase in revenue. More players have been signed too, in what is likely to prove an expensive new season for many lower league clubs, according to football business expert Kieran Maguire of Liverpool University.
“In the lower tiers of football, the main problems is that the costs are constantly rising especially since the recent rises in inflation, which have hit clubs in terms of heat and light for the floodlights and the changing rooms, transport costs to away games. Against that you have got relatively restricted income, you don’t have a TV deal, the sponsorship deals are erratic at times and you are relying on people to often come out in inclement weather. So, you have got to give credit to anybody who puts money into a football club,” says Maguire.
The expensive struggle for a new ground.
Aside from money, it is finding a new ground that’s the biggest headache. Worcester City sold St George’s Lane, the club’s home since 1905, for housing and moved out 10 years ago. Planning permission for new grounds fell through after residents complained they didn’t want the parking and noise.
Lancaster says he is looking at new options with the only certainty being that it will be expensive and tricky to get planning permission from the city council.
“We had some prices kicking around . Figures quite scary. As long as you have got a bit of land, a stand and some changing rooms you can add to that – it will be a staged thing,” he says .
“Everyone wants it, but no one wants it on their doorstep. We are talking about an asset that will be used by children, business and the community. As a city council, you have got to make a wiser, more nuanced decision.”
New season, new challenge, thick skin.
Lancaster is preparing himself for the new season in August with few illusions.
“I think it is an enjoyable challenge – I might not say that in five years’ time, if I get some flak, If things start going the other way and people start calling for my head I might feel differently!”
“I’ve got quite a thick skin; you need it really. For now, everything is complimentary, it’s all great. When things go the other way, I am sure it will feel a bit different. It won’t make me anybody and I won’t take anything out of it. If you look at the Premier League and the FSGs and people like that, they do it to make money. FSG bought Liverpool for £300 million it is now valued at about £4 billion – it is an investment; they will make money. At this level, Worcester City, it is not going to make you money, it is not an investment that is going to give me any return at all.”
Can you ever imagine a Premier League owner ever uttering those last dozen words?
