No sinister ulterior motive

[Sits]

That’s shit Jobi1. I hope the new ownership are cut from a better cloth and hang in there.

[NHH]

I recall working with McGill's sister when the Trust initially took over the club in 2003. I see she stepped down in 2016 - was that because of a rift?

[Jobi1]

Yep, Jason and his massive ego fell out with the other McGills. Sophie and their father, Rob, left the board, which is when things really started to go rapidly downhill at the club. Sadly, I don't think they were resolved when Rob passed away last year. Sophie is now Commercial Director at Tonbridge Angels – our loss is very much their gain. The interview she did earlier this year on the excellent Hospital Ball podcast is well worth a listen.

[Jobi1]

The radio station have now received a statement from Jason McGill regarding last night's comments by the current chairman:

"Having listened to the interview with Mr Henderson on BBC York, I was taken aback by his comments regarding the financial position of the club following transfer of ownership in July 2022. All monies withdrawn were owed to J M Packaging Ltd and therefore properly returned. All contracts relating to the club could have been examined and any questions forthcoming could have been explained by the outgoing directors through a due diligence process. I have gone on record to say that I felt my fellow directors and I left the club in a healthy position and that I would have funded the club for this season to ensure an organised transfer of ownership. I received a message of thanks from the Chairman of The Supporters' Trust for my time at the club and for the way I acted during the share transfer. I wish to extend my very best wishes to John Askey, Kingsley James and the team and to go on record to say what an excellent job John has done at York City Football Club since his appointment in November 2021."

(The last sentence is a dig at the rather odd comments Henderson made about much-loved manager John Askey – seems they don't get on very well, unforunately.)

I think at this point I probably just need to become one of those people who manages to not care about anything to do with the club beyond what happens on that green rectangle on a Saturday afternoon...

[NHH]

Yep, Jason and his massive ego fell out with the other McGills. Sophie and their father, Rob, left the board, which is when things really started to go rapidly downhill at the club. Sadly, I don't think they were resolved when Rob passed away last year. Sophie is now Commercial Director at Tonbridge Angels – our loss is very much their gain. The interview she did earlier this year on the excellent Hospital Ball podcast is well worth a listen.

Wow, just seen her twitter where she salutes the takeover saying change was desperately needed. Crikey.

[Jobi1]

It is with some weariness that I find myself trudging back to this thread (not wanting to clog up the manager thread any more), but it seems its original target may need to change after today's ludicrous events, which broadly panned out as follows:

• Manager John Askey arrives at the club in the morning supposedly for a meeting about his contract, then is made to stand and wait while the CEO (Suppoters' Trust board member Alastair Smith) prints off a letter to hand to Askey, which tells him his contract has been terminated. Self-styled "Cheeky Chairman"/majority owner Glen Henderson is... somewhere else, who knows.
• The news is broken (suspiciously quickly) by local media, leading several first-team players to express their shock and dismay on social media.
• That's nothing compared to the shock and dismay of fans, with many venting furiously at Henderson and the Supporters' Trust, and a lot expressing the desire to revoke their Trust membership and cancelling direct debits and/or demanding refunds for their contributions to the 'Boost the Budget' scheme the Trust launched a couple of weeks ago, making the not unreasonable point that the scheme promised all funds would go directly to John Askey's playing budget. "The product no longer exists", tweets a furious Guy Mowbray.
• The club issue two separate statements (the second seemingly prompted by the level of howling outrage from fans), suggesting Askey wanted to leave and that he'd cancelled a meeting they'd arranged about the budget, among other flimsy non-reasons.
• BBC local radio host a phone-in in the evening, at the start of which is played an interview with John Askey himself, in which he refutes most of what's been said in the statements - says he never said he wanted to leave, and he himself (not the club) called the meeting mentioned in the club statement which he ended up having to cancel. Notes that there has been a level of interference from the owner, such as the now notorious fact that the owner has insisted his own son be taken on the playing staff, also that Henderson went to the players at the start of pre-season and asked if they were happy with the style of football they were playing, as he felt the way they'd been playing when they got promoted wasn't very good. Also claims he's had barely any contact with the club hierarchy in recent weeks, and any contact has been instigated by him. States that he knew fans had issues with Jason McGill, but that he got on well with him and he was at least "a proper chairman" (eek). Finishes the interview with tears in his eyes according to the presenter, who is audibly also choking up.
• Mike Brown, Supporters' Trust chair and football club board member, calls in to the show to clarify what he can, but only ends up drawing even more ire from the fans. Seems to suggest among other things that Henderson seems to have some kind of Guardiola-era Barcelona plan of having every team from the kids to the seniors playing exactly the same style and formation, etc., and that Askey refused to buy into any such ideas. Says Askey's, a-hem, indifferent public reaction to the new ownership in the summer wasn't a good start (but you'd say probably understandable given the new owner had come in and immediately slagged off him and his team for playing bad football).
• Guy Mowbray joins the phone-in fray with some interesting insight - apparently when Askey took over a year ago he contacted Mowbray to get an interested outsider's perspective, and they met for hours with Askey wanting to know every last detail about the club and what it's about. Mowbray confirmed Askey is a thoroughly decent and committed bloke, and clearly has felt undermined by the interference, and that some of the players have had their abilities undermined too.
• Phone-in finishes with the presenter once again audibly struggling not to bawl his eyes out, before playing the highly emotional montage from last season's play-off final.

So, in sum, it seems we have jumped from one ego-driven crank owner to one with perhaps an even bigger ego, if the levels of interference in football matters are true, who is not showing any inclination to offer much financial backing to the club and is showing extremely worrying signs of, at best, not really knowing what he's doing. We have a Supporters' Trust that despite having its stake in the club back up to 49% seems hell-bent on proving itself to be as ineffectual, if not outright incompetent, as I'm afraid a majority of City fans have come to believe them to be over the last 15 or so years.

Where do we go from here? I honestly don't know. Satchmo Distel mentioned a possibility of a fan boycott on the managers thread - I'm not sure that'll happen (not straight away anyway), but I imagine the impressively healthy crowds that have been coming so far this season will take a bit of a hit, and as I said on that other thread I think the atmosphere at the next match on Saturday will be extremely unpleasant. Unless Henderson and the Trust pull a major rabbit out of the hat and appoint a new boss who gets the team playing spectacular football and challenging for promotion again this season, I honestly am not sure how they can win the fans round again after today. I've never known a reaction like this to a manager dismissal - on socials literally 100% of fans are completely opposed to the decision.

It's just such a sad state of affairs, after all the optimism of having got shot of the moribund old regime, to find ourself back exactly where we were before within just a few short months, with rancour and a complete breakdown of belief and communication between the fans and the club. I so desperately want fan ownership to work, but I honestly don't think it can at York, at least unless there's complete root-and-branch change from top to bottom of the Supporters' Trust, who just seem to stumble from one PR mishap to another. Sad to say I don't think the majority of fans will ever again be willing to countenance fan ownership after all that's happened over the years here. As for Henderson, the "cheeky chairman", it may be best for all concerned if he swiftly realises he's in the wrong game and cheekily takes himself back to the hospitality industry or whatever he reckons his best area of expertise is.

[Patrick Thistle]

Anyone who self-describes themself as "cheeky" is waving a big red flag imo.

And, also, this sucks. Strength to you and other York fans.

[Jobi1]

Anyone who self-describes themself as "cheeky" is waving a big red flag imo.

Indeed.

Interestingly, the recent game at Shrewsbury was raised by Brown in the discussions last night as a negative against Askey. Not sure if you noticed, but City only named 4 subs out of their permitted 9(?), ostensibly due to lack of squad depth. That came just a couple of days after Henderson had done his awful Q&A on the radio in which he made it pretty clear there were differences of opinion between he and Askey and that there was very little money available for squad strengthening though, so some felt Askey was making a point by only naming 4 subs. Brown last night claimed this was indicative of Askey's refusal to involve himself in any way with the youth team, in that he could have filled the bench with youth players. A fan then text in pointing out that the youth players wouldn't have been registered for the competition so couldn't have been involved in any case.

Obviously we only have the words of the various parties to go on, but I'm much more inclined to believe Askey over Henderson and the Trust. Seems incredulous that a manager would refuse to have any interaction with the youth development department, as Brown was suggesting. To note further on the involvement of Henderson's son in the playing staff, Askey was quite open last night in saying he has several times asked him to stop coming in, as apparently other players in the squad had started grumbling about it. The fact he had to ask several times suggests Henderson just kept demanding his golden boy be allowed to join in (despite Henderson's claim the other week that it was absolutely Askey's final decision and there would be no favouritism). What a mess.

[Patrick Thistle]

This is just hearsay but after Askey got the boot at Shrewsbury, an uncle of one of the Shrewsbury youth teasers told me Askey had never once interacted with the youth team. Askey was only there for a few months so maybe hadn't got round to it. Although you'd think a manager could make time.

He wasn't popular at Shrewsbury in the short time he was there. Possibly a hangover from how he was treated at Macclesfield. But the football was so dire, Sam Ricketts seemed like an improvement when he came in. Askey didn't go out of his way to win any friends in the local media or in the fanbase.

Tbh I was surprised to hear that he got another gig.

[Jobi1]

Wow, that is interesting. He certainly is a bit of an odd personality so perhaps easy to see why not everyone gets on with him – always seemed crucifyingly uncomfortable in interviews and other media work, and didn't seem to have a sense of what the right thing was and when to say it (witness in his first week in the job basically saying the fans should stop complaining about the board and get on with supporting the team, and the aforementioned reaction in the summer, when asked by the press what he thought of the new owners in the early days of the takeover in the summer and his response was "not much").

There's always two sides to every story of course, but I don't think Askey's personality excuses the appalling way this appears to have been handled and the massive alarm bells now ringing over Henderson's meddling and way of doing business.

[Patrick Thistle]

Oh yeah, that's completely off obviously. The chairman sounds like a twat.

It's just the youth thing triggered a memory of that being an area of alleged non-engagement during Askey's short stint with Salop.

Sooner or later these relational issues add up and there's one common denominator.

[Jobi1]

Statement from the Supporters' Trust: https://www.ycst.org.uk/john-askeys-departure/

[NickSTFU]

Askey was treated appalling at Shrewsbury by a large section of the supporters. I remember the foul abuse he got at Fleetwood from supposed respected members of our Supporter Parliament. Utterly disgusting and they were called out for it.

His lack of engagement with the Youth Team may have been down to having to rebuild a team that had it spine ripped out after Hurst left.

Either way, we'll never know how he'd have got on, because he wasn't around long enough.

[Jobi1]

David Ward, chief City reporter/commentator for BBC Radio York, reporting tonight that he approached Henderson after the game at Dorking today asking if he'd be willing to come on the radio, and Henderson apparently laughed in his face and suggested that it was somehow all Ward's fault that he and Askey fell out and that the fans are now all against him. What a loon.

[Jobi1]

Hearing that several City fans who had hospitality lounge upgrades (which gets you a seat very close to the directors) for the Wrexham game this Saturday received emails this morning informing them that their tickets have been cancelled, after Henderson copped for a fair bit of flak in the stands at the last game. Dissent will not be tolerated in the court of the king, it seems.

[Jobi1]

Another sorry twist in this ridiculous tale – the cheeky one is looking to bail already. Just received the following communiqué from the Supporters' Trust:

Following recent discussions between Glen Henderson and the Supporters’ Trust about the direction of the football club, we have received written confirmation from Glen that he is willing to trigger a buy-back clause contained in a Shareholders’ Agreement of June 2022. The Trust board agree with Glen that this would be in the best interests of the football club.

The relevant clause gives the Trust the option to purchase Glen’s shareholding for a price based upon an independent valuation. However, Glen has indicated that he would not seek to profit from any purchase of shares and would accept a consideration equal to his total investment in the football club at the time of any sale.

The Trust board held an urgent meeting yesterday evening to explore the various options available to take the club forward, including:

• Crowdfunding to achieve 100% supporter ownership
• Forming a consortium of multiple investors
• Attracting a new investor partner
• Declining Glen Henderson’s offer of shares

At this stage, the Trust are keen to hear from any individual or consortium that may be interested in acquiring a majority shareholding in the football club. In the first instance, any interested party should email info@ycst.org.uk before 6^th January 2023 for further information.

Should any credible investors be identified, the Trust are committed to putting the matter to an informed vote of our members in a Special General Meeting. In the coming weeks, the Trust board will seek advice from its legal teams and the Football Supporters Association. We will issue further updates on how the process will work in due course.

In the meantime, the Trust encourages supporters to make donations to enable us to acquire Glen’s shares at https://www.ycst.org.uk/one-off-donation/ should they prefer a fan ownership model. In the event that a third party investor is approved by Trust members, any such donations will be held by the Trust and ringfenced for the club’s future playing budget or essential working capital.

The Trust board are extremely disappointed that despite best efforts, things haven’t worked out with Glen as hoped. We are determined to learn from our mistakes and find a way forward that all supporters can get behind. Whilst the football club has faced many recent challenges, significant positive changes have been introduced and we are confident that given time the club will flourish. Now more than ever, we need supporters to come together as a united force.

[Sunderporinostesta]

His breakdown of expenditure should be interesting.

[Jobi1]

His breakdown of expenditure should be interesting.

Quite. Doing a very rough calculation, the Trust bought McGill's 75% stake for £350k, making them 100% owners for a few minutes before immediately selling on 51% to Henderson, so if that valuation still stands his stake should be in the region of £240k. However, it's never been disclosed exactly how much of that initial outlay to McGill he contributed, and I find it hard to believe the Trust had a spare £110k kicking around, so who knows exactly how much capital he's put in. I'm pretty sure he hasn't contributed anything beyond that initial investment though.

[Jobi1]

Strap in tight, kids, today's update is a fun one...

First, Henderson does an interview on local radio in which he claims he was unwell in bed when he sent the Supporters' Trust the email offering the buy-back on his shares so didn't really mean it, and in fact has no intention of selling. Also claims he had not agreed to the Trust publishing the statement I posted above notifying everybody of the offer. It was clear he hadn't discussed much of this with the Trust prior to going on the radio, and the interview also contains the line (which I think probably was a slip of the tongue): "I'm never, ever going to make anybody happy."

The Trust have just responded with another statement, noting that Henderson first made the offer verbally a couple of weeks before the sick-bed email, and there's no legal provision for him to withdraw the offer before the 28-day consideration period is up. Also noted that they did send the first statement to Henderson for his comment/approval but heard nothing back. They have also reaffirmed their commitment to finding a new investor and buying back his shares.

Has there ever been a club owner/chairman more like David Brent than Henderson? It'd almost be quite entertaining, if it weren't for the crushing, demoralising fatigue of our club having been such a circus for so very many years now!

[Sean of the Shed]

What an abysmal mess. Most people's response to finding the cesspit is full would be to empty it, but at York they appear to have come to the conclusion that the best solution is to build a wall around it so they can fit a load more shit in it.

[Grimmer]

I can’t work out whether we’d be better with McGill still there.

[Jobi1]

I'm pretty confident in saying no, we wouldn't.

[Jobi1]

Supporters' Trust confirm that they've accepted Henderson's offer of buying back his shares, whether he still wants to make it or not. This after it was spotted on Companies' House that Henderson has appointed his wife as a director of the club.

Anyone fancy buying a football club?!

The Supporters’ Trust can confirm that following a unanimous vote of the Trust board yesterday evening, it has provided an Acceptance Notice to the football club in respect of Glen Henderson’s shareholding this morning.

This process has been carried out in accordance with the football club’s Articles of Association and gives the Trust a period of 90 calendar days in which to pay the consideration for the shares. As such, the deadline for completion of the transaction is 4^th April 2023.

We are pleased to report that the Trust has received approaches from six interested parties, and we are currently working with each of them to complete a robust process that will ultimately lead to a vote of our members at an SGM. We will issue a further statement next week to outline the process and associated timeline.

[Jobi1]

Not quite sure what to make of the last couple of weeks' slow developments on this, although the massive concern is that there is indeed, per the thread title (about a different individual of course), some kind of ulterior motive situation going on...

The Trust are still ploughing ahead with their intended buy-back of Henderson's shares, and have been updating us with the process and what's happening next. Apparently they have had six expressions of interest from potential investment partners and are currently working through due diligence on them.

However, in the meantime, Henderson has been dishing out 2.5-year contracts to a number of the current first-team squad. Given that for most of the last few years we've been operating mostly with fairly standard for non-league 1-year (or even 10-month) contracts for players, this is a very notable change of tack, and is very clearly Henderson sending a message (especially as he's getting himself in the signing photos). Is he just doing it to send the message that he's going nowhere? Is he genuinely still thinking he's building some kind of project? Is he doing it to deliberately saddle the club with a massive financial obligation whether he's staying or not? All of the above? It's very unnerving in any case, and says all you need to know about our recent history that we're this suspicious of what on the face of it should be good news (in the sense of fans' favourites signing long-term deals). I definitely feel like he's up to something, but what I'm not sure.

[Sean of the Shed]

Is it possible that by signing them to long term contracts he is attempting to increase the value of the club's assets and therefore drive up the sale price?