My Convoluted Position on the Mess at my Club, Oldham Athletic

On a particularly regular basis, I feel conflicted on Twitter when discussing my team, Oldham Athletic. I get regularly accused of being happy about the current position of the team, and about the club’s owners. Given the latest furore at the club over the banning of three fans, I’m yet again feeling in that conflicted position.

It’s an utterly terrible decision made by the club, I imagine at the behest of the owner since it’s quite clear he’s very stubborn, and willing to dig his heels in. And hence a lot of people are angry, and the usual calls for the owner to sell up and get out of our club are repeated.

My problem is, and has always been, that as far as we know there are no offers on the table for the club. I believe there are those working hard to try and bring that about, but as things stand, even if the owner was willing to sell, who is he selling to? I can’t support such an incomplete proposal.

The current owner is clearly terrible — our league position speaks great volumes. But who is jumping up to buy the club?

I have no reason to believe there hasn’t been the bids that are claimed to have been made in the past, or that the current owner is asking for a price that’s simply too high. Other clubs have also been bought recently, even at League Two level and lower. But bids for Oldham Athletic at the moment? Shout “sell the club”, but who to?

The criticism some level at me for this is that I’ll never know a sufficient amount about anybody who makes a bid until the bid is accepted and they own the club. That is almost certainly true, but it doesn’t change the fact that I’m not able to support a proposition that the current owner sell to any owner, a position many (most?) fans take.

The reason for this should be clear — the new owner could be worse. Each time we have had new owners since JW Lees sold up twenty years ago, despite what we thought at the time was possible, those owners have proved to be worse than the previous ones. Other clubs have been bought by utterly terrible owners, or been stalked by them.

There is no guarantee that any owner is better than the current owner. So it means I’m not going to like, or retweet, tweets to the effect of “sell the club”, and “get out of my club”, not because I like the current owner and think he’s the best possible owner for the club.

I would like the current owner to sell. I would like him out of the club, but I want him out of the club to a new set of owners who are local, and have a good, sustainable plan for the club moving forwards. A set of owners that maximise the potential of a community football club bringing everyone in Oldham together, doing much more than hosting a football match every other Saturday afternoon.

That probably involves some subsidisation by any new set of owners, and that is why I think those owners need thus to be local — with a stake in the community already. Perhaps a consortium of local businesses who would benefit from the buzz that a thriving community football club could create.

That’s what I’d like. The current owners, given plenty of opportunity, have shown no inclination to do any of this. I have no reason to believe owning and running a football club is easy — the fact I endlessly disagree with my fellow fans tells me that. But there needs to at least be some effort expended in getting, and then keeping the fans onside. They are a football club’s single largest resource, and a huge potential force for good.