Skip to main content

A look at the Chairboys

League One is littered with clubs who have fallen from the grace of Premier League membership over the last 30 years — Wycombe in beechy Bucks are one of the exceptions to that rule.   Historically, High Wycombe was a home to the furniture industry, hence their nickname.  The setting of their ground, albeit reached through a trading estate, is impressively rural.

They were only promoted to the Football League for the first time in 1993 and have spent the majority of the time since flitting between the third and fourth tiers, before reaching the Championship for the first time in 2020-21.

The average attendance for their home games at 10,000-capacity Adams Park this season is under 6,000. The gap in resources compared to Sunderland and Sheffield Wednesday, who will contest the division’s other play-off semi-final, is more like a chasm.

American businessman and lawyer Rob Couhig completed a takeover of the club from the supporters’ trust in February 2020 and travels from New Orleans once a month for a week at Adams Park. He has armed manager Gareth Ainsworth with the tools to challenge for the second tier.

“We expect to be in the Championship,” Couhig told the Bucks Free Press in January. “We have re-done the training ground from the bottom up and we’ve now got a training facility that is as good as anyone’s in the Championship. We’re part of building something that has never existed and I love it.”

“I reject terms such as ‘massive club’ or ‘little club’ because, to me, our players are just as good or even better than anybody else. Ultimately, our job in the ownership is to support the ability to pay for quality players and, if you look at it, I think people get misled due to the size of the stadium.”

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Fulham requires big funding from owner

After lengthy delays, Fulham’s shiny, new Riverside Stand has finally opened, creating “a unique Thameside destination with first class facilities for supporters and partners on match days, as well as for the wider community year-round”. This ambitious project has increased Craven Cottage’s capacity by around 4,000 to 29,600, while it has also taken advantage of the club’s fantastic location and wealthy catchment area by including two Michelin star restaurants, a rooftop swimming pool, corporate hospitality and event space, all benefiting from views of the Thames. Chief executive Alistair Mackintosh observed, “Fulham is the sort of club that can have a business class or first class and have fans that turn left on a plane.” Indeed, there is also an exclusive members club – with a football season ticket as an optional extra. It’s fair to say that “the times they are a-changing”, as this is a long way from the traditional pie and a pint. However, in a world where clubs face the tw...
Post a Comment
Read more

It's no deal say Spurs insiders over Taiwanese takeover

Senior figures at Tottenham Hotspur insisted on Friday that they had not been informed of any deal to sell Daniel Levy’s stake in the club. A business group, Eight Sports Capital — which is said to include a billionaire Taiwanese financier — claimed that it had an agreement in place to buy a 24.99 per cent stake in ENIC, the club’s majority owners, from Levy, who owns 29.88 per cent. The Times has been told Ng Wing Fai and Brooklyn Earick form part of the group, having both been linked previously to potential takeovers of the Premier League club. The Taiwanese businessman, Richard Tsai, is also said to be part of the consortium. He is reportedly worth £7 billion.  Last year Earick, the former DJ and tech entrepreneur, was part of an attempted £4.5 billion takeover, which was “unequivocally rejected” by Spurs.  An ENIC spokesperson said: “We can confirm that neither ENIC nor THFC are aware of any sale by Daniel Levy’s Family Trust of its minority stake in ENIC, THFC’...
Post a Comment
Read more

Threat of financial calamity removed from Baggies

West Bromwich Albion had effectively been in decline ever since the club was sold to a Chinese consortium in August 2016, paying a figure north of £200m to buy former owner Jeremy Peace’s stake. Controlling shareholder Guochuan Lai’s ownership was fairly disastrous for the club, but his unloved tenure finally came to an end after Bilkul Football WBA, a company ultimately owned by Florida-based entrepreneur Shilen Patel and his father Dr Kiran Patel, acquired an 87.8% shareholding in West Bromwich Albion Group Limited, the parent company of West Bromwich Albion Football Club. This change in ownership was urgently required, due to the numerous financial problems facing West Brom, including growing high-interest debt and serious cash flow concerns, following years of no investment from the former owner. Indeed, West Brom’s auditors had already rung the alarm bell in the 2021/22 accounts when they cast doubt on the club’s ability to continue as a going concern without making player s...
1 comment
Read more