The fall (and hopefully rise) of Yeovil Town

From my youth I remember Yeovil as giant killers with their famous sloping pitch at their former ground. They got into the Football League, but once a club falls out t they can find themselves like Yeovil (and Scunthorpe, among others such as Boston United) in the second tier of the non-league system and the sixth tier of the pyramid.

Hope has been in short supply in Yeovil’s corner of Somerset. Twenty years ago, it was them going up as the free-scoring champions of English football’s fifth tier with a record points total and huge goal difference. And 10 years ago, a Yeovil side featuring future Premier League stars Luke Ayling and Dan Burn beat Brentford 2-1 in the League One play-off final at Wembley to reach the Championship.

At a meeting organised by fans’ group the Glovers Trust last week, speaker after speaker berated Scott Priestnall, the self-styled “strategic and innovative leader” who bought the club in 2019 and promised supporters a better matchday experience, sounder finances and a return to the English Football League. Spoiler: he led them in the opposite direction.

Roger Pipe, chair of the Glovers Trust, said of Priestnall: “To say his time in charge hasn’t been good is something of an understatement — we’ve been a rudderless and unhappy ship for some time. “It’s pretty clear that Priestnall is much more interested in developing the land than the football club.”

Priestnall did manage to persuade the local council to buy Yeovil’s property assets, including the stadium, from him for £2.8million of taxpayers’ money, which left him without about £2million to settle the loan he used to buy the club and all that land, and clear debts.

This, to many, seemed like a remarkably generous thing for the council to do, particularly as it also granted Priestnall, as the majority owner of the club’s holding company, the right to buy back the land for £2.8million — a potential bargain if he ever managed to build houses on it.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the fans’ forum. Priestnall posted a rare update on the club website to announce a deal had been agreed for the purchase of the club.

Having witnessed at least three different takeover attempts collapse during his four-year reign, the fans at the Yeovil Sports and Social Club, and the many more following via Zoom, spent about a minute discussing this bombshell and then more than an hour debating the enormous hole Priestnall had dug for the club.

“The club was clearly running into very significant cashflow problems in the last few months of the Priestnall reign and heading for administration, which would have had serious ramifications going forward,” says former club director, lawyer and insolvency practitioner Stephen Allinson.

“Having spent some time advising Martin Hellier, I am now optimistic about the future. He is a local businessman who has shown real commitment in buying out Priestnall and offering fans a fresh start.

But, by Friday evening, Yeovil Town Twitter was chirping with the news that this time Priestnall really was going, with official confirmation coming on Saturday morning, when the club website confirmed local hotelier and property developer Martin Hellier had bought the 41-year-old out.

“As local owners, our hearts are rooted in the wellbeing and progression of our community and we pledge to every fan our intentions to form one entity, one club, one community, and to finally ‘Achieve by Unity’,” said Hellier, quoting the club motto. He then assured fans that this “has not been a transaction for financial gain” but a deal done simply because he is one of them.

The coming months will not be easy or cheap for Hellier but, speaking to the local BBC radio station on Monday morning, he said he wanted to be “an open book” who would speak to fans at least once a month and “still be able to walk around Tesco on a Saturday morning”.

Good luck to him and Yeovil but this story reinforces the case for an independent regulator of football with real powers.

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The Political Economy of Football V2

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