Macclesfield Town: Thirteenth Time Unlucky

Half a million pounds. In the rarefied air of modern football, where Gareth Bale’s reported weekly salary could cover it twice over, it seems like a trivial sum. But on Wednesday morning at the High Court in London, half a million pounds was more than enough to bring the 146-year history of Macclesfield Town Football Club to an end.

For owner Amar Alkadhi, it was the thirteenth trip to court over this winding-up petition, first raised in January 2019. Twelve times, the club had been granted an adjournment. This time, a request for another eight weeks to secure a buyer was denied. Judge Prentice saw no comfort that the club could pay its debts, noting that Alkadhi had offered no explanation for a screenshot of a bank statement showing £1.1m in available funds, nor why that money had not already been used to settle with creditors. The judge stated there had been “ample opportunity” to pay. There would be no lucky thirteenth.

A Long Time Coming

While the pandemic has brought many clubs to their knees, Macclesfield’s demise cannot be pinned on this particular force majeure. To do so would be to let those responsible off the hook. This was an accident waiting to happen, the culmination of years of farcical financial management that stretches back more than a decade and a half. The club was already in trouble when Amar and Bashar Alkadhi became involved in 2003. By 2006, an FA commission found them guilty of improper conduct relating to a stadium grant, resulting in fines and compensation of almost £300,000.

After relegation from the EFL in 2012, the club was reportedly half a million pounds in debt. A plan to become a Community Interest Company fell through. Even a triumphant return to the EFL in 2018 under a National League title was built on sand. Problems paying wages plagued the entire 2018-19 season. Manager Sol Campbell somehow engineered a miraculous escape from relegation on the final day, but the off-field chaos was unsustainable.

Frustrated players, some of whom had gone months without pay, took over the winding-up petition themselves in July 2019. Alkadhi’s response was to issue a statement accusing them of trying to “close down our 145-year-old club”. One of those players was Elliott Durrell, who had scored the very goal against Cambridge United that had kept them in the league. David Seligman, the players’ lawyer, was scathing. “They aren’t Premier League footballers,” he said, “they are earning very modest salaries, living month-to-month… they just wanted what they were owed.”

Relegated by Committee

The 2019-20 season brought more of the same. Players went on strike in November, forcing the club to field youth players in a humiliating FA Cup defeat at home to Kingstonian. Points were deducted three times for failing to pay salaries and for not fulfilling fixtures against Plymouth Argyle and Crewe Alexandra.

Ironically, when the season was curtailed in March, Macclesfield looked safe. Bury’s earlier collapse meant only one club would be relegated, and Stevenage’s performance left them well adrift at the bottom. But a long summer of EFL disciplinary action followed. In June, an Independent Disciplinary Commission handed out a points deduction but suspended enough of it to keep the club up. The EFL, however, appealed against its own commission’s decision.

In August, an arbitration panel sided with the league. A further four-point deduction was applied, retrospectively. Macclesfield’s Points-Per-Game total dropped below Stevenage’s. Without kicking a ball, the club was relegated back to the National League.

An Uncertain Future

The EFL effectively expelled a financial basket case from its competition, making it someone else’s problem. Now, that problem falls to the National League, whose season is scheduled to begin on the 3rd of October. The league has yet to comment, but it is difficult to see how it could allow a club in liquidation to start the campaign. Bromley, listed as Macclesfield’s first opponent, would be forgiven for holding off on booking the team coach.

This isn’t quite the end. The winding-up order can still be averted if the debts are paid in full, and quickly. A company’s directors’ powers cease, its assets are liquidated, and it is struck off the register at Companies House.

The town of Macclesfield will have a football club again. It might not be called Macclesfield Town and it might not play at Moss Rose, but 146 years of history cannot be erased. That history includes winning the first two Northern Premier League titles and the inaugural FA Trophy in 1970. But any comfort in that future certainty should not dissipate the anger at those who let this happen: an owner manifestly unfit to run a club, and a league that failed to regulate until it decided simply to wash its hands of the problem. As Macclesfield Town slide from view, the question remains: who is next?