Steve Evans: the manager, the conviction and the Boston United scandal

A crowd of 1,252 people at Broadfield Stadium is a modest figure. It was the attendance for Crawley Town’s victory over Bath City in the Blue Square Premier, a result that lifted the club to seventh place after four matches. For a club in the throes of “Project Promotion”, backed by new owners for whom money is seemingly no object, such a turnout might feel like a quiet rebuke. Perhaps the grand ambition of buying a place in the Football League hasn't yet captured the imagination of the town’s public. Winning football usually brings bigger crowds, but for Crawley, the shadow looming over their project is long and has less to do with results and more to do with reputation. The distaste for the club’s lavish spending is palpable, yet it pales in comparison to the animosity directed at one man: their manager, Steve Evans.

The antipathy towards Steve Evans runs deeper than the usual partisan dislike of a rival manager. It is something baser, a raw nerve that provokes colourful and florid streams of abuse from the terraces. Opposing fans seem desperately hopeful of his failure. While his abrasive, “larger than life” character certainly contributes to this, the core of the vitriol is rooted in something far more tangible. Steve Evans is a convicted criminal. For many in the non-league world, he is the man who orchestrated a cynical scam to propel a club into the Football League, a man who, despite a criminal record for his actions, ultimately got away with it.

The Tainted Titles of Boston United

Evans’s journey into management began after an average playing career in his native Scotland was curtailed by a knee ligament injury at the age of twenty-eight. A brief spell as chairman at Corby Town in 1994 was followed by four years at Stamford FC. In 1998, he was given his significant managerial break at Boston United, a club often described as a “sleeping giant” of the non-league scene. The appointment appeared inspired. Within two years, Boston were champions of the Southern League, earning promotion to the Football Conference. Two years after that, they reached the promised land of the Football League, edging out Dagenham & Redbridge on goal difference in a tense, neck-and-neck title race. On the surface, it was a story of remarkable success, of a manager awakening a club from its slumber. Both of these triumphs, however, would later be exposed as fundamentally tainted by systematic fraud.

The foundations of Evans’s success were built on a simple but effective ploy designed to cheat the system. The club systematically lodged false contracts for its players with the football authorities. These official documents stated player salaries that were merely a fraction of their true earnings. The substantial difference was paid out through undeclared channels, often disguised as “expenses”, ensuring no tax or national insurance contributions were paid on the bulk of the players’ wages. This illegal practice, a clear case of what would become known as “financial doping”, gave Boston United a significant and unfair competitive advantage over rivals who operated within the rules.

The scale of the deception was stark. In one instance, player Ken Charlery was officially contracted on £120 per week. His actual earnings were £620 per week, supplemented by a £16,000 signing-on fee on which no tax was paid. Similarly, the former Liverpool defender Mike Marsh was listed as earning £100 per week, a tenth of his real £1,000 weekly wage. This scheme allowed Boston United to assemble a squad far beyond its legitimate financial means, directly fuelling its two tainted promotions under the management of Steve Evans.

FA Investigation and a Manager's Conviction

The house of cards began to collapse almost immediately after Boston United secured their Football League status. Within weeks, the FA’s then-compliance officer, Graham Bean, initiated an investigation into financial irregularities at the club. In July of that year, an FA disciplinary committee found Boston United guilty. The punishment was a £100,000 fine and a four-point deduction for their inaugural Football League season. This penalty infuriated Dagenham & Redbridge, the club that had been so narrowly and, as it turned out, unfairly denied promotion. For them, the sanction was seen as a slap on the wrist that failed to correct a grave injustice.

More significantly, the FA’s findings went beyond the club’s institutional guilt. The committee found that both Steve Evans and the club’s owner, Pat Malkinson, had actively tried to subvert the investigation. They were found guilty of having “facilitated a payment of £8,000 to a witness to attempt to mislead, impede and frustrate” the FA’s enquiry. For this serious offence, Malkinson was suspended from football for thirteen months and fined £5,250. Evans received a harsher penalty: a twenty-month suspension from all football activities and an £8,000 fine. The FA had sent a clear message about his personal culpability.

The manager was banned, but his exile was short-lived. He took a job with a recruitment company owned by businessman Jon Sotnick, who would later become Chief Executive at Darlington. Sotnick was persuaded to invest in Boston United, and by February 2004, Evans was back in the manager’s office. However, the FA’s sanctions were now the least of his worries. A full criminal investigation was underway. In September 2005, Evans, Malkinson, and three others connected with Boston United were charged with conspiracy to commit fraud at the club between 1998 and 2002. They all denied the charges, setting the stage for a court case that would bring the sordid details of the affair into the public domain and result in a criminal conviction for the manager.

Courtroom Drama and a Manager's Reputation

While the legal process ground on, Steve Evans continued to cultivate a reputation for aggressive and abusive touchline behaviour. In one notable incident in February 2006, he was escorted from Grimsby Town’s Blundell Park by police after verbally abusing the fourth official. The club chairman at the time, Jon Sotnick, leaped to his manager’s defence, bizarrely claiming a conspiracy was at work. “At every game Steve seems to be singled out for extra attention from the police - and I’m determined to get the bottom of this,” he stated. Sotnick’s most memorable quote on the matter, offered without a hint of irony, painted a picture of a persecuted victim:

Steve was thrown out of the ground with no money, no mobile phone and was left to fend for himself.

In September 2006, the trial began at Southwark Crown Court. The court heard evidence from players like Ken Charlery, confirming the dual-contract system. The total amount defrauded from the public purse through the failure to pay tax and national insurance on player wages was confirmed to be £245,188. As the trial progressed, two defendants were acquitted by the judge and another had their case thrown out. Then, in a dramatic turn, both Evans and Pat Malkinson changed their pleas to guilty at the last minute. Malkinson received a two-year prison sentence, suspended for two years, and was ordered to repay the money owed plus over £100,000 in interest. Steve Evans received a one-year suspended sentence for his role in the fraud. The conviction was now a permanent part of his record.

The Aftermath for Boston United

During the sentencing, a narrative of sympathy for Evans emerged from his own camp. His defence counsel, Jim Sturman QC, pleaded for mercy, portraying a man broken by the ordeal. “If your honour sends Steve Evans to prison today he will lose his job again,” Sturman argued. “I ask for tempering justice with mercy… He is terrified of spending one day in prison… He has not slept. His family have not slept. He is terrified.” The court was told the affair had already cost Evans £140,000 in legal fees, fines, and lost income. To the fury of Boston supporters, who had watched their club’s name dragged through the mud, the new chairman, Jim Rodwell, echoed this sentiment. “I think Steven has been working under incredibly difficult circumstances and it’s been a struggle for him,” Rodwell announced, confirming that Evans would remain in his job as manager. This decision to retain a manager with a fresh conviction for fraud committed at the club was met with disbelief by many observers.

The club, however, was financially crippled. The legacy of the scandal was not just reputational but fiscal. In May 2007, a defeat at Wrexham on the final day of the season confirmed Boston United’s relegation from the Football League. Just two days later, Steve Evans resigned. The club’s fall was precipitous. In June 2007, they were demoted a further division to the Blue Square North. A year later, they fell again, into the Premier Division of the Northern Premier League. While Boston United were plummeting through the non-league pyramid as a direct consequence of the era of his management, Evans landed on his feet. Within 48 hours of leaving the wreckage behind, he was appointed manager of Blue Square Premier club Crawley Town.

Steve Evans and Crawley's "Project Promotion"

Crawley Town was not without its own financial troubles. The club fought off a winding-up order from HMRC and had well-documented difficulties over the three years of Evans’s tenure. But by the summer before the season in question, new owners had arrived, paid off all the club’s debts, and embarked on a spending spree unprecedented in recent non-league history. They spent £330,000 on transfer fees for new players, a figure that does not even account for the significant associated wage budget. This new project, bankrolled to achieve promotion at any cost, mirrored the strategy of financial muscle that had defined Evans’s time at Boston United. Their aggressive approach was not universally welcomed. An attempt to sign Wimbledon’s captain, Danny Kedwell, was rebuffed by the player himself. “Crawley are trying to buy everyone and I’m flattered,” Kedwell said, “but I’m captain of this club and hopefully next season we’ll be in the Football League instead of them.” The quote was a pointed reminder that respect cannot always be bought.

The story of Steve Evans is a story that merits retelling. For supporters of clubs like Dagenham & Redbridge, who were cheated out of a rightful promotion, and for fans of Boston United, who saw their club brought to its knees, the past is not easily forgotten. The conviction for fraud remains a stark fact. While Crawley Town supporters may not care about the moral dimension of their manager’s history if he delivers a place in the Football League, his past will inevitably tarnish any future success. Whatever Steve Evans achieves in his career, and whichever club employs him, will be tainted by his involvement in one of the most clear-cut examples of financial doping in modern football. While Boston United were, at the time of writing, beginning their long climb back, having won promotion to the Blue Square North, the legacy of their former manager’s tenure was the very reason they had fallen so far in the first place.