The Khoslas and Kingstonian: Out of Administration, Into the Fire

A New Regime

In July 2002, at a supporters’ forum, Kingstonian’s new owner Rajesh Khosla introduced the fans to three letters that had begun to shake English football: CVA. The Company Voluntary Arrangement, designed to bring the club fully out of administration, had failed. His attempts to explain why were just as unsuccessful. He blamed the football authorities for “moving the goalposts” and the club's old directors for everything else, before warning the press “not to print lies.”

This was not the fresh start supporters had hoped for. The Khosla family had purchased Kingstonian from administrators Begbies Traynor in April 2002. Rajesh was the hard-nosed businessman in charge, though the club’s 125-year lease on its Kingsmeadow ground was transferred to his son, Anup. Initially, the new regime’s popularity rested on one simple fact: they were not Chris Kelly, the previous chairman whose twenty-year association had ended in ignominy. But that goodwill evaporated quickly.

The failed CVA had immediate consequences, with Kingstonian suspended from the Ryman League for the first few weeks of the season. Khosla’s financial restructuring proved more damaging. He announced that gate receipts and bar takings would be handled by two separate accounts. The club, it transpired, was expected to survive solely on gate money, while the significant and historically vital bar income would flow into a Khosla family account. No club at Kingstonian’s level could operate on gate receipts alone.

The Dons Arrive

The summer of 2002 is better remembered in non-league circles for the birth of AFC Wimbledon. The two stories soon became intertwined. Khosla welcomed the new fan-owned club and its large support base to Kingsmeadow as tenants. The arrangement was lucrative, with Wimbledon averaging gates of 2,500 despite starting in the Combined Counties League. Yet with Kingstonian’s finances severed from the stadium’s other revenue streams, the club itself saw none of the benefit from this new influx of cash.

Kingstonian’s season under new manager Steve Sedgeley started late but featured a long unbeaten run. Behind the scenes, however, things were falling apart. The CVA remained blocked by old directors, finances tightened, and Sedgeley departed. The Khoslas showed little empathy for the football club they now owned.

In March 2003, Rajesh Khosla delivered his endgame. He announced he was selling the Kingsmeadow lease to AFC Wimbledon. Kingstonian, the club that had moved into the ground in 1989 on a 125-year lease, was now a sub-tenant in its own home. Khosla’s rationale was that the club could start again, debt-free. The reality was a twenty-year sub-lease and a continuing struggle for survival, now without any assets.

Profit and Protest

The real rationale was profit. Khosla had spotted Wimbledon’s desperation for a home near their Merton roots and their fans’ ability to raise money through the Dons Trust. Having paid the administrators between £400,000 and £500,000 for the lease, he sold it on for a figure between £2 million and £2.5 million, even lending Wimbledon the money to complete the purchase. He had done a business deal and seemed genuinely perplexed by the idea that Kingstonian should see any of the proceeds.

The episode prompted Kingstonian fans to form their own Supporters Trust, following the model established by Supporters’ Direct. Khosla appeared to support the idea, though mainly because he still owned the club and wanted others to run it and pay its bills. The relationship was fraught. The Trust was tasked with administering the club for a season to prove its competence, but with Khosla holding the purse strings. The budget they set for the entire club was soon spent by Khosla on player wages alone.

In March 2004, a deal for the Trust to buy the club for £1 plus debts was agreed, but Khosla reneged on his promises. The Trust failed. Fan protests grew, amplified by a 16-page booklet titled “Khosliar” that detailed the owner’s broken pledges. Ultimately, quiet representations to the Ryman League from respected figures at the club forced the issue. Khosla was made to sell, claiming as he left that he had improved the club’s position and deserved a return on his investment, an attitude that seems oddly familiar to observers on Merseyside this week.

A local flower-seller, Jimmy Cochrane, stepped in to save the club, before selling to the current owners, Malcolm Winwright and Mark Anderson. They have since stabilised the club and negotiated an improved lease with their landlords, AFC Wimbledon. For many Kingstonian fans, the resentment towards their tenants-turned-landlords lingers, a complex legacy of a period that began with the promise of rescue and ended with the fight for survival.