The Supporters Trust sought a 'right to reply' from the Chronicle and Echo to balance misleading and inaccurate statements made by 'the football club' in an online article published by the newspaper on 13 April.
Our reply is below and a link to the revised article is included.
Statement
The statement from Northampton Town Football Club accusing the Supporters Trust of ‘scaremongering’ is inaccurate, misleading and conveys symptoms of obsessive paranoia.
Nearly all of the directors of the Trust are lifelong supporters.
All of the directors of the Trust are committed to promoting the long-term interests of professional football in our town, reflecting the mission statement of the Trust.
They care passionately about the club and want it to succeed.
In fulfilling this responsibility, they have a duty to raise concerns if there is a material risk that the future of the club might be compromised.
The club statement says ‘There are no financial issues whatsoever at the club and it even shows their business naivety to be using accounts from the year end June 30th 2025 to try and create problems today.’
We disagree.
As it stands, the club is indebted to its main financiers to the tune of more than £13 million, plus outstanding short-term obligations to creditors that include, it seems, more than £5 million due to GRS Roadstone Group.
An expectation has been created by the club that the capital debt will be repaid from the proceeds of the land sale, yet this land is not collateral in the strictest sense.
There is no guarantee that the sale of the land will be sufficient to pay down the debt.
Indeed, since valuations carried out in 2020 suggested the land might be worth £20 million, the values of commercial land have softened.
It appears that the future of the club may eventually depend on a speculative land investment that may go well but could very easily go badly wrong.
It is the duty of our directors to conduct reverse stress testing.
This includes giving due consideration to many alternative scenarios, including extreme ones. One such scenario would arise if a decision was taken not to pay down the capital debt on completion of the land sale, or should some other unforeseen event occur that prevents it, such as the incapacity or death of a principal actor.
For financial information, we are compelled to rely on accounts for the year ended 30 June 2025 which were filed by the club at Companies House on the deadline date of 31 March 2026 whereas many other clubs with the same financial year end filed their accounts much earlier and, in some cases, published much fuller accounts.
We issued our release ten days later and that period of time for review and board discussion included the Easter break.
The Trust board is composed of directors with significant business, financial and legal experience. Further, we have access to external professional advisers for help and guidance whenever needed. We have always taken advice when considered necessary. The allegation of business naivety is absurd.
The club also made a false allegation about our resignation from the Football Supporters' Association (FSA) as being the result of a FSA disciplinary procedure.
We regard this as a reckless and inaccurate statement which is defamatory.
There was no disciplinary action against the Trust at all.
The matter concerned one director of the Trust about whom a ruling was made without giving the individual director or the Trust on his behalf the right to respond.
The FSA conducted a process which was incomplete and not carried out in accordance with due process.
We objected to the process and it was not pursued further by the FSA.
Six months later we resigned from the FSA but our resignation was not related to the matter mentioned and the decision was fully communicated to Trust members who we regularly engage with.
Finally, as a minority shareholder in the club, we remind its directors of their own statutory duties under the Companies Act 2006, in which section 172 requires directors to promote the success of the company for the benefit of its members (shareholders) and other stakeholders, paying due regard to the long-term consequences of their actions.
https://www.northamptonchron.co.uk/sport/football/supporters-trust-and-northampton-town-have-their-say-as-grs-group-respond-to-trusts-serious-concerns-over-payments-6573557
