Reply To: Phoenix Club?

[Jon B]

I also think talk of a phoenix club is a little premature. However if things go badly in the next few months then it would do no harm to think seriously about it quite soon.

What is a football club? A community of fans, and a tiny number of professionals, supported by a wider group of volunteers, at this level.

In six months Scunthorpe United could lose control of Glanford Park and be completely insolvent. It’s not fanciful to think this could be the club’s last season in it’s current form. If the club goes, as the first post shows, it will be at least a decade for a return to the five o’clock football results on a Saturday. The quickest return from a disaster was AFC Wimbledon who took nine years to return from their foundation, after the awful MK franchising, to being members of League Two.

Some old league names vanished in the seventies and are still in non-league- Workington, Southport, Bradford PA. Barrow took half a century and several near extinctions before making it back.

To be competitive in the fifth tier (the National League) I’d say you need a playing budget of 1.5-2 million to be competitive nowadays. That’s daft money. Effectively, it means just over half the clubs have some chance of promotion whereas the rest are just happy to be competing at that level.

I agree that every effort should be made to keep the current Scunthorpe United entity going. However, the support may face the situation where that’s not possible, quite soon. In which case, basic questions:

Who will establish a new club?

On what basis- private business, CIC, co-op?

Where will it play?

How will it be funded?

What level will the club start at and what will be the realistic timeframe for progress back towards competing at the current / one level above?

It will take a year or so to at least have some answer to all these tricky questions. Timing is everything if the worst happens and the fans still want to see a Scunthorpe team playing at some level next year.