Success will be having a football team representing the town of Bury and I'm 100% confident we'll have that. I'd love Bury FC to be saved and eventually merged with Bury AFC and do a Wimbledon, to show we won't take this lying down and we won't be beaten by crooks and conmen and organisations that don't care about lower league football.
The challenge though, will be how far we can move up the leagues on our fan base. Not only do we have Man Utd and Man City down the road but a host of other local clubs (similar to Glasgow's smaller towns/suburbs). Not only that but also Football Club of Manchester (you may remember a few Man Utd fans broke away from their club due to the Glazers) and the Salford City Vanity Club (Class of '92 and all that shit)...both clubs have relatively small crowds (even smaller than ours) but they do take fans off us. Salford, for example, is now our nearest league club.
I'm sure you'll be aware the Neville brothers are involved with Salford, both Bury lads, their Mum, our club secretary and their Dad (RIP) former commercial director. And whilst I don't want to talk ill of the dead, he made the catastrophic decision (when there was at least one better option) to basically hand the club over in 2013 to Stewart Day, a deluded property developer from Yorkshire who didn’t even support Bury...I know, I despair. I don't think he put one penny of his own money into the club. He said he'd cleared the debts...the truth was he'd put all the debt (only about £750K) onto a loan, secured against the ground (previously mortgage free) at rates of around 138%.
He just went mental then, siphoning money from his property business into the club, setting up a car park investment scam, borrowing more money on the ground...whilst him and/or others taking introductory fees of going on for £1M. We were making losses of £2.5M a year...it was just sheer lunacy. Our overall debts rocketed up to massive levels, for a club of our size. Talk about being built on sand...
Day resigned after 5 or 6 years, 'for family reasons' and said he'd left the club in a stronger financial state. A total lie. His so-called 'property empire', then went bust within days/weeks owing millions of pounds. The Car Park scam raised £3M and went down with his property business, even though it's our car park. The offer was £10K a plot, at 9% interest with the promise of all money back in 5/10 years. Unregulated, of course, and it was obvious what was going to happen and it did....I know people who have lost their life savings. Day and his sidekick Glenn Thomas are utter scum.
Then to top it off, Steve Dale took over (introduced by his good mate Glenn Thomas would you believe?) saying he'd just recovered from leukaemia and wanted a second chance in life, to put back into the community. Claims of £3M put into the club, with our training facilities to be renovated with accommodation, swimming pools...you name it, for underprivileged kids. It soon turned out to be all lies...he was an asset stripper; put the club's computers and furniture and all our trophies/memorabilia (fortunately these are hidden from him) into newly set up companies, of which he and his son are sole directors. He then stopped paying the players and staff; whilst bullying non playing staff to resign. The rest is history and I don't really want to go there but he really is the scum of the earth. The leukaemia story wasn't even true (I've loads of evidence from past employees, non Bury related, confirming he just used as a sympathy vote). What sort of animal does that?
When I confronted him at a pre-season friendly last year, he threatened to 'rip my fcukin' face off.'
So we've been shafted left, right and centre for 7 years, including by the EFL...who didn't give a shit during all this time of...CCJs, WUPs, massive losses, etc.
A total and utter shit storm and a complete disgrace. If any of the above is incorrect, I make no apologies, as it is the truth to the best of my knowledge and anyway, Day, Thomas & Dale wouldn't dare take me to court, coz they know what would come out. How they are still walking the streets, is beyond belief.
Right...I need a lie down now!!!
In the meantime, see the two links below and read and weep.
We show how loans, a car park and a collapsed business helped drive Bury to the brink as a winding-up petition is adjourned
www.theguardian.com
The appalling state of Bury’s finances led to the modern and analytical potential buyers pulling abruptly out of the deal
www.theguardian.com