It is probably a mistake to start with a British cultural reference that is nearly 29 years old, but this is a story about misgivings and mistakes, so it feels apt.

In 1995, the late, great comedian Caroline Aherne had a spoof talk show in which she played a character called Mrs Merton, an elderly lady from Manchester who would ask celebrities disingenuously blunt questions.

“So, what first attracted you to the millionaire Paul Daniels?” was her famous opener to Debbie McGee, the glamorous assistant and wife of the aforementioned TV magician.

A version of that question had been rattling around my head while I tried to find a common thread between the four case studies we have done this week on men who want to buy football clubs.

So, Chris/Dozy/William/Thomas, what first attracted you to the cash business with property assets that would guarantee weeks, if not months, of positive media coverage and a huge dopamine hit from the gratitude of strangers?

Because when you put it like that, it is not hard to see how bidding for football clubs might be addictive/a good smokescreen/useful advertising/worth a go (delete as applicable).

We picked Chris Kirchner, Dozy Mmobuosi, William Storey and Thomas Zilliacus this time, but if there are any streaming giants reading, we could flesh out…

Kicked out of the FA Cup and facing a fresh English Football League investigation into allegations of backdated paperwork, Barnsley’s season has been anything but boring.

The South Yorkshire side are pushing for promotion but the overall impression is one of a club distracted and divided by the break-up of the ownership group that took control in 2017 — a situation exacerbated by a dispute between two women at the club last summer.

Co-owner and director Jean Cryne, the 70-year-old widow of former owner Patrick Cryne, allegedly told fellow staff that she thought then-club secretary Eleanor Dobson, 28, flirted with the players and wore inappropriate clothes. Cryne did not deny this when Dobson, who had recently gotten married, later challenged her about them.

This led Dobson, who joined the club in 2022, to make a formal complaint to the then-chief executive Khaled El-Ahmad and their human resources manager, with club chairman Neerav Parekh also informed.

In an attempt to resolve the matter, El-Ahmad arranged a video conference call in early August between the two women during which it is said Dobson accepted an apology from Cryne.

But within weeks of that virtual meeting, the row flared up again when Dobson discovered that her complaint, which was meant to be private, had…

There is an EFL club that keeps a database designed to monitor the progress of its future head coaches. It is succession planning, a means of identifying the next best candidate before the search is even required to begin.

Individuals are marked and categorised; ones to watch and others to forget. A new tab has recently been created beneath those head coaches who are deemed unworthy of consideration, though. It is labelled “Joey Barton”. Do not touch.

The anecdote is relayed after one senior figure at the club was asked last week if Barton, sacked as manager of Bristol Rovers in October, would ever be considered for one of their managerial vacancies. “Not a chance,” they say.

Barton is unlikely to care. Not publicly, at least. After his playing career was held back by acts of violence and self-sabotage, the 41-year-old is now setting fire to his prospects of finding further opportunities as a football manager.

An industry that has provided Barton with no end of second chances – after prison, after an 18-month gambling ban and after multiple arrests – is finally seeing its patience expire thanks to a series of furious social media posts against female pundits and commentators.

They seem to have closed off any possible return to the game he claims to be defending. There…

Welcome to #GrassrootsGOATs, our series about the heroes that make football happen at a local level. After your nominations, we have narrowed it down to five people whose incredible dedication has changed the lives of those around them through football. Read the full series here…

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Dave Eastham chuckles when thinking about the inaugural training session for Oxenhope Juniors, whose home village nestles amid the moors of Bronte Country in Yorkshire.

“The grass was frozen over, so we had to play on this old Tarmac basketball court,” he says. “There were four kids there and it was also raining. So, not a great start.”

From such inauspicious beginnings in October 2019, the club now boasts six under-age teams and more than 90 players. A feat made all the more remarkable by co-founder Dave — an all-round “superhero” for helping bring “football to the children of this area”, according to friend Andy Farley — grieving the loss of wife Amy from pancreatic cancer during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Amy Firth passed away aged 42 in October 2020, just months after being diagnosed on the eve of the first lockdown in March. She left behind husband Dave and three children, Isla (now 13), Finn (12), and Erin (eight).

“Obviously a really, really difficult time for all the…

The English FA has said that staff at professional clubs “falls short of reflecting the levels of diversity amongst the playing population”.

This comes after the FA published its third annual report on the Football Leadership Diversity Code. Introduced in 2020, the code is an initiative to prompt the collective effort to address inequality in senior leadership, wider team operations and coaching roles.

Last season among the clubs endorsing the initiative, just nine per cent of senior leaders, 11 per cent of team operations, 16 per cent of coaches and nine per cent of hired senior coaches were individuals of Black, Asian or mixed heritage. Additionally, only 23 per cent of senior leaders and 30 per cent of team operations hires were female.

Within the 53 club signatories, 21 per cent of senior leaders and 29 per cent of team operations are female. Meanwhile, seven per cent of senior leaders and nine per cent of team operations belong to individuals of Black, Asian or mixed heritage. 

In the coaching workforce, 13 per cent of trainers and 11 per cent of senior coaches are from Black, Asian, or mixed heritage backgrounds.

This year marks the first instance where participating clubs have disclosed their actual workforce data, including information on LGBTQ+ and disability,…

Like a giant hailstorm, the tennis balls bounced up off the turf inside the Select Car Leasing Stadium. A few to begin with and then dozens. More than 200 were thrown in total, bringing play to a standstill for two minutes. At a club used to losing points, here was one being made by Reading’s disaffected supporters.

The League One visit of Bolton Wanderers this month had been targeted as the day fans took a stand against Dai Yongge, the Chinese businessman who has owned Reading since May 2017.

Dai arrived with ambitions to lead Reading back to the Premier League, a level they fell from in 2012-13, but has instead left them hamstrung in the third tier following relegation in May, bound by financial constraints brought on by his folly. Reading’s total losses now stand at £191million ($232m) after five consecutive years where wages have eclipsed income. The club’s women’s team has been sacrificed, being downgraded to a part-time operation this summer.

Reading fans have thrown tennis balls on the pitch during todays game in protest against their ownership.

The travelling Bolton fans applaud their efforts. pic.twitter.com/7yYhtGau3n

— Football Away Days (@FBAwayDays) September 16, 2023

Finding the good in Dai’s six-year reign gets no easier for a club where fans…

There is a group chat for American owners of EFL clubs — and those of other nationalities who reside stateside — where the topic of conversation often returns to the same issue. How do you get the biggest sports market in the world interested in a lower-league club like Gillingham?

The answer, if you are the owner of Kent’s only professional football club, is simple. A trip to the club’s home ground, Priestfield, which is hemmed in by houses and carries the magic of a 130-year institution, usually does the trick.

“It’s discussed a lot among us, how we can use Welcome to Wrexham or Ted Lasso. They were funny but also made people pay more attention to English football and kept doing that, so Americans became fans,” Brad Galinson tells The Athletic. “Everyone who has come over here has been absolutely hooked and become a Gills follower. So from our standpoint, we really want to introduce our country to what you guys have here, which is fantastic.”

It has been nine months since Galinson, a property tycoon based in Tampa, Florida, and his wife Shannon became majority shareholders in the League Two side. An email to then owner Paul Scally, who had a fraught relationship with fans over his 27-year reign, in 2022 was the first step in a journey that has since seen…

Hannah Dingley’s tenure as caretaker manager of Forest Green Rovers, which made her the first woman to take charge of a men’s side in England’s top four divisions, is set to end with the League Two club to appoint a new manager.

Southampton under-21 coach David Horseman will replace the 39-year-old with an announcement from the club expected imminently.

Louis Carey, who alongside Horseman was part of Ruben Selles’ backroom staff at Southampton last season, will join Horseman as part of his coaching staff at Forest Green.

The League Two club made history when they appointed Dingley as the club’s caretaker manager on July 4.

Dale Vince, the club’s chairman, said at the time: “Hannah was the natural choice for us to be first team interim head coach — she’s done a fantastic job leading our academy and is well aligned with the values of the club.

This article was originally published as part of a Women of the EFL feature in March 2021. It has been repurposed to reflect the news that she has become Forest Green’s caretaker manager after Duncan Ferguson’s departure. The 39-year-old will take charge of the League Two side in a friendly against non-League Melksham Town on Wednesday.  

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The road leading to Forest Green Rovers’ New Lawn Stadium is named “Another Way”. It is a sign of the commitment that owner Dale Vince has made to running his club differently through his well-publicised desire to make the Gloucestershire outfit as environmentally friendly as possible.

Serving vegan pies and building a new eco stadium made out of wood is not the only way in which the club have been leaders in change in recent years — they became the first club to appoint a female head of academy in 2019, Hannah Dingley.

“It sounds awful but I thought, ‘If I’m going to get an opportunity anywhere, I’m going to get it at Forest Green’,” says Dingley, who leads a team of 25 staff overseeing around 140 young players in the academy. “It’s a bit like trying to run quite a small school and we’re really lucky here that the club are really keen and invested in promoting the academy.”

Dingley has been a key recruit as…

As Barnsley secured their place in this weekend’s League One play-off final last Friday, beating visitors Bolton Wanderers 1-0 at Oakwell to complete a 2-1 aggregate win, two women in the directors’ box shared an emotional moment.

God bless you, Jean pic.twitter.com/TAFwZWdKRj

— Barnsley FC (@BarnsleyFC) May 20, 2023

Jean Cryne (on the left in the tweet above) is a familiar face at the South Yorkshire club. The wife of Barnsley’s former owner Patrick Cryne, who sadly passed away in 2018 at age 66, she shares an emotional bond with the club her husband had followed all his life and stepped in to save when they were on the brink of folding in 2003.

The woman whose arm is placed warmly around her shoulders, in contrast, is newer to Barnsley fans.

Julie Anne Quay is an Australian-born businesswoman who moved to New York more than 20 years ago. Quay is a leading name in the fashion world, having founded the global pop culture, fashion and music brand VFILES. And since last May, Quay has been able to include the role of ‘Director of Barnsley Football Club’ on her impressive CV.

Initially, it seems like an incongruous fit but, more and more, we are seeing an intertwined relationship between fashion and football. David Beckham and more recently Jack Grealish and Leah…