When we eventually speak, Rod Taylor is full of apologies.
The co-chairman of Morecambe is a busy man. He runs a thriving hotel and care home business in the town, and sits on the board of the club’s flourishing community sports initiative.
But that wasn’t the reason he wasn’t answering calls on Wednesday of last week. Taylor was part of a delegation from the football club at the funeral of 93-year-old supporter Cliff Crabtree, Morecambe’s oldest fan.
Everyone in the town knew Cliff and his love for the club which is why, on his 90th birthday, Taylor persuaded then manager Derek Adams to stop the club coach on the way to an away game to deliver presents.
“He was a wonderful man. People like Cliff live and breathe this football club so it was only right we had a representation there,” Taylor tells i.
It is anecdotes like this that make the desperate situation Morecambe currently find themselves in so distressing. This proud community club, which was playing Ipswich Town in League One just over a year ago, are on the brink because of, in Taylor’s words, a prolonged, two-year “ownership fiasco”. And he is not exaggerating.
Currently they have no manager, just two professionals on their books, are the subject of a transfer embargo and last month, player and staff wages were paid late. There are fears that with May’s pay day on the horizon, the same could happen again in a couple of weeks.
To compound matters their highly-rated CEO Ben Sadler, who has done much to hold things together behind the scenes, is departing for Walsall.
April’s late payment triggered a three-point deduction on the League Two club and prompted the threat of a boycott from senior players of their final game against Swindon Town.
A “shambles” was how skipper Farrend Rawson described the situation and that was before manager Ged Brannan, who had done a sterling job piloting the club into play-off contention after losing six loan players in January, resigned to join Accrington Stanley as their assistant manager.
Brannan’s was an especially painful departure. The 52-year-old spoke of his deep regret at leaving but the uncertainty over the club’s future effectively forced his hand. For staff at Morecambe’s level there are mortgages to think about, bills to pay and food to put on the table.
“We are in a bleak situation,” Taylor tells i, with disarming honesty. “It can’t go on.”
At the centre of this chaos is one man: Morecambe’s owner Jason Whittingham, whose Bond Group have been in charge for six years.
If you recognise the name it was Whittingham, along with co-owner Colin Goldring, who presided over the slide of rugby union club Worcester Warriors into an acrimonious administration in 2022, which led to their expulsion from the Premiership having piled up more than £15min debt.
The threat of administration now lingers over Morecambe, with serious doubts about whether Whittingham and the Bond Group can afford to keep covering the club’s running costs.
It is an unhappy union that should be heading for divorce. The club has been up for sale for more than two years – and there has been “genuine interest” in that time, says Taylor – but the suspicion is the current owner is asking for too much. Indeed sources tell i that Whittingham has previously demanded up to £5m for the club, a wild overvaluation given Morecambe posted losses of £1.2m last season.
Taylor won’t be drawn on figures but admits that it has been “way overvalued” in the past.
“Is that the situation now? I don’t really know what he’s aiming for at the moment. But bear in mind whoever buys the club is buying a loss-making business,” he says.
Whittingham now finds himself deeply unpopular with supporters. While he used to be fairly vocal and gave interviews to the rugby press as recently as 2022, he has not been heard from for months.
He has not spoken to Morecambe’s supporters trust since a proposed takeover by Sarbjot Johal, a 21-year-old soft drinks entrepreneur, collapsed last year without ever starting the EFL’s owners and director’s tests. The Morecambe owner did not respond to attempts by i to speak to him for this article.
Where Morecambe differs from your typical EFL basket case is that the board – on which Taylor and several other lifelong Morecambe fans sit – is independent from Whittingham and has not been afraid to call out his ownership, even though he appointed them to run the club while he tries to find the buyer.
Taylor’s profile makes him a spokesman but he is also the club’s best salesman, which makes it so bewildering that he and the board have largely been kept “at arm’s length” from the sales process being run in the shadows by Whittingham.
The board remain a beacon in the gloom for fans, a group of unpaid but dedicated directors trying to hold things together while Whittingham seemingly prevaricates over the club’s future. “Believe it or not there are a lot of good things going on at Morecambe,” Taylor says.
He cites the fact the club have no external debt and pay just a peppercorn rent to play at the Mazuma Mobile stadium. It is 30 years since they were playing in the Northern Premier League but with crowds of 4,000 and 17 consecutive seasons in the Football League, they should be an “attractive prospect” to buyers.
“The academy is producing, the community sports scheme is firing on all cylinders, the commercial and events are brilliant and have been doing really well over the last 12 months with good people involved,” he says.
“The ladies’ football, which came on board last year, is really positive. There are so many good elements but of course, the ownership situation has dragged on for two years and is really crippling us.”
To step away from the precipice one of two things needs to happen quickly: either Bond Group agree to fully finance the club to move forward or they sell to a responsible owner.
The prospect of the former appears unlikely. “I have no confidence in that and neither do my colleagues on the board,” Taylor says.
On the latter option, there was some optimism that a deal to sell the club could be drawing close, with genuine interest from a US group in buying Bond Group out.
“It looked more optimistic last week. That did fall away a little bit a the back end of the back end of the week but who knows?” Taylor says.
“I understand the owner is currently talking to potential purchasers.” A video call with Whittingham is planned in the next couple of days to get a full appraisal of the situation but it is difficult to escape the feeling that the club under Whittingham is starting to circle the drain.
“I think there are serious discussions with Bond Group to take place early this week,” Taylor says.
“I think we, as a board of directors, need a clear steer on how the owners see it. It may be that they decide to fund it. If that’s the case, fine. But you need that assurance, don’t you?
“A business can’t live hand to mouth. It’s a limited company and it’s got to function like that. We need a clear directive from the owner this week, that’s the absolute reality.”
Placing the club into administration – the “nuclear option” – might yet force Whittingham’s hand. But it would also cause job losses and a nine-point deduction for next season, which is already looking difficult given Morecambe are way behind rivals in terms of player recruitment and retention and managerial certainty.
“I couldn’t say administration can be ruled out as an option, it can’t be,” Taylor admits.
“That’s down to the owner funding his business and making sure it is viable and it can pay its way. If that becomes a situation where it isn’t and it becomes not viable and can’t pay its bills that’s a different conversation altogether.
“It would absolutely crease me. You’ve got to be responsible, though. You don’t want that business to disappear altogether. It’s the nuclear option, it’s not the option we want. We want a sale.
“But I can’t say at this stage in the middle of May that it won’t happen. I don’t want it to happen, I hope it won’t happen and I hope the club is sold to a new owner who funds it properly.”
There has been some talk in the past that boxer Tyson Fury, Morecambe’s most famous resident, might buy it. Given Morecambe has always punched above its weight in the EFL in the past, that appeals to headline writers but doesn’t seem a serious prospect – though the north east corner of the stadium houses the Tyson Fury Foundation and the heavyweight already owns a gym inside the building.
“He’s great around our local area, he mixes with people, he’ll jog down the promenade and stop and talk to people. He’s very respectful that way,” Taylor says.
“But I don’t think there was any real intent to buy the football club. Had there been that would have happened surely.”
For supporters, the wait is tortuous. There have been marches and protests against Whittingham over two years but there is simply no mechanism to force him to sell.
“It’s one of those where it seems completely illogical,” Joel Shooter of the club’s Supporters Trust tells i.
“It’s careering towards a path where both parties lose. If administration happens, there are no winners – we lose nine points and Jason loses the club for nothing.”
The mood on the ground, though, feels defiant rather than deflated, the frustration here that the club is almost being held to ransom while a flawed sales process plays out.
Those who love Morecambe have rallied but it is now down to one man to sell up. The hope is the brinkmanship ends soon and the prospect of oblivion brings clarity and a realistic asking price.
“You could get angry, you could get your blood pressure up, you could do all these things. And there is some of that with me. But you have to be pragmatic and look at the bigger picture,” Taylor, who represents the values the EFL should be encouraging in owners, says.
“We have a wonderful board of directors, they’re solid, four of them are lifetime supporters of the football club who have seen it through from non-league level. And we are very together, there’s massive stability there.
“We have got ex-directors, friends of the club who still contribute, because they love it. They are concerned at the moment because they don’t want to see all the work they have put in to get the club where it is sold down the river.”