Season extension

The FA’s decision on Tuesday to relegate Northwich Victoria and exclude them from the play-offs is desperately unfortunate for Vics’ fans and leaves them in a very difficult position. Northwich Victoria is a club with a long and proud history and last Saturday’s home game showed the sympathy and support that exists for Vics fans at FC United. As a supporter-owned club, we will offer them whatever assistance we can whilst respecting their club.

Generally, the past couple of weeks at FC have been a period of uncertainty as we strove for a play-off position. Suspensions had an effect on the side, with key players missing, and we wobbled over Easter but it was good to see us finish the season on a high with a convincing win last Saturday.

Also missing - from the bench - over Easter was our manager, in circumstances that we are not altogether happy about. Margy received a two-match ban for comments he is alleged to have made to a referee at the end of the Stafford home game. The referee claimed that Karl had said something untoward but both he and Daz Lyons, who was stood next to Karl at the time, were adamant that this wasn’t the case.

We were particularly unhappy at the way the incident was handled both by the officials on the day and then by the FA. We very much want to have a dialogue with referees and to keep the lines of communication open but in this instance are frustrated that the FA seemed to pay little heed to the views of clubs. It makes things very difficult. The club believes Karl and Daz’s version of events. While we respect match officials, we don’t think it is right the way that things were handled in this case or others we have been involved in. We need to avoid at all costs a situation where managers and players feel that they can’t talk to referees. The game will be poorer for that.

Elsewhere, we’ve been continuing to work with our design team to modify and tweak the plans for our new ground. We’ve also had further discussions with Sport England and the Football Foundation about the funding requirements for the grants we hope to secure for the project. Discussions have also taken place with all other funders, including the city council. These things always seem to take a long time as you dot the i’s and cross t’s, but we continue to make positive progress.

Looking ahead to Saturday’s game at Chorley, while the circumstances of our qualification for the promotion play-offs is not the way we would have chosen to make the last four, we have been presented with an opportunity that we need to grasp. The players are excited at the prospect and looked sharp in training this week.

After almost 140 years of history we hope Vics can survive. The club’s chances of survival will be much greater if a way can be found for the supporters to be involved on the board of the club. Supporter-owned clubs work and can be successful: AFC Wimbledon, Exeter, Chester and FC United show that in practice.

Ironically, even as that success is being demonstrated, there are still some in the game who refuse to see it. "I don’t see a time when fans have a say in board decisions - it’s never worked at any club" so said Leeds United director Peter Lorimer this week.

What arrant, arrogant and misinformed nonsense.

Maybe Peter Lorimer dismisses as insignificant the achievements of clubs in the lower reaches of the game or is ignorant of the fact that in the Premier League Swansea City fans own 20% of their club giving them a real say in the way that their football club is run, then again it might be the case that Peter Lorimer just does not know what he is talking about.