The financial crisis at Bury has been laid bare by a statement on behalf of the players, who won promotion to League One this season, that the club has not paid any of their wages since February. Nicky Adams, a 32-year-old midfielder in his third stint at the club, issued the statement on Twitter saying the players “have gone from elation to complete and utter dismay”.
Non-playing staff have also been kept waiting and not been paid in full, because of the club’s cashflow and financial difficulties. Bury face a winding-up petition on 19 June, principally for unpaid taxes due to HMRC, which was adjourned last week after the owner, Steve Dale, said he had “some expressions of interest” from potential buyers.
In a bitterly critical statement, the players called on Dale to “move on” and sell the club, saying they understood he has received offers. “Mr chairman, we know you have no regard or consideration for us as players, our families or our futures, but please just accept the offer and walk away from our club before you bring it to its knees.”
The players have not been paid for 12 weeks, Adams’s statement said, and their union, the Professional Footballers’ Association, had partly paid the March wages.
In a statement on Bury’s website, Dale said he is suffering from an incurable form of leukaemia and acute osteoarthritis and is “unable to leave my bed, let alone home some days”. Dale added that he was working “tirelessly until all hours to save our club,” but confirmed that manager Ryan Lowe is in talks with Plymouth.
“The club was bust due to the previous owner’s tenure,” Dale added. “Nobody would have taken it on, I did and am being vilified … for sorting a mess that I did not create. Everybody needs to be paid but the club cannot afford the level of employees it has.”
Dale took over Bury in December from Stewart Day, a Lancashire property developer whose regime latterly also struggled to pay the players on time, previously taking out loans at an annual interest rate of 138%, secured on Gigg Lane,andfaced three winding-up petitions in 2016. Day’s property company, Mederco, which had loaned Bury £4.2m, according to the club’s 2016-17 accounts, went into administration in February.
Day said when he left in December that he believed he had left Bury “in a stronger position than it was in when I arrived”, and was leaving “with a heavy heart” to spend more time with his family. The administrator of Mederco, Phil Deyes of Leonard Curtis in Leeds, revealed in his report on the insolvency that in November HMRC had issued a winding-up petition against Mederco for £605,000 unpaid tax, and that Day had instructed the insolvency accountants in early December.
Deyes reported that there were “limited financial records” at Mederco, and he estimated the company owed creditors £4m. That included £190,000 outstanding to investors who had bought parking spaces at Gigg Lane for £9,995 each, in a scheme marketed by Day with a commitment to pay 9% annual interest.
In a long statement issued on the club website last month Dale said that when he took over “this football club was in serious trouble, and this turned out to be far in excess of what we could have comprehended”.
Dale added that he had delayed paying wages because of a £250,000 electricity and water bill, and that £1.6m was needed to pay wages, HMRC and pensions alone by the end of this month.
“Clearly we have not made ourselves popular with the staff for our need to cut back, but our job is to save the club, not ingratiate,” Dale said.
He concluded by saying he had received expressions of interest and “would like to openly invite offers to me directly, to take over ownership of the club”.
The players in their statement pleaded with Dale to sell immediately: “If it’s become too much, all we ask is that you step aside, move on and stop negatively impacting everyone’s livelihoods.”