[maccawozzagod]

the thing is with Eric, is that he is a businessman but he bought the club because he was fro Accrington, had a love of the club and wanted to do right by it. When he bought it from John Alty he would have paid a decent five figure sum for it and then took on the debt as well. That would have been a significant purchase at the time as we had gates of around 3-400.

Nobody will ever know just what personal fortune he has put into the club but there is no doubt that he has. Whenever the game wasn't sponsored EW Cartons stepped in etc etc as well as any number of pocket dippings he would have made just like other directors have to do.

When he turned down the Khan money we all thought he was stupid, but could Khan have dleivered us to the Football League? we'll never know. But when other fans accuse us of having been bankrolled into the league it make sme chuckle. How many 'sugar daddies' are willing to have the worst facilities in their respective division? and we have only ever really paid money for a handful of players Prendergast £7k? Calcutt £5k?, Mullin £15k?, Craney £15k? Williams £25k (after selling him months earlier for £60k) and Roberts £4k. I can't think of any others we have paid actual coin for.

As far as Eric selling the club is concerned, I hope that he does, IF, his level of investment has run its course and only if any buyer seriously has the club at heart. Nobody buys a club really to just throw their money away but very very few will ever get a return for their money. Stanley have got weak gates and that in turn produces weak revenue from merchandise, but we have all said all along that the club would be a goldmine in the hands of an astute marketeer. There is potential here for a good solid business, but putting that money back into the ground and squad would have to be a priority for quite some time.

But what is happening at the moment as regards the money situation will happen again if we are to step up a league. The ground needs hundreds of thousands spending on it to bring it up to scratch let alone make it 'nice' The squad needs hundreds of thousands of pounds spending on it to make us a promotion team (and then its not a guarantee). If we were to go up a level we would find those figures going up at least threefold.

Better the devil you know many a time over, but maybe the job is becoming bigger than anybody anticipated it would?

We now have youth squads to run, a reserve side, an academy, Football in the Community (massive scale from scratch), the business getting side of it must have had to increase massively, the squad has to be bigger, merchandising will have increased. All these things take up a hell of a lot of time and Eric oversees everything. That maybe to his and the clubs detriment but he has kept us solvent and has taken us to a level we never dreamed about.

If we had never won the Conference we would not be complaining about half the things we do and we would have a team competing in the top half of the table and we would still be dreaming about the promised land


If Eric does sell up I hope he is very well rewarded for his efforts over the last 12 years because he deserves it.