Wycombe directors warned of the dangers of selling out – but that was then

Wycombe Wanderers supporters voted by 81% last week to transfer their shareholding in the club to businessman Steve Hayes, who now owns Wycombe 100%. There is, though, a significant, disgruntled minority of fans who either voted against it, or who voted in favour but felt they had been given no choice.

As detailed in my article last Monday, Hayes had put £7m – as loans - into funding the League One club's repeatedly thumping annual losses, and he then offered to write off £3m of these in return for being given outright control. If supporters did not approve the transfer of the shares to his 100% ownership he promised to withdraw his financial support from the club. Wycombe's directors warned the supporter-shareholders that if they did not vote for this to happen, the club would be forced into administration when Hayes pulled his money out.

Until 2004, Wycombe was a club owned by its supporter-members. Fans who had season tickets for three years could buy a share for just £1, which gave them ownership in the club and the right to elect directors. That structure had been the foundation for the club's triumphant rise from non-league to League One football and notable FA Cup runs, particularly under a young, promising manager named Martin O'Neill. The club boasted sound finances throughout that period because the fan-ownership structure meant there was no sugar daddy to put the club in debt to, or to fund overspending.

That was changed in 2004 specifically to allow investment from outside. Supporter-shareholders were also faced then with debts which had been run up, and voted to reduce their stake to 25%, although they retained crucial control over some major issues including the ability to veto any move from the ground at Adams Park.

Since then, the club has overspent more and gone deeper into the debt of Steve Hayes. He also owns Wasps, who play at Adams Park, and he has indeed announced plans to move both clubs away from Adams Park and build a new stadium with a 20,000 capacity as a venue for grander ambition. Last Monday, the vote went Hayes' way, with 81% voting in favour. Within the minority who voted against, there have been some vocal complaints about the ending of supporter ownership, the financial position the club had sunk to, and the way the choice was presented.

A keen-eyed Wycombe fans' website, whose authors clearly have sharp memories, has since reproduced a well-argued, articulate letter from the club itself, praising the merits of supporter ownership, and setting out point by point why the club did not need and should not sell out to an investor-owner. It was written by one of the club's own directors, Graham Peart, the then finance director, in 1998.

"Once sold," the letter warns, "control over destiny has gone – forever."

That, though, was then, and this is now.

I do intend to write in more depth about these events at Wycombe in due course - in other words, when I have time!