Benham to buy second hand car

Man o’ means Matthew Benham has bought a second hand car from neo-Soviet collective Bees United, and he will allow BU to keep the car for five years and hit it with spanners if they want to.

Under the terms of the deal Benham will spend a small fortune in each of the next five years repairing dents in the car while BU remain in charge of the vehicle – and the spanners. At the end of the five years Benham can decide whether he still wants the car or not.

Industry insiders speculate that while BU wanted to take the car off the previous owner – who intended to strip it down for parts – its purchase plan was soon revealed to be a work of fantasy based on unrealistic performance figures meaning that the car’s future hinged entirely on having a new garage built for it at the expense of unspecified others, with the new garage in turn subsidising the running costs of the car through unspecified ways, which were rumoured to involve leprochauns.

The vehicle was unavailable for comment at the time of going to press, however a BU source stated it was “relieved”.

Benham or bust

It doesn’t take a master of reading between the lines to figure out what underlies the proposed Bees United/Matthew Benham deal: BU have maxed out the borrowing capital on Griffin Park, and – for all the excellent work by recent appointees – haven’t been able to haul back the worsening financial position inflicted by Noades and the period of strategic drift when BU first got their mitts on the boardroom canapés.

Benham for his part is also revealing in his statement accompanying the voting papers, stating that he is unwilling to continue funding the Club without controlling it.

And that is effectively that. Unless there is another investor lurking out in the long grass – and there is no reason to believe for a minute there is – BU can’t call Benham’s bluff and risk his debts being called in.

Those close to the Club and the deal seem suitably assured of Benham’s intentions, and we have no reason to doubt them. However BU members should be under no illusions that a Jack Walker-style gilded era is being ushered in; Benham has been strikingly clear in his GPG interview as to the extent of his involvement.

What is of concern is the lack of long-term information on what happens to the club in, say, years six to ten of this deal. At the moment such queries seem to be being dismissed as unreasonable on the grounds that five years time is too far away to think about. This, frankly, is not good enough. What BU members are voting on this month is the sale of the club in 2014. The commitment of £5m for the next five years is generous and welcome, but it will pale rapidly if the playing budget is slashed and we romp out of the league in years six and seven.

The old adage is that the best way to make a small fortune out of football is to start with a large fortune, but we do not know – and nor do we have any right to – how affluent Benham is.

The point, however, is this: lower league football is littered with clubs who have had wealthy benefactors spend their money over a number of years, only to discover that clubs do not become self-sufficient while their once handsome resources have dwidled. Others see a bad managerial appointment undo their good work and catapult the team into a downward spiral, with wages fitting a team of the division above and performances redolent of the league below.

None of this is to cast any aspersions whatsoever on Matthew Benham: we don’t know him, we know next to nothing about him and we are happy to take it that he is an individual of the most admirable character and means.

But selling a football club is still a complete gamble, and even if details have not been made publicly available it is to be hoped that Bees United have done their own due diligence and know the long term plan. Not that the club’s financial position gives them much choice anyway.