ROB COUHIG HAD A DREAM…

After a few months of discussions and debate and a two-week one-week voting process, it was confirmed on Wednesday 23rd October that American businessman Rob Couhig is to become the new majority owner of Wycombe Wanderers. He achieved the required 75% of the vote from Wycombe Wanderers Trust Legacy members to acquire 75% of the football club.

It marks the end of just over seven years of Supporter ownership at Adams Park after the Trust took over from previous owner Steve Hayes. Those seven years have seen all the spectrums of emotions for Wycombe – from relegation battles to Wembley heartache to promotion and then staying up in League One for the first time since 2003. During that time Wycombe have preached sustainability and the simple idea of spending less than you make to preserve the future of the club. There have been incentives to raise cash, cost-cutting and the fortune of having Gareth Ainsworth running things on the pitch who has been in tune with the club’s limitations from the start and accepted the need to sell players, the importance of good cup runs and utilised the loan system to build a squad capable of moving up through the leagues.

Yet to break even whilst maintaining a team that could compete in the football league has proved tricky. It’s perhaps a sign of modern football and its broken business model where club’s outgoings regularly exceed their incomings. Wycombe’s losses were reported to be around £600,000 a year and they were spending beyond their means, but not through excessive transfer fees or high wages, but just to merely to stay afloat.

Raising more money subsequently proved difficult. Once bills and wages are paid only then should you look at what is left to spend on infrastructure, marketing, building works, youth football and much more besides.

D3D4 Football Ep104 – From Raglans to riches

The Frank Adams stand has leaks that need fixing. The floodlights are not great quality. There is no wi-fi available to fans. The club shop contains little more than some kit and a handful of items. The club has not marketed itself to the wider community. There are no stadium tours or fan clubs for youngsters. These are but a few of the issues.

None of this is the fault of the Trust or the employees at the club who have worked tirelessly with what little they had. It’s that they haven’t had the money or the manpower to work on and improve these elements. It’s been a vicious circle – having no funds meant no funds to generate funds. It takes money to make money. As Rob Couhig said, the club has been held together by ‘string and twine’ and by good people with the knowhow and passion but not the tools to help the club thrive.

Yet in June, a solution came calling. The club had been seeking outside investment for a while and it looked likely to happen towards the end of last season but previous potential investors pulled out. Talks continued but the playing budget was cut by a reported 30% in an attempt to stay afloat. And then Rob Couhig arrived.

He put some money in immediately as a mark of his intentions and to assist the club through the lean summer period. Yet he didn’t want to buy the club immediately. It was a courtship, a chance for Couhig assisted by his nephew Pete, his wife Missy and football business consultant Mark Palmer, to show what they could do.

To say they impressed is an understatement. They re-instated playing budget brought in exciting talents like Paul Smyth, Fred Onyedinma, Jack Grimmer, David Wheeler and many more besides, alleviating fears that the season might be another relegation battle. They introduced a cloud-based ticketing system in an attempt to make purchasing tickets easier and reduce queues. A new ‘Chairboys Village’ complete with live music, high-quality local beer (also available to order via a cashless app) and a vegan barbeque can be found at Adams Park and has been full to bursting on matchdays. Missy took to her husband’s Twitter feed to ask fans what items they’d like to see in the club shop. This is just a sprinkling, for they didn’t want to invest too much prior to taking over in case the vote was a ‘No’, but the desire to implement wi-fi and make further improvements to Adams Park is clear for all to see. They may even bring back a youth set-up, something the Trust did away with due to its unsustainability back in 2012.

Yet it has been more than just that. The Couhig’s have engaged with fans, both in-person and on social media, responding to messages and ideas all the while exhuming a passion for Wycombe Wanderers that appears genuine. Rob has even come up with his own saying – ‘Yeah, I’m a Wanderer’ – stating publicly that he had fallen in love with the club. Cynics may argue they have been on a PR stunt to get the voters onside, yet they were damned if they did and damned if they didn’t and the passion does appear genuine. In addition to this, there has been a respect of what the club has achieved with its limited resources and Couhig was deliberately absent from the meeting last week in which the Trust unveiled the finer print of the deal. This was a big decision by people for whom the club meant a great amount and he wanted the members to have the chance to discuss it frankly and honestly amongst themselves.

Yet Rob Couhig remains a businessman and can see the opportunities to help make the club sustainable. He preaches about the matchday experience, an oh so vital tool to any football club. Yes, we all want our team to play well and win, but football clubs transcend mere performance on the pitch. As any fan of any club knows, performances and results are a variable. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. Sometimes you get promoted, sometimes you get relegated. A football club is a community asset, an entity that can put much back into its community and a place where people can meet on a Saturday to forget about life for a while – the national outpouring of disgust and sadness at Bury’s recent demise is an example of that. Making the ground a thriving hub of activity with good food, beer, facilities and more is tantamount to the social side of a footballing community. It also means further revenue streams that can improve the on-pitch performance. Couhig has mentioned The Championship – a pipe dream to which the Chairboy faithful may have given up on until recently which now seems plausible. Yet it’s vital that Wycombe don’t chase it like many clubs have done in the past – the long term future and helping the club to grow and thrive within its own community is more important. Couhig himself has admitted that he doesn’t have the financial clout to bankroll the team in the second tier and this is a good thing. Pouring money into the team for two or three years of higher-level football is all well and good until the money dries up.

Sustainability remains the message, something that now seems possible with financial backing. It’s odd to say that but if the money is invested in the right way and the right areas can it be achieved? The concern is that all football clubs in the lower leagues lose money no matter how wealthy or poor their backers are. Wycombe have a trend to buck and it’s not going to be easy to do. Yet Rob Couhig has, by his own admission, an ego and wants to change the thinking. ‘Little Wycombe’ has been the badge of honour worn by fans during the lean years, especially when self-proclaimed bigger clubs had their feathers ruffled by the Wanderers, but those days are gone. Couhig has told the club to think big and proclaims ‘The Worldwide Wycombe Wanderers Phenomenon’ – he’s a big believer in the power of iFollow and the way it can generate funds and garner new fans across the globe. He equally is not one to suffer fools gladly, stating that if employees don’t pull their weight to make the club a success, they can seek employment elsewhere.

There are naturally, concerns. As previously mentioned, the sustainability ideology is a tough one and many of the issues that need addressing to improve Adams Park on a matchday are hardly new. Poor access, lack of car parking, long queues, small kiosks and the like are issues Wycombe have been trying to address for years and they’re issues that affect many clubs around the country. If attendances improve, such things could get worse. Yet maybe such things need blue-sky thinking and serious financial investment in an attempt to succeed where others have not.

What Wycombe must do is maintain some of the good ideas that they have implemented over the years – the 500 club has raised funds for the playing budget, the community share scheme has brought in some cash and the team of volunteers who carry out vital work at the ground reportedly save the club thousands each year. Such schemes should continue to work towards the sustainable model.

The Trust still own 25% of the club, the stadium and two seats on the board of six, meaning Wycombe does remain part-owned by the fans, a good position for them to be in.

The immediate future certainly looks positive. Wycombe Wanderers is now a debt-free football club, riding high in the league table and a cult hero of a manager who just might be staying put for the time being. Ainsworth has spoken highly of the Couhig’s and need for investment. He was linked to QPR in the summer and may well have left had he been offered the job, with the view that he had taken Wycombe Wanderers as far as he could on the resources he had. He has purchased nets for the training pitch, had his own wages deferred and joked recently that he could tell you how much money was taken in the bars on any given Saturday, such was his involvement with the club’s (lack of) finances. If anyone has earnt some financial investment, it’s him.

There is perhaps a marginal sense of sadness that the club is no longer fan-owned, but then while supporters could wear the badge of honour of owning their club outright without the actual responsibility and hardships of running it and if the club can grow, engage with new fans and thrive as a community asset it will be but a small price to pay. Had the vote been ‘No’, Wycombe would now be in a very precarious position, yet it has not felt as if fans had to vote ‘Yes’ as the lesser of two evils. The pulse of the fanbase suggests this is an exciting time to be a Wycombe Wanderer.

We will see in time how it all works out, whether Wycombe can break the mold and become sustainable while competing on the pitch and the Couhig’s can set an example for other clubs to follow. Yet as for the short term, it’s a new dawn, it’s a new day, it’s a new life for Wycombe Wanderers.

And the feeling’s good.

words Phil Slatter, D3D4 Wycombe Wanderers correspondent