Doing the 92 is Daniel Storey’s odyssey to every English football league club in a single season. This is club 68/92. The best way to follow his journey is by subscribing here
Behind the goal at Crawley Town’s Broadfield Stadium, on the terrace where the club’s most vociferous supporters stand, a banner is waved before and after the game.
It reflects upon a long history and an uncertain future and sends a message to the club’s owners: “127 years to build, 12 months to kill. Wagmi Out”. During the game, there are sporadic chants against the ownership.
On the pitch, Crawley draw 1-1 with Reading, ordinarily a fine result but one that offers little reassurance or hope. Crawley have won five of their last 34 league games and are nine points from safety (plus goal difference) with 10 league games remaining.
Their stay in League One is likely to be brief. It’s not only those behind the goal who think it’ll be a while before Crawley return to this level.
In April 2022, Crawley Town were taken over by Wagmi United LLC, a group of US cryptocurrency investors. Wagmi stands for “We are going to make it”, a buzzphrase of the crypto community.
Wagmi had previously attempted a takeover of Bradford City, a process that was never completed. Bradford supporters had protested about the potential takeover.
Wagmi were not shy in their ambitions. Their grand plan was to turn Crawley into “the internet’s team” by allowing anyone to engage with the club by purchasing NFTs that Wagmi claimed would be tied to tangible merchandise and club benefits.
They became the first football club to release an NFT-only football shirt. They also endeavoured to use data-led recruitment as the foundation of their progress.
The initial fundraising was relatively successful. Wagmi raised a reported $18m (£14m) before the takeover, allowing their initial funding of the squad. The third shirt, according to chairman Preston Johnson, raised around $5m (£3.8m) – although it is not certain how much of that was made by the club.
Crawley’s new owners did not arrive into an easy situation. This was a club with a decidedly non-league mentality that hadn’t finished in the top 10 of League Two in the seven years since relegation.
A month after the takeover, manager John Yems was suspended (and later banned from football for three years) after serious accusations of widespread discriminatory language emerged. Within two years, Wagmi had taken Crawley up to League One. On the face of it, that’s a pretty good effort.
Crawley Town 1-1 Reading (Saturday 8 March)
- Game no.: 75/92
- Miles: 334
- Cumulative miles: 13,784
- Total goals seen: 218
- The one thing I’ll remember in May: When a cross flashed across goal with no takers, a mass of home supporters shouted “Gamble” like the audience on a quiz show.
Even those unhappy supporters I spoke to at the stadium wanted to acknowledge that the ticket prices were reduced and thus the attendances increased. They stressed that the creation of a fan zone is a positive development, as is some increased collaboration with the Community Trust. This has not been an unmitigated failure.
How much credit the owners deserve for the promotion is open to interpretation. It is true that they appointed the inspirational Scott Lindsey, who led a team from 22nd in the fourth tier to seventh and an improbable promotion via the play-offs. But Lindsey was also the fourth Crawley manager in three months and there were reports of players not really knowing what was going on.
In September, Lindsey chose to leave for MK Dons in the division below. Rob Elliot was appointed from Gateshead in his place and currently has a 19 per cent win ratio. Certainly if you were being uncharitable you might describe 2023-24 as Lindsey’s triumph more than Crawley’s.
Still, relegation back to League Two would be no great embarrassment, at least not according to Crawley’s established norms. They only reached the Football League for the first time in 2011 and in 2006 were in administration and close to extinction.
They have the sixth smallest ground in the 92 and their record attendance is under 6,000. That came against Reading in 2013, when their opponents were in the Premier League. A lot has changed since.
It is not Crawley’s league position that is prompting protest, but the process. Some of the wariness – both at the time of the takeover and now – comes from the source of the financing, a volatile currency that potentially leaves Crawley’s financial future in the hands of something way beyond their control.
But it also reflects a growing suspicion about the club’s operation and the decision-making of some of those in charge.
It started with the recruitment and the overhaul of the squad post-promotion. Of the 15 players used by Crawley in last season’s play-off final win, only three are still at the club. Eighteen players left Crawley last summer and 16 came in on permanent or loan deals.
That included reportedly breaking their club record transfer fee – by a distance – for Nigeria international Benjamin Tanimu. Tanimu has played 156 league minutes this season.
The aim, it seems, was to use metric data to find better players than the ones they sold and released for less money.
It’s hard to conclude that the strategy has worked, given the league performance this season (although Crawley would have been among the favourites for relegation with the same squad as last year).
More than all of that, it’s the oddities of this project, the elements that are considered notorious on a national level, that have left supporters seeking answers.
This summer, striker Mo Faal was signed on a short-term deal from non-league on a six-month deal with an 18-month extension option.
The EFL ruled that the contract was impermissible (extension options cannot be longer than the contract length) and, according to Faal, he was told that there was no negotiation. He had just put a deposit down on a new home.
In October 2022, Johnson revealed that Crawley were inviting three members of YouTuber football team The Sidemen to train with the club’s first team ahead of an FA Cup tie against Accrington Stanley, with a view to having them on the bench for the game.
If that felt like an unhelpful gimmick, so too did Johnson appearing in the dugout for a game against Stevenage. When Johnson stood up and moved towards the touchline during the game, he was roundly booed by supporters.
In May last year, he stepped down as chairman. Two months later, he was back in position.
Let’s be generous for a moment. People make mistakes. Wagmi would hardly be the first owners to arrive in English football with grand ideas (although their source of funding is indeed groundbreaking, for better or worse), get a little excited about innovation and fail to read the room on certain issues.
It would have been nice if they had realised that having YouTubers training with the first team is a surefire way to annoy season-ticket holders, but it happens.
The key in these circumstances is to communicate. Football supporters will forever be cynical, for that is our right when outsiders control something we love so dearly, but they will also offer patience and faith to those who try to meet us halfway and accept that they know closer to nothing than everything about what defines our club. As the banner read: 127 years to build a club.
Crawley’s owners know that much. When Johnson returned as chairman and CEO in July last year, it was with that same promise: “In order to achieve the sustainable success we seek and to have the level of two-way communication with supporters that we desire, it’s essential that we are present and embedded in the Crawley community.”
That is where the ill-feeling has its roots and where the mutiny is growing; that is why the banner was held up and the chants were sung. The accusation is not just that Crawley’s hierarchy has made mistakes that have angered supporters, but that the engagement between them and the club has been deliberately damaged.
Carol Bates had been a volunteer for eight years at Crawley, looking after the mascots on a matchday.
In January, she used her X account to poke fun at some of the questions posed by the club in a fan survey, including “What animal best represents Crawley Town FC?” and “If Crawley Town was a dish, what would it be and why?”. Carol pointed out that a CEO with knowledge of English football would not ask these questions.
Several days later, Carol received a phone call from the club, brief and to the point, that informed her that her eight years of volunteering for the club had been terminated, effective immediately.
“I have made the same comment about having an experienced EFL CEO right from the beginning of Wagmi’s tenure and a few times since,” Carol tells The i Paper.
“It wasn’t a personal attack, it is my opinion that we wouldn’t have made so many mistakes had there been advice and knowledge given to Wagmi from an experienced EFL CEO.
“It just so happened that this time I mentioned it, in relation to some questions in a new Brand Identity Survey, that the person in that capacity was Preston Johnson, who took offence to it. The whole situation was badly handled.”
The week before I visited Crawley, supporter director Sam Jordan resigned from his position. Sam is a lifelong supporter of the club who was deeply honoured to take up the position, but found his work harder and harder.
“I joined with the hope and belief that we could build stronger relationships between the club and supporters, fostering transparency, trust and coordination” Sam said.
“It has become increasingly clear that these values were not consistently being upheld. I have seen repeated mistakes, a lack of integrity in decision-making and a failure to learn from past errors.
“That has left me with little confidence that the club’s leadership is truly committed to the principles it claims to stand for.
“I have been dismayed with some decisions made in the past, disappointed in some decisions that are impacting the club presently and concerned with some decisions that have been made for the future of our club that are yet to materialise publicly.”
Jordan’s damning parting statement is reflected in the opinions of those members of the Crawley Town Supporters Alliance, the club’s independent supporters trust who surveyed its members recently.
The findings were damning: despite being in League One, 60 per cent of respondents wanted Wagmi to sell. They highlighted a number of issues, including the treatment of volunteers, the owner’s behaviour on social media and the lack of respect for heritage and tradition.
The worry of some supporters I spoke to was how this situation potentially escalates. There is some admiration for the ambition of Wagmi, but it will be futile if they cannot take matchgoing fans with them on that journey.
There is always a danger when outsiders aren’t listening to those who have lived this that criticism only generates stubbornness. That will help nobody, but there are too many precedents for fear not to grow.
On some level, there is a disconnect between priorities here: the ambitious crypto investor who wants to change the world and the football supporters who never considered that their club would try. On the Wagmi website, three distinct aims for this project are listed for all to see, introduced as a manifesto.
- To reinvent broken legacy sports management models
- To give fans a meaningful voice
- To take Crawley Town FC, the smallest club in the English Football League, to the Premier League
The first aim is bold: to reinvent an entire industry through the prism of one club. The third aim is, somehow, bolder still: nothing about this club is ready for the Championship, let alone the Premier League.
As such, these are just words. Crawley are also probably not the smallest club in the Football League, as claimed, but presenting them as such plays into the creation of a miracle narrative.
But it’s that second aim that is the most important and it is there in black and white: “to give fans a meaningful voice”.
The pertinent question is what “fan” means in that context. Is it those who have supported this club for decades, through the years when owner Bruce Winfield finally took them to the Football League before sadly passing away a month later? Or is it those who have invested by buying non-fungible tokens?
If Crawley’s owners really do care about season ticket holders, they will have learned lessons over the last two years. About squad-building, recruitment, avoiding the gimmicks and of treating loyal staff who love this place in a way that makes them want to stay and realising that ambition should go hand in hand with heritage to create something meaningful rather than destroying it.
They will accept the criticism of Carol Bates and Sam Jordan and they will work on its constructive elements. They will reach back out to both and look to repair relationships.
The only way you can gain trust is to earn it and the only way to regain it is to work doubly hard on the bits that people say you aren’t so good at. We will see what Wagmi are all about this summer because good people should be kept in the fold, not frozen out of it.
“Supporters aren’t asking for anything unreasonable—just a club that respects its traditions, values its fans, and has a clear, sensible strategy for success,” says Reuben Watt, chair of the supporters trust.
“Football clubs thrive when there is unity between owners, staff, players, and supporters, but that only happens when fans feel heard and appreciated.
“Right now, the frustration comes from a sense that these fundamental principles are being overlooked. It’s not about resisting change—it’s about ensuring that change is done with respect for the club’s identity and in a way that genuinely benefits the community and its long-term future.
“Fans aren’t expecting miracles, just transparency, communication, and decisions that make sense for the good of the club—not personal agendas or experiments at its expense.”
Every supporter I speak to, I do so separately. Yet each of them make the same point: they don’t even want the intended relentless winning machine if it comes laced with risk and the threat of their connection being eroded. They don’t want to witness the reinvention of sports management, no offence.
They want Crawley Town. They want somewhere to watch football on a Saturday afternoon. They want to be proud of their club and to be sure that everyone that works there is happy. They want to be sure that their club will still be there in 20 years’ time.
Daniel Storey has set himself the goal of visiting all 92 grounds across the Premier League and EFL this season. You can follow his progress via our interactive map and find every article (so far) here
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