Doing the 92 is Daniel Storey’s odyssey to every English football league club in a single season. This is club 70/92. The best way to follow his journey and read all of the previous pieces is by subscribing here
The globalisation of the Premier League – players, managers, owners, supporters – is nothing new, but for the first 20 years of the division’s existence that barely dripped down below the Championship. Leagues One and Two were stylistically identifiable, a product that had barely changed since the 1990s.
In terms of players and managers, that’s roughly the same as it was. Twenty-three of the current 24 League One clubs have a British or Irish manager. No non-English-speaking nation currently has more than five representatives in the division (Sweden).
But for owners, a revolution has taken place in England’s lower leagues. Twenty of the 44 clubs in those two leagues are either foreign-owned or have significant minority shareholders from abroad.
There is the usual crop of US investors – Huddersfield Town, Birmingham City, Crawley, Cambridge United, Lincoln City, Wrexham, Carlisle United, Walsall, Gillingham. There are others from Asia (Barnsley, MK Dons, Reading), English-speaking countries (Australian at Swindon, Canadian at Peterborough) and then other exceptions (Georgian-Kazakh at Wycombe, Nordic owners at Burton and Notts County).
What I really need is one of these owners to talk me through this new culture: the process, the reasoning, the challenges, the joy and the lessons learned. Which brings us to Bristol Rovers’ Memorial Stadium in early March and a club that hasn’t been in England’s second tier since 1993 and were in non-league 10 years ago.
Rovers are perhaps the best example of this global revolution. In 2015, they were purchased by the Al-Qadi family, founders of the Arab Jordan Investment Bank. Wael Al-Qadi was educated in England and became club president. Then, in August 2023, Kuwaiti businessman Hussain AlSaeed bought 55 per cent of Bristol Rovers’ holding company. He became sole shareholder in November last year.
Bristol Rovers 2-3 Rotherham United (Saturday 1 March)
- Game no.: 73/92
- Miles: 268
- Cumulative miles: 13,180
- Total goals seen: 194
- The one thing I’ll remember in May: Very navel-gazing, but watching football in the warm sunshine with sunglasses in the best city in England. It’s a good old life.
The first question for Hussain is a simple one: why do you want to own an English football club? He smiles and explains that there is an easy answer too: love.
“First of all, I am a football fan. Football has been one of the greatest passions of my life and that was the starting attraction. I had also been following English football, more than any other league, for all that time.
“Our company started investing in sport six or seven years ago, when we did a deal with the NBA to host the NBA academy in our area. We built a training ground for the NBA in Kuwait. From there, we decided that we would like to extend that investment to football and English football was always the most likely.”
That’s an answer you hear a lot, and is obviously relevant. If someone has a lot of money to invest and finds a market that holds a personal significance, it becomes a passion project and labour of love. English football also provides access to an international audience, obvious marketing opportunities and allows those who own companies to build their own brand (and all the more so if they succeed on the pitch).
The more pertinent question is why Bristol Rovers; another fairly simple answer: money. Hussain was not committed only to this club before purchase, but then met the owners, had several meetings and believed that he could make a difference to the team and to the infrastructure. There was also the opportunity to begin with a lower stake and build, which was attractive.
The finances of English football are the biggest driver of foreign investment in the bottom two tiers of the Football League. The Premier League is a multibillionaire’s (or gulf state’s) playground. The Championship is a division where heavy loss-making is routine. That usually requires heavy investment just to tread water.
“You are talking about completely different levels,” AlSaeed says. “In the Premier League you’re getting into the billions just to buy – it would be difficult to get in. The Championship is also not easy. League One, we felt, was an environment that offered good value, a place where perhaps you can add value and make a difference in the league.”
The finances can still be wince-inducing at this level. Bristol Rovers revealed their latest accounts in January that recorded a £5.4m pre-tax loss. That’s partly a result of significant change that was always likely under new ownership. Rovers signed 16 new players last summer and have changed managers twice since the start of 2023-24. Inigo Calderon, that one foreign manager exception in League One, has a style that the owner believes fits his vision for the club. Changing style costs money too.
“I think we will reduce our losses,” AlSaeed says. “In the first year, a lot of cleaning had to be done and we knew that that would be expensive. We have a plan to lower those losses by increasing revenue.
“Now you’re still going to lose money, because the revenue is not enough to cover your operation. But at least you have to make those losses manageable – we want to do that. First year it had to be done a certain way and it was expensive, but next year will be lower and then the year after will be lower than that.”
The point about increasing revenue is a crucial one. One common theme of clubs in the bottom two leagues is the obvious opportunity to improve facilities, both at the stadium and training grounds. The latter helps to improve your chances of attracting, developing and selling talented young players (revenue rises). The former means you attract more supporters and create lasting connections with more people (revenue rises).
AlSaeed has done that. After initial meetings revealed that a party potentially interested in a new stadium would not be forthcoming, the Memorial’s South Stand has been renovated. Next is the east side and converting the terraces on the west. He would like to do it quickly, but stresses patience.
“We know what we need to do but that takes time,” he says. “You have to talk to the Council, you have to get the studies done. But that is what we are aiming for: renovating our stadium to make it more inviting and increasing it to 15,000-16,000. It might have to be done in two stages.”
This has not been an easy season for Rovers. The last few weeks produced results that suggested a corner had been turned, beating Huddersfield and Bolton. Then they lost 5-0 at Lincoln City to suggest that they are not safe yet. Matt Taylor was sacked as manager to be replaced by Calderon. There was a run of one point from 21 that made relegation seem a distinct possibility. Their top league scorer has five goals.
There is a point to make here: none of this is easy. If we have seen a rise in foreign owners at this level, most arrive with similar aims and ambitions to AlSaeed. Everybody has a plan to invest and grow and make something better and that’s just the new owners. Carlisle United were taken over by ambitious US investors as a League One club and might well finish bottom of two divisons in successive seasons. Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.
Hussain’s point – entirely valid – is that all this will take time. But there’s no doubt that coming into English football at this level from abroad takes some adjusting to and puts you at a disadvantage to someone who has been around England’s third tier for 20 years. I ask him what he has learned over the last 18 months.
“I have taken over many businesses in my life and you know what to do,” he says. “You look at it, you discover where the expenses are, where the revenues are and then you work on how to raise the revenues beyond the expenses. If you need to fix a few things then you fix them – done. One plus one equals two and then you’re running.
“I quickly learnt that football doesn’t work that way; it’s not one plus one equals two. The moment you think that there is something to fix in a certain area and you think you have fixed it, you realise that you only changed it. You have to keep coming back to everything and try another thing.
“It’s an extremely difficult business. It’s challenging, certainly. It provides such a mix of feelings. Sometimes you think ‘what have I got into here, I should have done something else’ and then a moment comes along and you think ‘this is exactly what I was looking for’.
“Whatever you do, everybody is watching. Whatever you say, everybody is listening. Not only that, everybody will remind you of what you said a month or two ago. Of course things change, and what you said a few months ago may have changed too. So I have learnt to only speak when I am quite sure that something is going to happen. You learn as you go.”
Next season probably will be different, presuming they stay up: less chaotic, more homework done, more lessons learned. It’ll also still be hard, as the owner knows. The spending of teams towards the top of this division this season was unprecedented and things rarely go back to where they were. It’s likely that eight former Premier League teams will finish ahead of Bristol Rovers in League One this season and they haven’t finished in its top eight since 2000.
This season, AlSaeed says, there are League One clubs with double the budget of Bristol Rovers. As such, you have to get everything right to beat them even in a one-off game let alone over the course of a season. So you make improvements gradually, try not to over-promise and under-deliver and always be wary of both.
“Doing our homework and doing our best won’t mean that we don’t make mistakes or that we haven’t made them,” he says. “But we hope that we don’t make the same mistake again.
“Avoiding the mistakes you have made before is the key, because that’s how you gradually increase your success rate, in terms of managers, players and staff. And once you make those decisions, you then have to have trust. You have to give them the task and you give them the budget and then you sit back and you watch.”
Before our conversation ends I want to ask Hussain something, a question that again makes him smile before answering. It is hardly unthinkable that a potential investor in English football, perhaps from his own or a neighbouring country, might look to follow him into League One or League Two. Eighteen months into his time here, with ups and downs, what advice would he give them? Or would he warn them against it?
“I would give them a red warning flag about not expecting quick results,” he says. “If you think that you’re going to buy a few good players and put them together and suddenly you’re going to get results immediately then you’re wrong. Mainly, to lower your expectations for the first two or three years.
“If you think that you’re going to come and spend as much money as you want and get your team into the Championship in the first year, you’re going to be disappointed. Spending money alone is not enough. It’s a formula. You need so many things you need to put together.”
It’s a perfectly reasonable missive, but it’s all said with a grin. AlSaeed will spend some of Ramadan back in Kuwait on business, a busy time of year personally and professionally. But he says that where he really wants to be is at home games watching the team, surrounded by supporters.
For all the difficulties – talking too much or too little, realism or ambition, short-term or long-term – that come with owning a football club, it must also be the most exciting thing you can think of. On some level, that’s why they are all here, hoping to weave their dream, whether they call USA, Kazakhstan, India or Kuwait home. Some will get it right, some will get it wrong and some will just keep plugging away. It gets under your skin.
“We want to make something that fans are proud of – that’s the driver,” AlSaeed says “Some of them have been coming to watch this team for 40, 50, 60 years. That’s history. We really have to appreciate their experience. Bristol Rovers fans are the no. 1 asset for this club.
“So yes I’m enjoying it. Yes it is stressful. Yes it is challenging. No, it hasn’t always gone the way we wanted it to this season. But nonetheless it is so enjoyable. Most importantly of all, I believe deeply that the good moments are yet to come. All the hard work that everybody is doing will be rewarded, if we are patient and we stick together.”
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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