Former Darlington Chairman part of takeover at Hartlepool
Raj Singh, the former Darlington chairman has been announced as part of the consortium that is planning the takeover of Hartlepool United Football Club.
Soccer Saturday host and Hartlepool fan Jeff Stelling who has been putting together this consortium that will attempt to takeover Hartlepool United and stop the club from entering administration.
News from Hartlepool's Supporters' Trust have been able to announce this morning that Singh is the proclaimed 'Teesside businessman' which has been mentioned as part of the consortium, with Singh offering to take over control of the club from current owners, Sage Investments, providing all existing debt is cleared.
Singh's plans are being backed by the supporters' trust, as they aim to raise £600,000 alongside the already £1.2 million which has already been committed to the takeover attempt.
Singh when in charge at Darlington had a very controversial spell at the club, as despite being chairman despite the Quakers win at Wembley in the 2011 FA Trophy final, the club was relegated from the football league and also did plunge into administration during the 2011-12 campaign.
However, despite the bad times he experienced at the club Singh did try to get himself involved once more at Darlington last summer as he was supported by former manager Martin Gray supporting his offer to invest £40,000 into the club, with plans for more investments in the future.
But when news broke Darlington fans voiced their concerns with Singh being involved with the club again and with that talks broke down.
A statement from Hartlepool Supporters’ Trust said:
“We have been in discussions with the Jeff Stelling led consortium and we can now officially confirm that in line with online rumours Raj Singh is indeed the Teesside businessman seeking to secure the consortium ownership of HUFC.
“Mr Singh has confirmed that an offer has been made to Sage Investments to acquire the club for no fee, with Sage Investment clearing their significant debts, (and therefore without interest payments accruing) and without any security held over the club by Sage.
“A performance related payment which would total a small fraction of the money owed to Sage would be made on the club’s promotion to back to League 2 and with another similar payment should we be promoted to League 1.
“There is an ongoing litigation issue within the club and without this being satisfactorily resolved then the consortium deal would not go ahead, however, those involved are confident that the matter would be closed to allow the take-over to go ahead.
“The £1.8m of funds required upfront would only be used to fund the running of the club as part of a three year business plan, and during that time the club would need to be structured to be much more sustainable.
“HUFC is currently a loss making club, and while cost cutting can be implemented and revenue streams improved, this takes time to achieve, and is complicated by reductions in both EFL parachute payments and Academy funding over the next two seasons.
“This take-over would leave the new owners of HUFC with as clean a slate as possible, however, for the offer to proceed to the next stage then the consortium does need to find £600k to add to the £1.2m that is already in place.
“Funds raised by supporters can be used to join the consortium via the Supporters Trust to give the fans direct representation in the running of our club and we can demonstrate to other potential consortium partners that we fans are committed to football in this town.
“We thank Raj for allowing us to give this additional detail today and ask all fans, whether HUST members or not to back our fundraising to support Jeff Stelling and Raj’s efforts to secure football in Hartlepool at the current level.”
Credit to HUST for the quotes used in this article, also credit to The Northern Echo for the imagery used in this article.