Less than 10 senior players, no manager and under an embargo: Morecambe are on brink of disaster – surely owner Jason Whittingham is the most hated man in sport

The man from whom many sports fans would very much like an explanation has made himself scarce, though all the evidence points to him being rather less occupied than he once was.

He’s Jason Whittingham – the only individual, as far as I can establish, on track to crash both a rugby union and football club. He was the catastrophic co-owner of Worcester Warriors, who under his custodianship plunged into administration and were expelled from rugby’s Premiership with more than £15million of debts three years ago. Now he’s taking Morecambe’s venerable, 105-year-old football club towards what looks increasingly like a similar end.

I’ve visited that club several times over the years and have always been struck by its pride and indefatigability – resolutely hanging on, just like the local town has in the face a declining tourism trade and the mysterious scarcity of the famous Morecambe Bay shrimps that give the team their nickname.

The search for owners has often taken the club into challenging waters. I reported the arrival of Brazilian Diego Lemos, who milked the fans’ applause before a home game with Carlisle and was barely seen again. But Whittingham, with his co-owner Colin Goldring, a lawyer currently barred from the profession, is a shark like few others.

A credible buyer, London-based investment firm Panjab Warriors, are ready to take Morecambe off his hands and have loaned his Bond Group Investments firm £6m to keep the Shrimps going. 

But whenever the sale to that EFL-approved group seems about to conclude, Whittingham gives some reason or other why the deal can’t be done, while what little cash the club have continues to dribble away.

Owners Jason Whittingham (left) and Colin Goldring at Worcester Warriors

Last year’s captain Yann Songo’o (left) is one of the few senior players left at Morecambe

This latest episode in this saga saw Whittingham instruct the club’s website to publish information last Friday about an alternative buyer called ‘Mr Jonny Cato’, and ‘an impressive group being built around him’. ‘Sales agreements’ were being completed, the club said. Nothing’s been heard since. I have not been able to establish if any such individual exists.

In the House of Commons last week, Morecambe MP Lizzi Collinge used parliamentary privilege to raise a suspicion that Whittingham is using Morecambe to leverage his own finances.

‘I suspect that he has built a house of cards, and it is now falling down around his ears,’ she said. ‘There’s a suspicion the club is being used to leverage his own financial situation. Morecambe FC is being held hostage, and it breaks my heart.’

I know all about owners like this. Flash Harrys who think they can alight at a place and screw a few quid out of its football club, get a promotion, sell some land. Challenge these people and they’re either extremely full of their own vast importance or they shut the door in your face.

Whittingham is currently just invisible. Unreachable through the few remaining companies in his once 25-strong portfolio. Nothing doing this week at ‘The 88 Club’ his wholesale watch, jewellery and metal ore business listed at Buckhurst Hill, Essex. 

Nor at Bond Group Investment, his ‘sports activities’ business in the same place. One of Whittingham’s Bond companies was struck off by Companies House in February. Similar action is under consideration for another. It seems the MP was right. A collapsing financial panoply, in which Morecambe looks like the last possession of value.

Panjab Warriors last week said it was considering legal action against Bond Group Investments, accusing it of possible ‘misrepresentation and bad faith dealing’. 

Meanwhile, Morecambe, who were relegated to the National League last season, have fewer than 10 senior players on their books, no manager, and a registration embargo from the National League, raising serious questions about fulfilling fixtures which start at Boston two weeks on Saturday.

Morecambe MP LIzzi Collinge raised the club’s plight in the House of Commons

Fans at the Mazuma Stadium don’t know if their club will begin the National League campaign

They have no pre-season friendlies. A local Indian restaurant is providing food for those players currently turning up to train under their own steam.

MP Collinge’s disclosure of information about Whittingham in the Commons formed part of a debate on the Football Governance Bill which this week received Royal Assent. 

The football regulator that legislation will establish must be imbued with the powers to ensure that rogue owners like Whittingham – surely the most hated man in sport – do not darken any club’s door. The regulator should be entitled to seize such a distressed club, call in administrators, cover running costs until rescue – and lock the likes of Whittingham out.

The current fear in Morecambe is best articulated by director James Wakefield, a lifelong Morecambe fans and now unpaid director, trying to rescue the club from this disaster. ‘I wake up at 4am with nightmares of the pitch overgrown with weeds,’ he tells us. ‘It’s been happening for the last six months – the terror that what happened to Bury could happen to us.’ 

The club’s anthem is Eric Morecambe’s Bring Me Sunshine. It’s very hard to find much on that section of Lancashire coast.

Farewell Joey, a hero at Liverpool and Wrexham 

Farewell Joey Jones, who walked the heights of European football with Liverpool, taking his hugely infectious enthusiasm along the way, but will be remembered by so many of those of us who saw him at Wrexham for the clenched fist he would extend from the dugout, when he assisted Brian Flynn. 

Encouraging us to encourage the lads on, in days when that team ran on spirit, not cash. One of the giants. He and his spirit will be so missed.