Owner-in-waiting Matt Uggla has said he expects to own Yeovil Town by Monday morning.
Posting on his Twitter account, the 29-year-old, whose group SU Glovers have been running affairs at Huish Park on a day-to-day basis since the end of February, that he expected the deal to be completed.
This follows comments made in a press conference on Thursday that he was expecting to sign papers which would transfer the majority shareholding in Yeovil Football & Athletic Club, the company which runs the club’s football operations, from chairman Scott Priestnall.
Responding to a supporter’s enquiry about the progress of the deal on Saturday morning, Uggla said: “Stewardship comes to an end Monday morning.”
Stewardship comes to an end Monday morning ?
— Matt Uggla (@matt_uggla) March 25, 2023
When they were first unveiled around a month ago, SU Glovers were described as having “taken on the stewardship” of the club which Uggla said was his way of saying he did not feel being named ‘owner’ would be appropriate.
However, immediately after that announcement he told us on the podcast that there was “a bureaucratic thing” which needed to be completed to finalise the deal which would see him take on the majority shareholding of Yeovil Football & Athletic Club for Priestnall.
The majority shareholding is around 72% with fellow director Stuart Robins retaining the 20% he purchase and the remaining 8% held by a number of minority shareholders, many supporters who bought shareholdings when the club’s future was in jeopardy in the 1990s.
Although the deal appears to see Priestnall out of the day to day running of the football club – and presumably resigning his position as chairman, as suggested by Uggla earlier this month – he remains the majority shareholder in Yeovil Town Holdings and retains the exclusive buy-back of Huish Park stadium and its surrounding land granted to him by South Somerset District Council.
A planning application to build 250 house on land around the stadium is expected to be submitted after planning consultants DLP Planning contacted the council about the next steps in the development process last month – read our article here.
In response to the enquiry, the council’s owner Highways Department warned that the removal parking facilities at the club would lead to “indiscriminate parking in the new estate road, and surrounding roads” and “increase the risk of collisions on the highways” – which we are sure will delight residents in the area.
We’ll keep you updated on the progress of this…..
Does this mean the planned housing is going ahead?. Priestnell is still the majority shareholder in Yeovil Holdings, can’t he be bought out?. If this development goes ahead,it will be I think the end of YTFC. If the club dies, the town of Yeovil will die also.
The housing is not definitely going ahead, but an application is expected – when and exactly for how many houses, we don’t know until it is submitted. However, once it does go in, it will be submit to scrutiny and could ultimately be rejected, particularly if enough people were to object to it.
However, Scott Priestnall is the majority shareholder (92%) of YTFC Holdings and, unless he decides to sell it, he will remain so.
My view would be that the ownership of the football club by a group with resources (£) behind them and a plan for investment on and off the pitch suggest the club is far less likely to die.