Rochdale on the brink

Dear Millers — there are clouds overhead in our part of town, and there are even darker clouds overhead for Rochdale AFC, a football club whose dramatic ups and downs we have chronicled before. According to Rochdale’s chairman, the very existence of the club is at stake. More on that below, plus lots of great reads and things to do this week, and a Guardian story suggesting Rochdale as a tourist destination (given how often we’ve been going there recently, we kind of agree).

Over the weekend, we published a beautiful read about love and bad boyfriends in Gwendoline Riley’s debut novels, Sick Notes and Cold Water. “A piece so evocative of being a teenager in the early 00s that I’m in grave danger of lying in bed listening to Interpol all morning,” commented a member called Tom. “I've never rushed to buy books that quickly ever,” added Mike, who won’t have time to read this email because he’s got a shelf of moody Mancunian literature to get through. Please join in the comments with equal enthusiasm.

Question: Does Manchester feel even more 'built up' and claustrophobic than other cities? We’ve been looking into the reasons why, and we’ve got a fantastic members-only piece coming out about that on Wednesday. We’re also working on a big piece about the state of the city’s economy (too neoliberal? not enough social housing?) and a scoop about something we can’t reveal until it’s out…

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Last week, we sent members a review of Andy Burnham’s new book (not entirely positive), and a great piece transporting you back to Manchester in 1977. We also welcomed Bernie Sanders to Mill HQ — watch the video here, or listen to our podcast about his visit, including his great quotes about what he calls a “disaster for democracy”.

🌦️ This week’s weather

Tuesday 🌧️ Cloudy with showery rain during the afternoon. Max 9°C.

Wednesday 🌦️ A cold start with bright spells but turning cloudy with rain arriving from the west by the middle of the afternoon. Max 9°C.

Thursday 🌦️ Changeable with infrequent sunny spells and showers. Breezy. Max 10°C.

Friday 🌧️ Breezy with rain, sleet and hill snow clearing to showers by the afternoon. Max 7°C.

Weekend 🌦️ Mixed weather consisting of sunshine and showers. Temperatures will be chilly.

You can find the latest forecast at Manchester Weather on Facebook — daily forecasts are published at 6.15am.

Witness ‘the work of a giant’

From today’s sponsor: On Thursday evening you can witness an extraordinary musical masterpiece right here in Manchester. The Austrian composer Anton Bruckner laboured over his Eighth Symphony for 16 years and after its premiere, the composer Hugo Wolf declared it “the work of a giant”. The Hallé — described by The Times as “one of the world's best orchestras” — will be performing it under the direction of the legendary Sir Mark Elder, providing one of the final chances to see Elder in action before he steps down as music director after 24 years this summer. If that’s not enough to persuade you to book your tickets, you can now get a 25% discount on all tickets using the special offer code Mill24 — just put it into the promo code box when you click here.

Fancy sponsoring an edition of The Mill? You’ll be reaching our 42,000 highly engaged Millers and giving our journalism a big funding boost at the same time. Click here to find out more.

The big story: Rochdale on the brink

Top line: The by-election in Rochdale this week isn’t the only story in town. Far from it. The future of Rochdale AFC, the town’s 117-year-old, fan-owned football club, is in peril. Without a £2m cash injection, its chairman says it will face liquidation by the end of next month. 

Context: Rochdale — or The Dale, as it's known — has had a rough few years. Its fans fought off a hostile takeover by two businessmen in 2021 (you might remember our long read on this), and last year the club was relegated from the English Football League for the first time in its history. 

• Dale’s chairman, Simon Gauge, said that when he became involved with the club in 2021, its finances were already in disarray.

• Fighting the attempted takeover pulled time and resources away “from trying to arrest the downward spiral that the club found itself in both on and off the pitch,” he said.

Details: In his statement, Gauge said the club is asset-rich but cash-poor. “The reason we find ourselves in this position is because our cash flow has run out,” says George Brigham, chair of the Dale Trust, a supporters society. “There’s been no player sales or cup runs, and that’s what’s kept us going up to now.”

To get the investment required, Gauge has proposed the club issues nine million new shares, valued at £2m and worth 90% of the club. Brigham says no one person in Rochdale’s history has owned that much of the club. The issuing of so many shares is an especially interesting development when you consider the furore sparked when the ex-directors tried to issue 700,000 new shares to allow the 2021 takeover attempt.

• Fans got the motion to issue the new shares struck down and set about finding far-flung shareholders to stop them selling to the takeover group, a few businessmen who the fans felt would run Rochdale into the ground.

Now you’re probably wondering, how does getting a sole investor to come in and buy 90% of the club chime with these fan-ownership values? It doesn’t, and that’s the problem. As one long-term fan put it: “We want fan-owned, but that’s not working”. They say the club has been swimming against the tide since 2021 and needs serious investment.

While the club’s directors “regularly stick their hands in their pockets”, the sums they dig out aren’t enough to keep Rochdale going. Gauge himself has put £566,000 in to buy time while it finds an investor. “Simon (Gauge) has basically been funding the club’s payroll since November,” says Brigham. Gauge said he and his family have reached their credit limit keeping the club afloat.

What’s next? There will be an extraordinary general meeting on 7 March, where the club hopes to agree to the issuing of the nine million shares, and find a way to make the club more attractive to investment — hashing out a plan to fix the current financial situation, sorting out leases, and making sure the investor can buy their stake in a simple, single transaction.

• The Mill understands that since Gauge’s statement last week, the club has been approached by ten potential investors.

Yesterday, there was a supporters’ meeting where concerns were raised of “wrong-uns” getting control of the club. The supporters remain wary of exactly who might come in for Rochdale — they’ve already had to fight off one undesirable suitor, after all. But mostly, the supporters we have spoken to are cautiously supportive of the motion and just want to see the club survive.

Regardless of the outcome, next month’s EGM is likely to be a death knell for fan ownership at Rochdale AFC, and gives possible cause for concern to other local clubs with similar ownership structures. “We’re just the first to catch the cold,” Brigham says. “I don’t think fan ownership was ever a realistic business model that was ever going to survive,” says another fan.

Bottom line: Back in 2022, the then-chair of the Dale Trust told us “we’ve no choice but to be sustainable,” because the only other option was to collapse under the leadership of an uninterested investor. Now, on contact with reality, that story has changed. As one fan said: "I just hope the investor comes into the club with the right intention.”

🛍️ Get rewards for signing up new Millers: You can get months of a free Mill subscription, or even an exclusive Mill tote bag, just by signing up friends to our free mailing list. Take a look at the leaderboard, where you’ll see that longtime Miller Tom Cheesewright has just won the first edition of a Mill tote bag (meaning we now have to design the bloody thing). If you’d like to get involved, just follow the link below, copy your unique referral code, and get sharing. Big thanks for your help.

Your Mill briefing

📜 An inquest jury found that a Scout leader and his assistant were responsible for the unlawful killing of 16-year-old Ben Leonard, who died from a head injury after falling 200 ft from the Great Orme, a headland near Llandudno. The inquest also found that neglect by the Scout Association contributed to Ben’s death, and referred the association and one of its staff to the police to be investigated for conspiracy to pervert the course of justice. Steve Holloway, the Scouts’ county commissioner for Greater Manchester East, admitted that he lied to Ben’s family after the incident, saying no one was to blame, even though he knew there was no responsible first aider on the trip. Holloway told others responsible for safety in the Scout Association: “Don’t worry, they are not going to sue.” He now says he feels “shame” over his involvement and that things had gone “horribly wrong”.

🚆 Rishi Sunak says that small cities and towns in Northern England and the Midlands will receive around £4.7 billion in reallocated HS2 funds, after plans to run a high-speed line to Manchester were scrapped last autumn. Councils and local authorities will be able to decide how to use the fund to improve their local transport services, with the funding earmarked for spending between 2025 and 2032. Today’s announcement has been met with scepticism by those who think that a large strategic investment in high-speed connectivity would boost the economy much more in the long term than lots of smaller sums.

📚 Writing for UnHerd, Ian Martin reviews Head North, Andy Burnham and Steve Rotheram’s new “half memoir, half manifesto”. Much like Mill staff writer Jack Walton, whose review asked “Is hating London a manifesto? I would propose, gently, that the answer is no”, Martin didn’t love it. “It feels as though the purpose of this book is to galvanise the region’s tribes, to weaponise a shared set of complex grudges, rather than to persuade anyone south of Stoke-on-Trent of anything,” he writes.

Home of the week

This leafy three-bedroom end-of-terrace in Oldham has stained glass windows, exposed brick and a large garden. £185,000.

Our favourite reads

Where tourists seldom tread, part 8: five more towns with hidden treasures — The Guardian

When you think of hidden tourist destinations, it might be the tropical rainforests of the Andaman Islands or the coastline of Albania. But the Guardian says we may also be overlooking Rochdale, where “the town’s built environment is a walk-round museum” carrying reminders of the textile trade and the Industrial Revolution, flanked by “looming hills on either side and of a quasi-rural remoteness from Manchester”. 

I Went on 100 Random Online Dates for Valentine's Day — Vice

Harriet Richardson, a performance artist from Manchester, talks about going on 100 dates in a row on Valentine’s Day, each one a video call lasting just five minutes, to test whether you can “truly authentically connect online”.

Who is Adrian Appiolaza, Moschino’s new creative director? — Dazed

The new boss of luxury fashion brand Moschino tells Dazed about how he looked to Manchester’s music scene for inspiration when he was young. “[It] pushed me to imagine another universe, seemingly distant, where I could express myself like never before.”

Our to do list

Tuesday

🎭 The National Theatre’s production of Chekhov’s Vanya starring Andrew Scott is screening at Stockport Plaza, tickets here.

⚽ RM Clark, author of Winner Stays On, a book about amateur football and the allure of success, will be discussing football culture at Whitworth Locke from 7pm. Reserve a free spot here.

Wednesday

🎨 The Tell-Tale Rooms is an immersive exhibition at HOME created by father and daughter Andrew and Eden Kötting. We get a particular insight into Eden’s world, who is visually impaired and neurodivergent, which is filled with “mischief” and “unpredictability”.

🏳️‍🌈 The People’s History Museum presents Outside In, an exhibition of artworks and poetry from the LGBTQIA+ and disabled community in Manchester, exploring how barriers can affect your sense of identity.

Thursday 

🎧 Experimental and ambient artist Flora Yin Wong and dancer Biana Scout are performing at SOUP. Tickets are £11.20. 

📚 Andy Spinoza will be discussing his bestselling book Manchester Unspun at Didsbury Baptist Church from 7.30pm, get tickets here.

Looking ahead

🎻 We don’t usually recommend events this far in advance, but Manchester Baroque’s performance of Bach’s magnificent St Matthew Passion at Manchester Cathedral on Friday 29 March is being organised by a longtime Mill member and we think it deserves an extra push. There’s a 20% discount on tickets for Millers (meaning they start at £12) which you can redeem by clicking this special link.