“West Brom board owe us answers,” Action For Albion founder Alistair Jones
On the face of it Alistair Jones, founder of Action For Albion, is fighting a losing battle.
— Action for Albion (@action4albion) December 23, 2022
He is just one small voice in a world of increasingly loud fan groups demanding action. Whether it be inside stadiums, on social media or via government petitions, fans at home and abroad are making themselves heard.
Owners and boards don’t always listen but Jones is determined to make the-powers-that-be at West Brom hear him.
The man taking on West Brom’s billionaire property-magnate owners works in the building trade. He has significantly fewer resources at his disposal but that won’t deter him.
“I’ve got four other sites to visit today so let’s get cracking,” he jovially steers the conversation towards a more serious tone.
“I founded Action For Albion just so that I knew something was being done. We as an organisation ask that the owners of our great, historic club look after it in the best interests of the club itself.
“The board are not doing that. They are serving their own interests and no one else’s.”
Jones has made staggering progress already and he tells me through chattering teeth from the front seat of his van that he isn’t about to stop.
Before the break for the World Cup, Action For Albion had amassed over a thousand followers on Twitter – that number has now more than doubled. They also saw a promising number of fans join their protest during the home game against Stoke City on 12th November.
“We probably had 60% of Baggies’ fans at that game participating. It was a great start,” he says with a glint in his eye.
But it was just the start.
Action For Albion ignited the protest after a combination of extraordinary revelations off the pitch and their poor early-season league position.
Since being relegated from the Premier League in May 2021, West Brom had been in free fall for 18 months. They came a disappointing 10th last season and were recently flirting with relegation.
The tipping point for Jones was what should have been a disappointing last-minute loss away to Millwall.
“The weird thing was that I just felt nothing after that game,” Jones says bluntly.
“We had been outclassed in the Championship by a team that hasn’t been in the top tier of English football for over 3 decades. That’s no disrespect to Millwall but it was a sign of how far we had fallen in just a season and a half.
“I just looked at this club that I’ve loved all my life and I had no interest at all. I didn’t care anymore. With all the talk doing the rounds it was so hard to care about what was going on on the pitch.”
So, what were these off-pitch revelations?
The numbers are complicated so sit tight.
Since being relegated, the club has been in receipt of the famed Premier League parachute payments but those will cease at the end of the 2022/23 season.
In order to plug the financial gap, the Baggies’ board has agreed to take out a £20m loan at an interest rate of 10% APR from a US-based investment group.
It was initially set at £25m but the club’s Chinese owner Lai Guochuan is theoretically on the cusp of returning £5m that he has long owed the club, thereby reducing the club’s borrowing needs.
Lai’s £5m stems from March 2021 when he withdrew £4.95m in cash from the club and agreed to pay £50,000 interest on it. This was justified at the time as a Covid-relief loan to his wider network of businesses.
It was supposed to be repaid in September 2021.
Not only is that money still outstanding but there has been no indication as to exactly which of Lai’s businesses the loan supported, or how.
This has led to a swirl of rumours… few of them good.
Even more talk has been generated around a £3.7m loan that then-owner Jeremy Peace took out from the club in 2014. The interest agreed on this loan means the total debt now stands at £5m but the quest to find what the money was actually used for is most important – and most concerning – to Jones.
“We think that money was used by Jeremy Peace to increase his own stake in the club. He then sold the club for, in our opinion, way more than it was worth but didn’t settle his loan,” Jones says.
He is adamant that there is a case to answer.
Shareholders For Albion (who collectively own a minority 12% stake in the club) agree with him. They have hired a legal firm to look into the legality of the arrangement.
The allegation is essentially that Peace illegitimately leveraged a small buyout and then sold the club without resolving the debt.
Peace has denied wrongdoing and welcomed any investigation.
Former CEO Xu Ke did address the issue. He diplomatically suggested the amount could be repaid via share dividends. This would settle the debt but would see no money put back into the club despite the club needing a cash injection so badly that it has sought the loan from MSD.
Xu Ke, known as ‘Kenny’, has since been replaced by Ron Gourlay who has remained tight-lipped.
Jones shakes his head at the mention of Gourlay’s name.
“All he had to do was sit down and talk to us,” he says, exasperated. “But there’s no chance. It’s more smoke and mirrors with him.”
There is one more debt to consider. A further £2m was taken out of the club via a loan in September 2021. This was secured against shares.
The club confirmed that money was lent to “a related party” and has a monthly interest rate of 0.3 per cent – far more generous than the 10% APR the club is paying.
“So the club is owed £12m by the owners, but the owners are trying to saddle it with even more debt while they pay tiny amounts of interest and the club pays massive amounts,” Jones deplores.
“How can that be right?”
It does seem extraordinary.
“These numbers aren’t speculative by the way. They are clearly visible in the club’s filings at Companies House. Some sources have suggested that the numbers are far greater but this £12m cannot be disputed,” he insists.
What is disputed is what the money is being used for.
Such gossip can be distracting for fans who have longstanding affiliations with their club. It is easy to see how rabbit holes can be lost down.
This kind of rabbit hole is what led Jones to consider his relationship with the club. He was in between jobs and found himself trying to follow leads to work out exactly what was going on with the club’s money.
The further he dug, the more worrying the clues and rather than answers he simply ended up with more questions.
Jones says he continuously found evidence of what he calls ‘financial mis-management’. In his opinion illegal practice could be going on as well but no concrete evidence has ever materialised.
It was a frustrating time that he admits took its toll.
“That is why we only want to focus on facts,” Jones says, matter-of-factly. “And it is a fact that the club is being mis-treated.”
It means so much to Jones because he is a lifelong West Bromwich Albion fan like his father before him. He is named after Alistair Robertson who scored for the Baggies on the Saturday before he was born.
With an affiliation like that to the club, how could he not take a stand?
He was pleased to find that Action For Albion were not short of supporters after the World Cup break.
When Albion returned to the pitch, further protests took place away at Sunderland, Coventry and Bristol City as well as their two home games in December. These home games were where the real extent of the support for their cause was felt.
Over 10,000 fans shone lights and triggered SOS alarms on their smartphones as they booed and whistled during the 12th minute of their 2-0 home victory over Preston North End on Thursday night. They repeated the process 12 minutes into the second half.
The 12 minutes being symbolic of the missing debts of £12m.
Perhaps inevitably, as momentum gathers behind the group, it has come under fire for various reasons.
Many fans believe that the peaceful, targeted tactics employed so far simply aren’t enough and they should be storming the pitch in a bid to make sure they are heard.
Others have suggested taking even more extreme action than that.
“Clearly that’s not the solution,” he says. Although he does concede it would garner more attention more quickly.
“Our protests have been legal, planned and structured from the outset,” he insists. “And they always will be.”
A minority of Baggies fans have interpreted Action For Albion’s actions as unhelpful and distracting.
“We do get asked: ‘shouldn’t you be getting behind the team and manager and not giving them a hard time?’” he says. “We do support them. At every game. And we will protest against the owner. At every game if we have to.
“We want to stress our motto is: ‘support the club not the board’. The players, the manager and all his staff, we are fully behind them.
“But they are playing with the club’s money,” Jones says. “It should be used for investment in the squad or training facilities, not going off to god-knows-where.
“It might as well have gone up in smoke. As things stand, we can’t even be sure if the chairman knows where it is.”
While Lai hasn’t spoken officially about it, he has been quoted waxing lyrical about his desire to get the club promoted back to the Premier League.
Jones echoes this sentiment.
“Action For Albion also want our club to return to the Premier League but that will be harder to achieve if we are burning through money, other people’s money, while ours is unaccounted for,” he says dejectedly.
“I salute the decision to take out the loan rather than fire-sell players but you can’t keep taking loans out forever. There will come a time when we are no longer able to take them out and then where are we?”
Jones lets this question hang. It is impossible not to think of the many many clubs in British football in recent years that have reformed or disbanded entirely due to financial mismanagement.
Action For Albion will not stand by and watch the same fate befall their club – not quietly.
“We just have to focus on what we can do and that is getting our message heard,” Jones perseveres.
“For now it’s on to our next protest [at home to Reading on 2nd January]. We are looking to keep growing the movement. We are hoping to stage protests outside the ground after the game.”
Does this make him anxious? The advantage of protesting in the stadium is that only those who have paid their entrance fee can participate.
“You might get an idiot doing something stupid but anyone acting irresponsibly does not do so in our name,” he reiterates.
“We are peaceful, legal and targeted.” He ends this sentence with a deep breath and a smile.
Onwards then.
Our conversation has come to an end. He is on the clock now and needs to get to work.
One thing is for certain: Jones and Action For Albion are making themselves heard and they won’t give up until they have answers.
