Most football fans dream of owning their own football club, which makes it even more infuriating when some moron isn’t running the team you support properly.

As a Port Vale fan, I know that feeling all too well but thankfully for us we’ve navigated away from that shitshow and managed to get ourselves some local owners that actually care about the club, community and most importantly, the fans. However, some clubs aren’t that lucky.

Today, we’ll be giving you 5 of the worst run clubs in the English Football League (Our opinion, obviously) – and sure, we’re bound to miss some because for some reason the EFL lets anybody with a seven-figure bank balance buy a team nowadays. 

Oldham 

Some owners like to do things properly – they hire the right team members to get the job done, leave them to it and enjoy success whereas some do it a little differently.

Unfortunately for the Latics, their current owner Abdallah Lemsagam is the latter. His meddling in team selections and unprofessionalism with the clubs’ players led their major-managerial signing Paul Scholes to abandon his post after only 31 days in charge. 

And not only that, Lemsagam was also reported to have come out and said that ‘if it wasn’t for him, the club wouldn’t exist anymore’. Now, sure… thanks for saving the club and all but that doesn’t sit quite right with me. Owners should be seen at games and be conversational with fans, not running to the press with quotes like that. 

Charlton

Christ, we’re only two into this very brief list and I’m already infuriated. Let me run a club and I guarantee that I could do it better than this lot.

Charlton owner Rolan Duchatalet actually demanded that the EFL buy the club off of him back in February 2019 via an official post on the club’s website. MADNESS.

He’s been branded a ‘club killer’ and many fans have claimed that he is actually trying to ruin the club. This is a battle that has been going on for years now and it looks like it’s going to be another season of protests for the south London club.

Coventry

Utter shitshow. 

Oh, I need to write more?

Owned by Otium Entertainment Group (subsidiary of SISU), Coventry just look doomed. Out of their own stadium, their owners refusing to sell and also burning any bridges they can find. 

I don’t know what’s worse, this whole situation or the fact that there are TWO more clubs that I genuinely feel are worse off.

Bury

Players and staff not paid their wages, a chairman that loves to release ridiculous official statements via the club’s website and no funds for player recruitment. It’s a miracle that Bury got out of League Two.

Chairman Steven Dale claims that the club was in a much worse position than he was led to believe when he took over and even if that is true, he won’t be winning any fans over with stuff like his latest press release, as it seems to skim over the fact that the club’s future has been secured and instead, focuses more on the fact that a few fans have stooped to calling him names and protesting at matches. 

Going into the new season they’ve lost their manager as well as 12 first-team players and will kick off with a 12-point deduction. It’s going to be a long winter in Greater Manchester.

Bolton

Yeah. Former Premier League giant that regularly took points from teams like Arsenal are now on the cusp of going out of business. 

Reports were that owner Ken Anderson hadn’t paid anyone at the club for 5 months, with non-playing members of staff relying on food bank donations.

As well as players refusing to play games at the back-end of last season, a pre-season friendly as recent as July 19th was called off because of the pay dispute. Now in the control of administrators, Bolton will start next season with a 12 point deduction, making it very likely that we’ll see them playing League Two football next season. 

The only piece of good news being that Anderson has said that the sale of the club is imminent.

It seems to be a regular occurrence in the lower leagues now and sort of just brushed under the carpet. The list of clubs whose ownership is or has been questionable during the last two decades just goes on and on, which makes you question the EFL’s stance on the whole thing.

Let us know your thoughts on the whole situation and keep up-to-date with everything football league by liking our Facebook page and by following us on Twitter.

James Ryan

Twitter: @JHR_1995