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EXPLAINED: Ambitious plans to transform Bath City and get them into the EFL

By AsiaEurope


Prospective new owner Andrew Stalbow has explained ambitious plans to transform Bath City and get them into the EFL.

After suffering relegation from the National League South last season, they now play in the Southern League – Premier South, winning their first game of the season, a 2-1 victory away at Sholing.

But just as the 2026/27 season gets underway, the Board of Bath City, together with the Bath City Supporters’ Society Committee have announced an agreement in principle for the sale of the club to an investor group.

Andrew Stalbow said in a video on the club’s YouTube: “First of all, I want to say thank you very much to all the Bath City fans for their very warm welcome since we shared the press release last week announcing the deal that we’d be working on and also I shared the letter to the shareholders of Bath City Football Club as we think about what our priorities would be if we get voted and accepted to move forward.

“I’m Andrew Stalbow, born in London and a massive football fan and the last five years I’ve been working really hard on trying to figure out a really interesting strategy to come into football. It’s been a long process.

“I’ve probably spoken to about 150 owners, investors, managers, players, and coaches as I try to get smart about a great way for me to bring a group of investors that really want to make a difference in a small football club.

“What we’ve been thinking about actually is could we find a club that was in the lower leagues in the UK that was in a brilliant location that had a wonderful stadium, a very engaged community, brilliant fans that have stepped up and were a club that really had a lot of potential that we could focus on and try and unlock.

“And four years into the research, about 15 months ago, I got a phone call from representatives of Bath City who said they were looking to find investors to help their club because they were in a difficult financial situation and were really looking for someone or a group to come in and support the growth of the club.

“When I heard that, I was like, fantastic. I love Bath. I’ve been here many weekends had a really really great time here. And when I heard the name Bath City, the thing to me, I think if I wasn’t a football fan, I’d assume that was a club in the Championship or the Premier League, it sounds like a really big team.

“Obviously, everybody knows the rugby club, but the football club it felt should be really quite high up the football pyramid, but obviously has been, you know, languishing a little bit in in the lower leagues. And so immediately it caught my eye as something that felt like this could be a really great opportunity.

“So after getting the call, we came down to Twerton and spent some time with the management team that were here. There was a special committee that had been set up by the club to look to find an investor. And straight away we hit it off because actually the people working at the club are all very talented, very accomplished people. And we felt like there was a good fit immediately and we started working on the project.

“What that meant was I went back to some people that I’d worked with previously in my career and asked them if they thought they might be interested in working alongside me to raise some money, invest into the club so that we could help transform the club, invest into it, give it the financial stability and build out a really sustainable football club that had a great financial foundation and build it up over time together, the fans, the operators of the club currently, and us.

“So, that’s what I’ve been working on for 15 months. It’s taken longer than we might have liked, we actually had a deal before relegation and the club just started losing a lot of games and when the club’s losing a lot of games, it was quite hard for us to raise investment. So, we took a pause. The club got relegated. But I spoke to all my investor group all the people that I’ve been working with and all of us unanimously said actually this project’s even more exciting right now because now we’re in the seventh tier. Surely the only way is up and we get an opportunity to tell the story of the journey of building up in partnership with the fans and the people that are working here a brilliant football club.

“So, we’re very very invested and excited about the idea of hopefully subject to shareholder approval being given the green light to go invest some money into the club and work together to build it up. The thing that attracted us to Bath was a few different things.

“Obviously, it’s a gorgeous city. Over 6 million tourists a year, people around the world come to it. Everybody knows what it stands for.

“Also, Twerton is a brilliant amazing community which is very powerful and a very critical part of this club.

“And then lastly, the fans were amazing. I mean the fans not only saved the club 10 years ago by investing into the club but then when Covid hit raising all that money that as a loan to the club again went beyond the call of duty of most fans and certainly the feedback I’ve always had when I’ve come to games, I came to about seven or eight games last year just saw very very passionate people that love this club and are particularly proud of the community heritage which is one of the most important elements that attracted us to the club.

“I think that a club like Bath is going to go on a journey with an investment like this and we’re really excited about the opportunity to capture the stories as we go. It takes a village to build up a football club like this. Whether it’s people working on video, whether it’s social media, whether it’s working on the women’s team, whether it’s working in the bar, whether it’s working and looking after hospitality, whether it’s the coaching staff, there’s so many stories and one of the things that’s going to be very important to us is to share those stories with you in a very open, transparent manner because they’re also super interesting. Also, we want you to see what goes on behind the scenes as we work to build out the club.

“So, let me tell you a bit about our investor group, we’ve raised $8.5 million, which is just over 6 million pounds to be invested into the club, which as we understand it is the biggest single investment into a non-league team to date. All the investors are excited about the same thing as me, which is being part of something special and going on a journey together.

“One of the things that I think really stands out about this is we know it’s going to be a partnership between us and the fans. And we do not see ourselves as owners. We see ourselves as custodians and partners with all of you. I’m a super transparent and open guy. So one of the things that we’ll be doing is sharing openly what we share with the board as we share our priorities and our progress against those as we build up the club together in partnership.

“I think one of the other things that really stands out for me about the club is the opportunity to invest into the football side of the business that maybe over the years hasn’t had the biggest budget before. Certainly Bath City have played really well considering the budgets they’ve had which have always been towards the lower end of the league. One of the things that we’re going to prioritise from the outset is investing into Scott’s playing squad so that we give ourselves a really competitive budget in the league this year.

“Other priorities for us aside from playing budget are also to make sure that we’ve got some of the facilities that really give the players the chance to excel and be the best they can be.

“For example, the changing room needs quite a lot of investment, the pitch, I’m standing on it right now. It’s a little bit dry and definitely needs a little bit of investment too. So, we’re going to focus on that. We know that kind of nutrition is a really important piece of things and that’s something we want to invest into too having spoken with Scott about it.

“In fact, one of the things we’re really looking for over the long term is to try and transform the club to help make it Football League ready. And one of the things that we’ve already got is, in my opinion, a manager that has the potential to be Football League ready. We’re really impressed with his openness, his honesty, the way he goes about his coaching role and we think Bath City’s in a brilliant place to go and invest into the squad under the tutelage of Scott. That’s super exciting for us. I will be if the shareholders vote for it, full-time executive chairman of the club, 100% dedicated to working with everybody to unlock the potential of the club.

“One of the things I want you to know is while this is a big amount of money for a small seventh tier team, we do not celebrate fundraising as any part of success. What’s important for us is to be great custodians of the money that we raise from from our investors and to be super thoughtful about how we invest and how we spend it because we want to build a sustainable club that has amazing facilities for the players and the fans and the community all together.

“And I want you to know that the money you spend on shirts, on beer, on food, and on tickets is all going to go straight back into the club because we want to invest into making a brilliant football experience for you on the pitch and off the pitch.

“Also, I think the question should be, what do you expect from us as a fan? Well, one of the most important things is making sure that you have a really good fan experience. I’ve already told you that we’re planning on sharing openly with you our progress, the good and the bad. We’re going to get some things wrong, but hopefully we’re going to get more right. And we’re going to have quarterly, so every 3 months, updates with the fans, a bit like we’re doing with the shareholders on Thursday in the town hall where we’ll share and we’ll discuss what our priorities are and how we’re executing and performing against those.

“Ultimately, we want to create a really fun fan experience. You know, I live in the US and in the UK, and I go to, you know, sporting events in the US, and they’re so fun. People get to the stadiums 2 or three hours before, they stay afterwards, the food’s good, the beer’s great, the music’s really fun. So, we want to make sure that over time we build a really great fan experience for everybody, I mean, food. Yeah, I think I mentioned it in my letter, you know, cheap beer, good food, and plenty of fun. That ultimately is kind of what we want to achieve. Obviously, we’ve got to deliver on the pitch to make everything fun, but that’s going to be making sure that we care about your experience is is super important for us.

“In terms of our longer term priorities, we love Twerton Park. We think it’s a really beautiful stadium. It feels soulful when we when we got the winner and scored in the last minute against Chippenham last year. The atmosphere was fantastic. You know, I was here for that. It was just brilliant. It’s got the heart and soul of a football stadium and we don’t want to lose that.

“We also think that in Bath and Twerton having a great facility here that is a sports and entertainment hub is really important and we it’s a real priority for us to invest into that over the long term. That’s not something we’re going to be able to change that much straight away because we’re going to focus on the football and try and get the club, the men’s team out of the seventh tier and into the sixth tier. But ultimately staying at Twerton and investing into Twerton is a big priority for us.

“The other long-term priority that we have is building out a training facility for the players for the men’s and the women’s team because right now we don’t have one and we don’t own one. We rent a facility in Filton. And it’s not always ideal to not have control of our own facility. Particularly as we hopefully make our way up the divisions. It’s clear that we’re going to transition from part-time into hybrid and possibly into full-time in communication with the coaching staff. That will mean more time at a training facility. And that’s a really important project that will kick off right from the start looking for something a location that can be important and very very important to us over the longer term.

“We don’t necessarily have all the finances at this stage to be able to afford to do everything we want on that front, but our goal is that with the capital that we’re raising at the beginning, if we can perform well, we’ll have a great opportunity to raise more money down the line because people know we’re great custodians. We’re executing against our plan and more and more people will want to support us and that’s going to unlock the potential for us to do more and more things.

“One of the other things that actually is really important that we’ll start developing a lot over the next year in partnership with Scott and the coaching staff is developing Bath City’s approach to playing football, its football system. The best teams in England have a very clear football system. For us, number one, that means attacking football. We want to see fun and exciting football on the pitch and that will always be a core part of our game. That said, one of the things that we’re competing with now is other clubs that have very very strong data science capabilities where they can analyse other players, analyse their players in training, analyse players that they want to recruit and get a little bit of an advantage which ultimately translates onto the pitch.

“So, one of our long-term investments is going to be building out a data science system for the club that we can use over the long term as we build out a system that we will communicate with you and share as we look to have really really competitive experiences in the leagues that we’re playing in.

“One of the people that I’m super excited to have brought in on the investor group is Curt Smith the lead singer and founder of Tears for Fears. He was brought up locally and I’ve become friends with his brothers Brett and Shaun too. I think what’s great about Curt is he’s obviously very passionate. He knows the power of Bath City as a community club, but he’s also a great example of the quality of investors that we have. These are people that are the very accomplished at the top of their games with amazing experience, lots of connections and I think Curt is going to be a really brilliant ambassador for the club working alongside me assuming the shareholders vote for this deal.

“One of the things that’s really interesting about the way we’ve structured the club going forward, hopefully if anyone has any concerns a member of the Bath City supporter society will be on the club’s board. We also have agreed other things such as we have agreed that we will not change the name of the club from Bath sCity. You do not need to worry about that. I couldn’t be more excited about Bath City. So, it was a very easy thing for us to agree.

“The other thing we’ve agreed is we will not change the colours of Bath City’s home kits. Again, another very easy thing for us. We love black and white. And actually, one of our investors, Franco Militinovich, he’s a huge Partizan Belgrade fan who also play in black and white and he can’t wait to get here and swap shirts with his Partizan shirt and his Bath City shirt as well.

“The other thing we’ve said as well is that we will not move ever from Twerton Park more than 5 miles away from the city centre or from Twerton Park if ever we were to outgrow this site. Now, if that was to happen, that’s a long way down the line where we need a bigger location than here and that would be an incredible day to get to for all of us. But as I said right now, I want your I want you to feel reassured that we want to invest into Twerton. This is our home and we think this is a brilliant place for us.

“So I know I’ve mentioned that we want to have a shot at getting to the Football League in 5 years. That is not a promise for me to be in the Football League. Clearly, I’m not going to be playing up front and I don’t have the influence on the day-to-day basis on the pitch and on match days.

“What we do have is we have an ability to influence all the inputs. So, my role is to make sure that the players are getting everything they need. Scott Bartlett on the men’s side is getting what he needs. Matt [Abreu] on the women’s side is getting what he needs to make sure that we give the players the greatest chance of success and we make sure that we’re capitalised well enough to give them competitive budgets to give us a great chance progress.

“My view is focus on all of those inputs and don’t and the success will follow if we get that right. So for us it’s one season at a time. We’ve got a very difficult season ahead of us. We got off to a great start on Saturday and we’re really excited about the positivity and the commitment from the players in that game to win in the last 5 minutes.

“So, we know that we’ve got what it takes to build a squad that can be super competitive this year, but I want to reassure you, we’re not thinking too far ahead. It’s one season at a time and we earn the right by doing a great job and the things that we say to attract more capital and the best people to this club to give us ultimately the best chance of success.

“One of the things that really attracted us to this club is the fact that the women’s team was founded in 2022 by Jane Jones. The club’s got off to a brilliant start and we’re super excited about the women’s team. As I told you, I spend my time between the US and the UK. In the US, women’s soccer, as they call it, women’s football to you and me, is on fire. I live near a team called Angel City that sells out its stadium every week and it’s really attractive, super exciting football. There’s a great pathway for girls from youth all the way into the main team and we’re really excited to work with Matt and the team and invest the women’s side and also give them the resources that they need as we look to take the women’s team up the divisions as well.

“We’ve spent a lot of time with the management team at Bath around the amazing progress they’ve made over the last few years since it became a community club and since they took loans from various people around Bath to be able to survive through Covid.

“One of the things that has been very apparent is that the club really isn’t in a financially secure place. Right now, the club is losing money every year and it also is saddled with over1 million pounds of debt which for a club that loses money and doesn’t actually generate even a million pounds a year in revenue is a really difficult position to be in.

“One of the things that attracted us to this is we know that if this club has the resources to go to the next level, it has the opportunity to fulfil its potential. And this funding investment really gives the club an opportunity to go to the next step, but also gives it a financial foundation. Assuming we manage it well and we’re smart about the choices and the decisions we make. This gives us a secure financial foundation on which to take the next step.

“Lastly, I want to say a word to Bath City Supporters Society. The club would not be here without your support back in 2017 and before and we appreciate that. The same is true of the people that loaned the club money back in 2020 and afterwards. You have been amazing. You’ve gone beyond the call of duty of what it takes to be a fan and we massively appreciate and recognise that and we see our role as being partners with you going forward as we work to build up a club together. If you do vote in favour of this deal, I want you to know that it will be the journey of our lives. This is the biggest project that I’ve ever worked on. We see a huge opportunity and we’re very, very grateful for your support.

“So, I want to say thank you for hopefully approving us. You know, we obviously feel confident, but we take nothing for granted and we certainly do not take your support for grant. So, I want to say a big thank you. I look forward to meet you Thursday and I also for the fans look forward to meeting you on Saturday at midday at Charlie’s. Let’s catch up and I can’t wait to get your pre-banger. Thank you.”







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