The Empire is Struck Back.
Yesterday (Thursday, the third of July 2025), all Morecambe fans were assured by the detested current owners of our club – the Bond Group – that they would be in a meeting later in the day with EFL-cleared potential buyers Panjab Warriors with the object of selling the club to them.
Also yesterday – in an article titled The Empire Strikes Back
we discussed the ways in which Jason Whittingham and his Group have attempted to avoid the scenario – Administration – which Morecambe’s last Board of Directors advocated as the only realistic way to break his murderous stranglehold on our beloved club. We have also looked at how he has tried to stop this happening. In a nutshell; he has got rid of the Board and taken direct control of the club himself in what he no doubt sees as Master Strokes to protect his own interests.
In doing so, you could argue, he has responded to a genuine threat to his own financial interests with an even more powerful reaction. In doing so, though, he seems to have forgotten a basic law of physics: that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. What he has actually done is set in motion a chain reaction which does not stop with him alone.
Removing the Board has not provided Mr Whittingham with the empty battlefield he had obviously hoped for. The Members of the Board may not be in place anymore but are all still with us – and they have the Inside Story on how Jason has been running the club into the ground during the last few years. Even more importantly, a revitalised Shrimps Trust – with an even more vibrant leadership – has reacted to what he has done in ways that he almost certainly will not have anticipated.
In a statement to its members made yesterday, the Trust updated everyone on some of the measures it has put in place to counter Jason’s latest move to stop the two potential developments he fears most. These are Administration or the sale of the club. Either of these measures could result in financial ruination for himself and his apparently beleaguered group of businesses. The Trust had already told us earlier in the week that `the club is now in breach of section 154 of the Companies Act 2006 which requires all private companies to have at least one appointed director” and that they had reported this fact to the government’s Companies House for them to investigate. Last night, the Shrimps Trust added:
“Jason Whittingham did speak to us this morning to advise that he is confident he will sell the club before the weekend. He indicated that he has a meeting with Panjab Warriors this evening. That he will update us on.
We have reported the fact that there are no company directors (at the club) to Companies House and await response.
We have also reported the dubious Bond Group Investment accounts that were recently filed.
We understand Jason is attempting to add himself to the company as a Director, however, under FA guidance that form needs to be sign by a current director, which of course is problematic, given there are no current directors. We will keep abreast of this situation.
Bond Group released their statement this afternoon, which we responded to. We remain of the position that Bond Group will not be able to find the funds needed to keep the club afloat (by our best estimate £700,000 without the Charles Street loan (Charles Street Buildings Group is a `Property Investment & Development Group’ based in Leicester) which is £630,000). We maintain the position that his only way out is to sell the club to Panjab Warriors immediately.”
Mr Whittingham won’t thank them for this. So let’s cut to the chase. What happened at last night’s meeting between the Bond Group and Panjab Warriors?
If you look on the club’s official website – as I just have at Midday on Friday the fourth of July 2025 – nothing did: it doesn’t merit a mention. Given that – if a sale had actually been agreed to the Warriors last night – it would be all over the media by now, it is safe to assume that – predictably – it wasn’t.
Panjab Warriors have already invested an awful lot of money in our club to keep it going at times when the Bond Group’s money pit – by their own admission – had well and truly run dry. Additionally, they have clearance from the EFL to take ownership of our club. But it still hasn’t happened.
The article I published yesterday ended with a plea to readers not to hold their breath as far as any news of a sale is concerned.
The absence of any updates about this adds a further reason to believe that – despite his gushing words to the contrary – Jason Whittingham is actually frantically working behind the scenes at our club to ensure that Administration is avoided at all costs and that he does not lose ownership of it either.
So why would he do this?
In the last two instalments of the current Soap Opera concerning the ownership crisis at Morecambe, we considered at least a couple of reasons why a sale of the club has always been unlikely to happen.
Firstly – and please forgive me for repeating this – we examined a theoretical example in which a company that is basically insolvent but owns an asset which it sees as vital to its continued existence may have a very strong vested interest not to sell it to anyone else:
Just assume that a business person owns a football club plus several other commercial enterprises. Then suppose that all of these firms are in serious financial trouble. So the business person’s answer to this is to borrow lots of money to keep them afloat and then effectively `loan’ the same amount of money concerned to his football club – at a much higher rate of interest. This is basic capitalism at work: it’s perfectly legal (although it arguably should not be as – forgetting about the ethics of it – this manipulation of loans in itself raises issues about businesses which are not actually solvent continuing to trade, which is supposed to be illegal.)
I don’t have any hard and fast figures to back this up but I am indebted to one of my readers – who I know to have a really good brain in his head – for posting this response to the article I published yesterday:
“Accounts for Bond Group ending May 2024 show assets of £2.8m and debts of £4.5m. I think it’s obvious what that £2.8m asset is mainly composed of. Without Morecambe FC (Jason Whittingham’s) balance sheet, already underwater, would be on the bottom of the ocean next to the Titanic.”
If this is correct – and I’ve no reason to believe that it isn’t – Bond Group has a massive £1,700,000 hole in its finances. Hitting the twin icebergs of either a sale of the club or Administration would deprive it of the Cash Cow which it seems has been the only thing that has stopped the entire edifice sinking without trace over the last few years. So – despite his repeated assurances that he wants to do so, it is clearly not only against Mr Whittingham’s personal interests to part with the club – it could actually be professional suicide. This would also explain why he has reacted so quickly – and arguably desperately – to stop the club going into Administration, which would take it out of his hands overnight.
The Shrimps Trust told us yesterday that part of their strategy to strike back at the Bond Group Empire has been to engage the services of a Licensed Insolvency Practitioner to examine the state of the organisation’s books. As we have already seen, they have asked Companies House to investigate these because they see at least one discrepancy in them. They have also added, specifically about the club entering Administration:
“At present, there are no directors in place, which means the company cannot initiate the administration process itself. This route is no longer considered viable, as we understand Jason Whittingham is likely to continue trying to appoint himself as a director. If successful, his appointment would effectively block any chance of the company voluntarily entering administration via its officers. That leaves two possible alternatives.”
We are going to look at one of these at the end of the article. However, bearing in mind all of the above, I think that any neutral observer of the shenanigans at Morecambe Football Club over the last few days would be forgiven for concluding:
- That Jason Whittingham has absolutely no intention of selling the club to any third party.
- That he will also do everything he can think of to stop the club being taken out of his hands by entering Administration.
- Following the model already established as Worcester Warriors was dismantled by his Bond Group – that Mr Whittigham is actually actively expending all his energies hiving-off whatever assets Morecambe Football Club still possess.
- That his sole intention – despite his apparently caring and compassionate words to the contrary – is to liquidate the club and thus wreck it altogether – for his own financial gain.
As the Worcester example shows, he’s done so before. He was thwarted there to some extent by the Rugby Football Union (RFU) and apparently has not been able to realise the phenomenal amount of profit he once hoped he would be able to generate.
At Morecambe, though, the equivalent of the RFU – the English Football League – will play no such role. We need to remember that these halfwits allowed Mr Whittingham to take control of our club in the first place because they deemed him to be a `fit and proper person’ to do so. Even when the scandal of the demise of Worcester Warriors occurred, they did nothing to even reconsider this basically fatuous opinion, let alone act upon it. Instead, the traditionally useless EFL has effectively colluded with the Bond Group by actually softening-up the club for the vultures to tear apart with the embargoes and points deductions it imposed on us in our hour of need last season and the one before that.
However, some other issues will not be quite so easy for Jason Whittingham and his wrecking crew to navigate. The main stumbling block is the fantastic fight against them being led by Tarnia Elsworth at the Shrimps Trust. Another concerns the ownership of the land the Mazuma Mobile Stadium is built upon. It is in the possession of a Christie Trust which Jason Whittingham has no control over – which in itself probably means that the profit margins he hoped for in Worcester were never going to be available in Morecambe. But – for all we know – he could have a legal plan to undermine the Christie Trust’s Covenant on the ground or – more likely – knows that he can legally sell-off valuable assets which he does have control of for his own personal profit.
Only time will tell what will actually happen. Sadly though, it is abundantly clear that Jason Whittingham was a Man on a Mission as soon as the ink was dry on the contract which ceded control of Worcester Warriors Rugby Union Club to him – and it’s only too clear with the benefit of hindsight what this Mission always was.
There is therefore no rational reason to believe that his Mission at Morecambe has ever been any different. So we must all do all we can to help the Shrimps Trust in its fight to save our wonderful football club. If you’re not already a member – join:
If you have shares in the club and you would like to give them to the Shrimps Trust in order to strengthen their position in the currently empty Boardroom, please contact them at
Finally for now – but perhaps most importantly – if you are a creditor of Morecambe Football Club and you want to help it to wrest control away from the Bond Group, please bear the following plea by the Trust in mind:
“In the meantime, we encourage any creditors with significant unpaid amounts owed by Morecambe Football Club Limited to contact us via our Trust email address (hello@shrimpstrust.co.uk).”
Why?
Because a route to Administration which Jason Whittingham cannot block, as explained by the Trust itself, is the
“Unsecured creditor route: A less direct and more time-consuming option is for an unsecured creditor (such as an unpaid supplier or employee) to apply to the court for an administration order. This requires showing that the company is insolvent and that administration would benefit creditors overall.”
The struggle to save our beloved club is far from over. Do what you can to help – please.
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