The Hull City owner, Assem Allam, has said he put the club up for sale in April “within 22 hours” of the Football Association’s decision to prohibit the proposed change of name to Hull Tigers. Allam had pledged to do so before the FA decision, saying that he would “walk away within 24 hours” if the governing body refused his plan.
Allam told a press conference called to hear his announcement that no suitable investors had come forward during the five months since April to buy the club, which owed him £72m as at 31 July last year, the date of the most recent accounts. After further spending on players in January to ensure City’s survival in the Premier League, then nine more signings in the summer, including Jake Livermore, Robert Snodgrass, Tom Ince, Michael Dawson and Abel Hernández, one source close to the club estimated that Allam’s loans may now approach £100m. Allam charges 5% interest on his loans; his interest paid by the club in 2012-13 was stated in the accounts to have been £2.8m.
Allam did not elaborate on how much money he wants to part with the club, which finished 16th in the Premier League last season and lost in the FA Cup final to Arsenal, and which plays at the KC Stadium, owned and built by Hull city council, with a capacity of 25,586. Nor was he specific about whether he would want his large loans to be repaid, apart from any money for selling the club itself.
The City owner, who has lived in Hull for 45 years since arriving, as a political fugitive he has said, from Egypt in 1969 then building a successful industrial generators business, prides himself on never changing his mind once he has made a decision.
He became set on changing the club’s name to Hull Tigers, claiming it would in itself greatly enhance the club’s global commercial appeal and earnings, after “severing relation” with the council over a proposed expansion of the stadium.
Allam insisted he would only invest in the stadium’s enlargement to 30,000 seats if he owned the freehold, but the council, which built the stadium for £43.5m public money in 2002, has not offered it for sale and wanted to enter negotiations to find a satisfactory way of structuring the expansion.
The FA decided in March, then confirmed in April that Allam had not made the case for a change to the name the club has had since 1904, which was opposed by a coalition of supporter groups under the banner City Till We Die. Allam said after he received confirmation on 9 April, he immediately fulfilled his promise to put the club up for sale: “This announcement is in accordance with my decision 10 months ago that I would walk away within 24 hours. In actual fact it was 22 hours,” Allam said in a prepared statement. “When I say something, I mean it. I don’t call bluffs, what I say is what you get exactly.”
Allam said he had begun an appeal against the FA’s decision to the court of arbitration for sport. “We are hopeful of a positive outcome, or that the FA reconsider their decision.” He suggested that if the FA’s decision were reversed, he might reconsider whether to sell the club.
Cas told the Guardian it had received no appeal from Hull City in relation to the name change. An FA spokesman said it had heard nothing about a Cas appeal and also declined to comment on Allam’s statement.
