Revived Notts County eye an unlikely rapid return to the EFL

When Notts County arrive at a vacant Wembley Stadium to face Harrogate in the National League play-off final, the teams will converge with sharply contrasting histories. For so long the oldest club in the Football League, the Magpies have contested nearly 5,000 games in the upper echelons of English football. Harrogate have played zero. Twelve months after a traumatic summer, Notts County may just feel like the team with less to lose.

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Much of the past decade at Meadow Lane has been defined by flagrant mismanagement, but not even the farce of 2009-10 – when the club was bought by men who drafted in Sven-Göran Eriksson as director of football and promised the world before the promises were proven to be false – prepared them for the final months of local businessman Alan Hardy’s tenure.

After starting last season by proclaiming Notts County a “dead cert” for promotion to League One, Hardy instead spent much of it bickering with fans on social media while his team dropped like a stone. As Notts County was relegated from the Football League for the first time, Hardy’s own company went into administration and he decided to sell the club. Notts County’s accounts revealed debts of almost £8m and an unpaid tax bill of £250,000. The club was summoned to the high court.

While the Nottingham South MP, Lilian Greenwood, warned of a real threat of liquidation for the club and the nervous wait for a new owner endured, life continued at a club financially frozen in time.

Neal Ardley was charged with managing a minuscule squad that was under transfer embargo and had not been paid for two months, his transfer targets slowly trickling away. Players had to bring their kits from the previous season to training and matches until the new attire could be purchased. Fans spent pre-season friendlies with only one eye on the action, the other on a collection bucket that continually circulated to aid the unpaid staff.

The tense wait eventually yielded an unlikely success. The Danish brothers Christoffer and Alexander Reedtz, owners of a football analytics company called Football Radar, finalised their purchase of the club two weeks before the season began. Debts of £8m were written off and seven players signed within a day. Still, the turmoil left its mark as more than a dozen new players entered a dressing room that was still reeling.

“The fans’ faith in where the club was going was low, there wasn’t even a full squad, the lads who were here – some of them still had the hangover from the relegation and what all that entailed,” says the defender Ben Turner, one of the new arrivals. “That was the dressing room most in need of galvanising that I have ever entered.”

The consequences of the manic summer spilled into the new season. After three games, Notts County sat 23rd and until matchday 16 they were an unremarkable mid-table team. But as the players fell into step and gelled, they began to fly.

Notts County have lost twice in their past 20 games and now boast a six-match winning streak, which includes an away win over Barrow, the eventual champions, in their penultimate game before the season was prematurely ended during lockdown. It could be argued that they finished as the best team in the league.

“That Ardley was able to put together a really effective squad under those circumstances is really nothing short of astonishing,” says Mike Scott, chair of the Notts County Supporters’ Trust.

After such a swift recovery, the mood is transformed. As the fans sing their players’ names again, respect has grown for the understated Danes who have helped Ardley incorporate Football Radar’s predictive analytics software into his management while steadfastly remaining in the background.

Since their arrival, the Reedtz brothers have stressed the need for a long-term perspective, which seems particularly important now. Six of the 42 teams since 1987 to be relegated from the National League have returned the following season and so a win for Notts County should be a tremendous success. But should they fall short, fans and players may eventually find solace in their blazing recovery and the simple fact that this summer, the wrong outcome will not cost them everything.