Pic: King’s Lynn Town FC
NEW King’s Lynn Town owner Stephen Cleeve has set his sights on the Football League after buying the Norfolk club from Buster Chapman.
Chapman helped bring football back to the town after the original King’s Lynn FC were wound-up in November 2009 due to crippling debts.
The Linnets restarted at Step 5 of the Non-League Pyramid but, under the management of Gary Setchell, have made it into the Evo-Stik League Southern Premier.
However, Chapman – chairman of the British Speedway Promoters’ Association and long-term owner of speedway team King’s Lynn Stars – says he has taken the club as far as he can and agreed to sell to Norfolk-based businessman Cleeve following three years of talks.
“We’ve put a lot of hard work in over the last six years, I have to say it’s been an enjoyable time,” Chapman told the Eastern Daily Press.
“But with the increased pressure of speedway and issues around my life, I found the last year very difficult so I thought the best idea was to move over and let somebody else with the belief and the passion to take the club further and that’s what I’ve done.
“To this day I believe that the club needs to progress further and it deserves to go further, it’s got a fantastic fan base and great facilities and we’ve done our best to make the club secure.
“The guy that has taken over has been very persistent. Steve’s got the ambition and the passion and got the will to do it and hopefully it’s been the right decision.”
Cleeve, 49, currently owns George Hotel in nearby Cley as well as football memorabilia website CollectSoccer and he has big plans for the Linnets.
Some fears have been raised over his past, which saw him banned from being a company director for eight years in 2000 for a string of controversial investment schemes.
He also tried and failed to take charge of Wrexham in 2011 but after three years of discussions, he has finally taken control of King’s Lynn and says there is plenty of potential to unearth.
Cleeve, who ran as the UKIP candidate for Kensington & Chelsea at the 2010 General Election, said: “King’s Lynn is a sleeping giant. It’s got a lot of potential and three or four hundred more people can come through the gate without too much difficulty.
“The club should be playing League football. It’s not going to be easy to get there but that’s the ambition. You’ve got to have an ambition, have a plan, and that’s what we’d like to do.
“I’ve been speaking to Buster for three years and I don’t think there’s been a week gone by without a text or e-mail between us. It was hard to convince him to sell the club because he came in when the club was on its knees.
“I’m going to try and bring some more commercial extra avenues into the club, I feel that they need to be sustainable, I’m prepared to put the money in but I want to make sure that the club brings in extra partnerships so that money can be made for players and wages.”
