Crawley Town Supporters' Alliance will 'explore initial conversations' with potential buyers if WAGMI United don't start listening to and engaging with fans

Reuben Watt and Sam Jordan were interviewed by Hannah Brown on The Real EFL Podcast following their vote to get a mandate on ‘pursuing any alternative legal means necessary to ensure the current co-chairmen are replaced’.

Those co-chairman are co-owners Eben Smith and Preston Johnson. The relationship between the CTSA and the co-chairman has been strained since December following a number of decisions including senior players being sold and sent out on loan, a number of changes in management and a lack of communication with the fans.

The CTSA had met with then interim CEO Chris Galley, Smith and Johnson on separate occasion but since March there has been silence with the owners saying they wanted to secure safety before making any comments.

The CTSA called for Galley, Smith and Johnson to resign on April 17 – before the crunch relegation battle with Colchester United and the remaining important games.

And now, weeks after the end of the season, the CTSA has still had no communication and on June 6, they sent an email to all members asking to vote to seek a mandate. Watt said: “We believe that relegation and financial hardship are realistic prospects if Mr. Smith and Mr. Johnson continue in their positions. Our aim is to prompt the replacement of the Co-Chairmen to safeguard the future of Crawley Town Football Club.”

The vote came back with 60% of the 154 who voted opting ‘For the CTSA to pursue any alternative legal means necessary to ensure the current Co-Chairmen are replaced’. This was following with rumours circulating on the internet Smith could be leaving the ownership group. A source close to WAGMI has since told SussexWorld: “There are no leadership changes planned.”

And today, Thursday, June 15, Watt and Jordan appeared on The Real EFL Podcast to explain why they felt they needed to to this and what the next steps are.

You can watch the whole podcast here.

What Watt and Jordan make clear in the podcast is they still want to engage with WAGMI and give them a chance. Jordan said: “The doors open to reconcile with Preston. The reason we wanted to do this is to publicly reach out to them. Who is running our football club WAGMI? Someone needs to say something.

He added: "We haven’t done anything yet, we have got a mandate from the members. We need to be ready if our club is in trouble, but as I alluded to earlier they have told us countless time they are going to have a board meeting, they have told us countless times they are going to appoint a CEO. The proof is in the pudding really. They told us they had someone ready to appoint but it was subject to us staying up. We stayed up nearly eight weeks ago now, where is that person. We have been waiting far too long.”

The pair also revealed they have spoken to potential buyers who could make WAGMI an offer. Jordan said: “Potentially, is there interested parties out there? Of course there are interested parties in wanting to buy an EFL club. There are only 92 top level Football League clubs in England. Unfortunately we don’t own our own ground, we haven’t really got a training ground, we haven’t got a massive supporter base, we are not like Bradford or Swindon who might attract more interest but we want to engage with WAGMI, that’s our number one priority because they are the current owners of the football club.”

And if communication does not improve and not visible action takes in terms of transfers, Jordan said: “The supporters will only get more and more frustrated. If we lose the first few games, don’t sign any players, it’s going to get nasty and we will have to explore the initial conversations with the people who could be interested in buying our football club at pace to offer them a way out.”

You can see the full podcast here.