John Howard is the director responsible for overseeing youth development, the Football in the Community scheme and the redevelopment of the Abbey Stadium. Recently his profile has risen as the man behind the offer for the sale and leaseback of the ground.
Born in Felixstowe, John's father was a greengrocer but he then became an estate agent and at the age of 17 John joined his father in the business.
"It didn't work out and I ended up taking the business over when I was 19," he explains. "I bought my first property when I was 18, sold the estate agency when I was 24, and I've been a property developer ever since."
John first got involved with Cambridge United 17 years ago and admits, "My first approach to the club wasn't very good, to be honest. I was a bit young and naive and I wanted to get more involved in a football club.
"I had played for Felixstowe reserves - very badly - and I was always a fanatical football fan. When I was 13 my report from the headmaster said 'John must realise there is more to life than football'. It was partly true of course: there was property and there were girls, but there was always football.
"I've been a football fan all my life and a Cambridge United fan for 17 years."
Answering the rumours that he was an Ipswich fan, John retorts, "Not true! I was a Norwich fan and anyone who knows me knows I don't like Ipswich at all. One of the reasons is because they keep trying to steal our best players and persuade them to play for them at youth team level, and I'm very involved in the youth policy here, and the other reason is because I used to support Norwich."
Having spent 17 years on the board, he must have seen both good and bad times at the club?
"The highlights have got to include getting to two FA Cup quarter-finals three or four years after I became a director. If that was now there would be so much more publicity and money for the club than there was then.
"Obviously winning the first ever play-off final at Wembley was a great achievement for the club, and in November 1992 we went to Ipswich and we beat them 2-1 to go top of the table. I watched the youth team game in the morning at Ipswich and we won that, then we beat the first team in the afternoon to go top of the table and that was a very enjoyable experience.
"When you consider what a small club we were - and are - to actually be in the first division and be top of the table, it's a remarkable story and one that will be very, very hard to achieve again. But that's what we're here for and that's why we travel the length and breadth of the country for nine months of the year, coming home late on a Saturday night and all the rest of it, trying to achieve that."
John believes the recent financial changes in the game have had the heaviest impact on the club and affect the way it must plan for the future.
"In recent years the money side of it has changed and has more of an effect. In the early days we used to budget to lose £50,000-£100,000 and make it up by selling players and so on, but Trevor Benjamin was obviously the last big fee we received.
"You only have to look at what we ended up with for Dave Kitson last year - probably about £250,000 with more to come if he's successful - but when you consider that Trevor Benjamin was £1.6million, then Dave would have been well in excess of £1million had the transfer market not crashed. He's scored twelve goals in the first division so far this season."
John has particular responsibilities for youth development and the Football in the Community scheme, and he admits, "I'm pleased to say both have been very successful. I've been involved with the youth policy since the early 90s and we've certainly managed to punch well above our weight ever since.
"The inclusion of Kit Carson has now emphasised that even more and we are really very successful at that level," he adds.
"Now what we must try to do is - rather than sell the players off, like we have Sylvan Blake to Manchester United at the age of 15 - we have got to try and do is get the losses down from where they are now so we can keep these players and get them into our first team so they can help to get us up the table into higher divisions, and then sell them on when they want to go and when we want them to go.
"I think if we can get the losses down to £100,000-£150,000 again next season, then we can achieve that."
John explaining the redevelopment plans
Since Reg Smart retired from the board of directors, John has also been heavily involved in the process of gaining planning permission for the next stage of the redevelopment of the Abbey Stadium.
"I have, and I've changed the planning permission around completely from the way it was originally," he explains.
"When Reg (Smart) decided to retire, Gary Harwood sort of threw it at me and said 'there you are, you're a property man, you sort it out. You should have been sorting it out from day one'.
"Well, it's a nice thing to say, but to be honest I would have done things differently from the start but I took over a month before they started building the south end and that had to continue. I couldn't stop them doing that but in retrospect I would have done it totally differently.
The Heritage Conservatories South Stand
"However, I looked at the north end and we had something like 4,500 seats in there, which was just madness in my opinion. So I went to the board and said we don't need that many seats, why don't we put in 1,500 seats and behind it we can have a lot more leisure space and move the club offices round the corner into new Portakabins, which is hopefully going to happen in January, and also try to get some planning permission right on the front rather than just car parking, because the front is obviously the most valuable spot.
"So we went to the planners and to start with they were very anti-everything, but to cut a long story short we have now managed to get an 86-bedroom hotel on the front and 36,000 square feet of leisure space, which is some achievement.
The front of the Abbey Stadium site
"I've had one or two detractors in this last week or so and I think what they must realise is that, with my development team and professional advisors that I've put in place, that's the scheme we've come up with and that's the scheme that gives Cambridge United the chance in the future.
"If it wasn't for the fact that we've got planning for a hotel and the rest of it, there wouldn't be any chance of the club being able to buy the ground back."
Moving on to the topic of the proposed sale and lease back, John answered several questions from supporters:
John, how is it that you have the money to buy the Abbey Stadium but not to help buy players to keep the club in the league?
They are two different businesses altogether. My business isn't buying players, never has been, and we invest a lot in our youth and in terms of buying players it's something we don't do at Cambridge United. We've never really done that, so I think that's the answer to that part of the question.
To answer the first part of the question, I'm buying it through my company, which I own, and the bank are helping me fund it, so that's why it's got to be on a commercial basis.
Why are you only giving the club four years to buy the Abbey back? Even Leeds United have 25 years to buy Elland Road back and it looks unlikely that we will be able to afford that in the timescale available.
That's not quite right. In the first four years I cannot sell the ground to anyone else or do anything else, so I can't sell it on as an investment and my hands are tied for four years. My bank weren't very happy about that but they're going to go along with it. They're saying that if something happens to me I can't do anything for four years, and one of their worries was that I was doing this purely for football reason.
Well, I hope they don't read this interview because to be honest this isn't a deal I'd be doing normally!
Why only four years? Well, actually it's not, because after that time lapses if I ever want to sell the ground the club still has the first chance to buy it back, so it has to be offered to the club first. I hope the club does buy it back because I don't really want to have Cambridge United as a long-term investment.
The club accounts set out the value of the Abbey Stadium site as around £4m - how can we justify letting it go for £2m?
People need to understand that the valuation of around £4m was based on vacant possession, so that's with no one there as a sitting tenant.
This is all about investment and what people must realise is that the club will have a lease on the ground for 50 years, and after those 50 years run out it's within the Landlord and Tenant Act 1954 that by law the club gets offered another 50 years. So it's a bit like me buying a property with a sitting tenant that I can't do anything with, and it's all linked to what rent the club can afford.
I am buying it basically on a 10% return, which means that I get a 10% return on value i.e. 10% of £2m represents the £200,000 rent. So if the club could afford £300,000 in rent then it would have been £3m. When you have a long lease it's linked to whatever rental income is coming in, but people must understand that for 100 years or more I cannot do anything to the football ground. It is leased long-term to Cambridge United so the club is a sitting tenant.
Do you, or any of your other directors have any business or leisure connections with any employees at Savills?
No leisure connections, no. They are a very big firm, one of the biggest in the country, and over the years I have bought the odd thing through them. Not the Cambridge office, but other offices around the country. I've obviously had involvement with them because they are the club's advisors on the redevelopment.
How much do you intend to sell the ground back for?
It will be explained to the shareholders at the EGM on 29th November, but it is a fixed price and it can't go up.
The lease rental of £200,000 seems high, how was this figure arrived at?
It basically a commercial rent, which is based on a mixture of what the club can afford and also what the ground is worth in terms of a football club renting it. But I would add that we hope to get some sub-tenants in on the front of the site and I have a few ideas to get people in temporarily while we find tenants for the development.
At the moment we're paying about £170,000 a year in interest on our loans so that will be replaced by the rent, and I've got plans to help with the other £30,000 a year.
Who are your fellow directors in 'Bideawhile 445 Ltd' and what is their interest in this business deal?
I have a partner who is a sports fan but not a Cambridge United fan, and I've had to persuade him that this is something we ought to do, which was tricky because obviously it stops us investing in other things. But I've persuaded him.
The company is just a new company that I've set up specifically to do this investment.
There have been many questions about "conflict of interest" and vested interest. Any comments?
Firstly, I think the club is better off with a friendly landlord than one who's not. I also understand the workings of the club and the problems it can face from time to time, and of course I have an affiliation with the club. As far as I am aware, the directors are all unanimous in favour of this deal.
One of the questions I have been asked is will I withdraw my offer because of taking all this flak. The answer is no, I've been a director of Cambridge United for 17 years and we've been through all sorts of things before, and because I'm a fan there's no way I'll withdraw the offer.
If it's feasible to do it a different way, which doesn't mean the club goes into administration, and if there's another solution which is Cambridge-orientated and involves CFU, then that isn't a problem to me. With regard to CFU and Nick Pomery and Brian Attmore, who is on the board, they are both good men and if there's any way the CFU can help then I will be delighted.
Why was CFU not approached as a potential purchaser of the Abbey? Given enough time, it is possible that CFU may have secured investment/funding to buy the Abbey, thus keeping it away from other parties with potential negative vested interests.
We spoke to the council to see if they could help, and they answered that they wouldn't be able to. Gary Harwood had a meeting with the chairman of CFU and it was explained to them what we thought we would have to do, and they went away to think about that.
I think they felt that other clubs have gone down the route of becoming a community-based club and it's something they wanted to explore, and I have no problem with that at all. If they can raise £2m by the 29th of November - which is when it has to be done by because on the 30th hopefully we'll complete the transaction and the club will have enough money to pay the wages and everything else - then I will be the first to congratulate them.
£4,000 a week rent is a lot of money to be paying when we are already losing £10,000 a week. How can we sustain such losses in the next 2-3 years without us going into administration?
We're not going to have those losses because plans are afoot to cut the losses to about £150,000 next year. I said earlier that we used to lose £50,000-£100,000 17 years ago, and £150,000 is probably a similar amount of money these days.
What used to happen is those days - as can happen nowadays - is that if you're only losing £150,000 some of the directors will put their hand in their pocket if it's needed because the losses aren't out of control and if you put £20,000 in it makes a difference, whereas if the losses are £500,000 then £20,000 is nothing really.
Also, if you have a cup run - which is a sore point at the moment - and if you were on TV for the first round I think it was £75,000, we've got a lad at Manchester United who hopefully is going to sign professional shortly and that will give us £50,000, we've got Dave Kitson at Reading and I believe we get £100,000 off them if they get into the Premiership, so there are windfalls that happen in football and as long as your losses aren't too great then they can make up the loss.
What we have to do is become realistic. We are a third division club not a first division club, we want to become a first division club but we've got to cut our cloth accordingly. This is the ideal opportunity to do so and as a board we intend to do that.
John, Where do you honestly see Cambridge United in five years time?
Realistically in five years time I see Cambridge at the top of the second division looking to go into the first, using a number of our youth team players who are 15 and 16 years old at the moment and who we haven't had to sell because we've got our losses under control and they're helping us become successful again.
In your Youth Development role, can you also please commit that United will not consider closing our Centre of Excellence to cut costs further as this is our life blood for the future?
Yes, I can confirm we won't be doing that. We will be cutting the youth team budget next season but I can confirm now that we won't be cutting any school of excellence or anything else. They will remain the same because it is the lifeblood of Cambridge United.
Interview by Andrea Thrussell
Please also see Chairman Gary Harwood's detailed Question & Answer session on this subject.
Previous features:
In Conversation With Brian Attmore (November 2004)
In Conversation With Dale Brooks (August 2004)
In Conversation With Gary Harwood (August 2004)
In Conversation With Herve Renard (August 2004)
Season Preview - team by team (July 2004)
Redevelopment - The Way Forward (June 2004)
End of Term Report 2003/04 (May 2004)
Randall Butt - The End of an Era (May 2004)
Gary Harwood's New Year Statement (January 2004)
'Bridge The Gap' - The Background (December 2003)
Abbey Stadium Plans Unveiled (October 2003)
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