FC Halifax Town: “We don’t want lack of squad depth to derail us”, says Bosomworth

The Shaymen are third in the National League after a superb start to the season under Pete Wild, which prompted the Town chairman to invite potential investors into discussions about coming on board.

The chairman said his invitation to possible investors doesn’t necessarily mean he will be walking away after 11 years at the helm.

”I love my football, I love business, and when I look at some of the transactions we’ve done for the club, we’ve done some very good deals,” said Bosomworth. “I enjoy all of that.
“Yes there’s a frustration that you’re doing it without the money you’ve not got.
“The players on the pitch are everything, and Pete’s done wonderfully well getting a group together.
“But we haven’t got the size of squad that means one or two who might need a break can be left out.
“It is frustrating to think we’ve got ourselves to this position, and we don’t want lack of depth to derail the effort.”

The Town chairman insists he still enjoys the role as much as he did when he first took over.

”I love it,” he said. “You always have to make decisions based on the money you haven’t got, and I’m sure that’s applicable to a few clubs.
“It’s frustrating when you know what you’d like to try and do. I think we’ve got a good idea what gives you a chance of getting promoted, but you can’t always do what you want to.
“That’s not by spending millions or hundreds of thousands, it’s by having a reasonable uplift in what you can do.
“You couldn’t run the business any leaner than how we run it.  
“People say ‘the league’s not as good this year’, but I think more teams are better this year than previously. I think it’s a very tough league.
“It’s got a lot harder because of outside investment. If you look at the clubs, you’ve either got clubs with 5,000-6,000 gates, or clubs with very wealthy owners who have resources beyond my limits.”

Bosomworth said money is a vital factor in promotion from the fifth tier, but isn’t the be all and end all.

”Out of the last 10 years, Macclesfield are the exception,” he said. “It’s predominantly been teams with slightly larger squad investment that have got promoted.
“Macclesfield were a good example that it’s not always just about money. But money helps.
“You need to be able to cope with injuries and suspensions. Everyone’s performed admirably so far, full credit to the squad, nobody would have foreseen us being top of the league.
“That’s a hard position to support. But this is just to give us a bit more strength-in-depth.
“The whole objective when we set out was to try and get this club into the Football League.

”We’ve had reasonable success bringing players to the club. We work hard to sell the club.
“But if somebody’s earning £1,500-£3,000 a week, then we’re nowhere near that, and neither are a lot of other clubs.
“You’ve probably got the really big hitters, then you’ve got some that are batting above our level, and then there’s ourselves, probably in the lower third.”

Wild is Bosomworth’s managerial appointment, and has made a terrific start to his tenure, despite only taking the reins a few days before the start of the campaign.
“He didn’t have a lot of time to get the team organised, there was a basic structure there but we needed more players,” said Bosomworth.
“I know people will say we’ve lost four out of five, and no-one wants to be losing that amount of games because losing becomes a habit like winning becomes a habit.
“We need to understand why we’re losing games and conceding goals.
“But he’s been excellent, he’s brought a real spirit to the club, he’s involved the fans as much as he can, which is really good.
“We’ve just got to keep moving forward.”Did Bosomworth see the start to the season coming when he appointed WIld?

”No. We always say ‘get to 50 points’, and we’ve got 35, so 15 more points and we’re safe.
“We’ve only just got into November, so we’re well on the way to the objective, which is fantastic.
“He’s been more positive in his approach to games, but are teams looking at us differently now? Have injuries upset us a bit?
“It’s a moving feast, but at the end of the day, you want your fans to be entertained. We want to be entertained.
“Whatever a fan wants, we want, because that’s what we’re here for. We’d love to be in the third round of the FA Cup, we’d love to gain automatic promotion. We want success, we want goals, we want the gates up at 3,000-4,000.”
When asked what will happen if no investor comes on board, Bosomworth said: “It depends how things go. We’ll look at attendances, because we need revenue through the turnstiles.

”We’ve got big games coming up against Notts County, Chesterfield and Stockport, all at Christmas.
“Does that affect attendances? Would we have been better with other games over that period and those games at other times? Who knows.
“We’ve just got to make sure we gain some revenue through December and January.
“The manager may want to juggle his pack, and no player wants to sit on the sidelines, they want to play.
“If someone feels they’re not going to get game time, I suspect they’ll want to go somewhere else anyway.”