Cod Almighty | Diary
"Yours could have been the remarkable story of redemption”
1 July 2025
He's officially gone and already forgotten by some. Who? There's two pigeons fleeing the coop. Well, Jordan Wright was Jordan Wrong all along and has wandered off to the sleepy sanatorium for sad old stripes down Newport way. But knickers do twist for one man only. Yes, you're right to presume it's Denver Hume who's now twisting by Blackpool.
"He was ace!" "He was crap!" The truth, as ever, is both and neither. In this reductive binary world where everything must be one thing or another the reality is somewhere in between.
A bit like Nottingham.
Our erstwhile leftish back had some attributes and some failings. Fourth division footballers: plus ca change. Fleetwood Town, it is claimed, offered the Denver Boot a multiple of Town's offer; we're talking a basic wages safely in four figures per week.
No ambishun! Why can't Town offer him the same? If you are asking that you are asking the wrong question. How can Fleetwood (average attendance: 2,973) afford to pay higher wages than Town (average attendance: 5,997)? Rich owners willing to put their own money in, you say. Ah but who are the owners and how did they get access to that money mountain?
Fleetwood Town's last accounts (to 30 June 2024) showed they lost £9.3m on a turnover of £5.8m. Their accounts show that over £40m has been provided by the shareholders – and Fleetwood owed £43.5m to creditors that had to be paid within a year. Can eyebrows rise any higher? Who is the parent company? Mmm, interesting. Your Deviant Diary has come over all Max Byygraves, I want to tell you a story…
They are presently in a group of companies, including Waterford Town, that are owned by The Willows 96 Limited, a company incorporated on 14 June 2023. The sole director is 29-year-old Jamie Robert Pilley. That company is recorded as purchasing the group from Jaymal Limited in May last year, a company from which Andy Pilley (Jamie's dad) resigned on 23 May 2023 and Jamie and a Mellissa Pilley (18 at the time) were appointed directors.
Ah yes, Andy Pilley, a man who got a four month prison sentence in 1998 for conspiracy to steal whilst he was a Post Office clerk. He came out of prison, formed a company with his sister and appeared to make mega-bucks through a company providing energy contracts (that company, by the way, is shown as being owed £5.8m in Fleetwood's last accounts)
On 19 May 2023 Andy Pilley was unanimously convicted on all counts relating to mis-selling energy supplies. He was convicted of running a business to defraud creditors, false representation and of being concerned with retaining criminal property.
On 4 July 2023 Andy Pilley was sentenced to 13 years in jail.
On being convicted Pilley resigned as a director of Fleetwood and the ownership changed. And up popped his son. If this was the BBC we'd have to put in a rider that there is no suggestion of any criminal activity or misdoings by anyone now connected with Fleetwood or the other companies mentioned within this diary.
So there we have it, Andy Pilley was sentenced to 13 years in prison for a multi-million pound fraud perpetrated through an energy company. There are facts and there are opinions, but that is simply a fact: that company profits were inflated through fraud. Without those profits Andy Pilley would not have been able to funnel moneys to Fleetwood. And that funnel contains well over £40m.
It is an opinion, and arguably fair comment, to label them a fraudulent football club, but the fact is they have been permitted to retain their league status. This is the embarrassing open secret in League Two – that a club built and maintained on the proceeds of a crime remains in the football league.
So good luck Denver, you were not the best, nor the worst, just someone who spent some time here. And now you've been attracted by the bright lights of the Fleetwood Casino. Just don't look too closely at where your wages comes from.
Football, modern Britain: plus ca change.
Ah-ha, we had someone in the back pocket all along. Jayden Sweeney put his trousers on and we've nicked him from Leyton Orient. Now that is modern Town and that is a change, and hopefully a plus.
GET IN THERE!