Shahid Azeem, chairman of Aldershot Town, gives an honest and open interview after Tommy Widdrington and Hugo Langton resign.
The resignations came unexpectedly on Monday, with no prior indications or demands from Widdrington, who later joined Eastbourne Borough. Azeem expressed disappointment but expressed gratitude for Widdrington’s contributions, including a notable FA Cup run and the club’s historic Wembley appearance with 20,000 fans.
He highlighted the club’s ambition, noting a 19% budget increase despite injury challenges and rising costs, refuting claims of insufficient ambition or financial mismanagement.
Azeem also dismissed rumours of personal profit from the club or its redevelopment, emphasising transparency with Rushmore Borough Council’s oversight.
Regarding potential club sales, he clarified past offers were rejected due to unsuitable buyers or unfeasible conditions. Currently, the focus is on stabilising the team under interim managers Dowse and James Henry while searching for a permanent manager, with Azeem urging fan support for upcoming games.
Interviewer: “Shahid, it’s been a difficult week at the club, hasn’t it? I mean, talk us through it from your perspective.”
Shahid: “Well, whatever we do, we don’t know what we plan, because being in modern football for eleven years here, every week you think everything’s planned and suddenly something comes up that you have to deal with.
“So, it’s been a challenging week, a bit of firefighting, but the important thing was to, and it didn’t help, that my two fellow directors, John was going to watch England in Latvia, and Dean was in South Africa. So, as a board, you know, I couldn’t get hold of him.
“So, when Tommy verbally gave his resignation on Monday afternoon, I had to deal with that, and then obviously had to deal with going forward, because we’re not in the best of health at the moment, so we had to make sure that we got everything ready for the Saturday, and then worry about dealing with what’s going on behind, and then obviously John and Dean came back on Thursday, and yeah, but in between there, lots and lots of challenges and battles, and we will carry on fighting our battles, choose the battles we want to choose, but nothing surprises me.
Interviewer: “So, well, Tommy’s resignation then did kind of come out of the blue, it wasn’t anything that you got wind of before, or anything like that?”
Shahid: “Not at all. No, I had any single complaints, or any changes, or any, wrong word to use, demands, nothing requested.
“I wanted to have a meeting with, just trying to get an update on where we are with all the injured players, what’s the plan, because, you know, we’ve got, we had four or five, well, five major games coming up in the next month or so, and I just wanted to address where we are with the injuries, what’s the likelihood of people coming back, what’s the plan to get, you know, sort of replacements in, because it’s critical, you know, the cup game’s critical, but then, you know, you’ve got to throw the curveball, so we’ll be dealing with it.”
Interviewer: “And obviously, he’s then, as we now know, has gone off to Eastbourne Borough, was there any indication of that during the resignation?”
Shahid: “No, when Tommy gave his verbal resignation, I said, have you been offered a job? No. Have you got another job to go to? No. And that was on, at that meeting on Monday afternoon.
“Look, I don’t want to get into a slanging match at the moment, so the less I say, the better, because at the moment, just for the record, that situation is with the lawyers, so I don’t really want to go into that.
“But I also don’t want to really undermine what Tommy did for the football club. You know, we can be critical about how things were handled, and I wish it didn’t end up this way, if you know what I mean.
“But, you know, we want to thank Tommy for everything he’s done for Aldershot Football Club, you know, so we as a board are ambitious, and the club is ambitious, and Tommy took us to great new heights, you know, the FA Cup run, you know, even at, you know, sort of, whether it was Bradford or, you know, we had, you know, obviously, massive thing at Swindon and Stockport, then obviously going to West Brom, amazing, you know, sort of cup run, third round, almost playoffs, and then to culminate, you know, to finish it off with this year, going to the first time in the history of Wembley with 20,000 there and 30,000 on, so you don’t want to forget that, because that was very important for the football club, and, you know, and Tommy and his team does, you know, need all the credit that they’re entitled to, so I don’t want to leave this on a sour note, so I don’t want to get into that.
“But there is, I also want the people to think that we as a board, we’ve got good nature, and want to accommodate everybody, but we’re also not weak, okay, so don’t take our, you know, good nature as weak people, but we’ll do what we need to do, which is best for all Aldershot Town Football Club.”
Interviewer: “You mentioned ambition in there, Shahid, that is one of the criticisms that has come the way of the board of the directors in this week, I mean, is that an unfair thing coming your way, that you guys aren’t ambitious?”
Shahid: “Well, I don’t know what, you know, what definition is of, you know, ambition, from our side of there, in the last sort of 18 months, we have increased our playing budget and management budget by 19%.
“If that doesn’t tell you that we’re ambitious, but we also, but that helps with fellow directors, putting six figures, some in to keep it going, it’s been horrendous with injuries, okay, so that hasn’t helped, I don’t know, we’ve got about 30-odd playing staff, quite a lot of them injured, we paid, you know, we’re paying additional money now to get, we have got a new medical person as a help, because of the number of injuries we’ve got, we, even after that budget increase that we decided this year, on top of that, we made additional funds available after the Halifax game to go and get some more players.
“So I’m not sure, it’s not, you know, it’s not like a pot of gold somewhere that we can just put our hand in and get some more money, but it’s, we are ambitious, but we also have to face reality.
“So in terms of, if you ask increases, well, they’re not ambitious, yeah, 20%, well, 19% increase is, and that’s just on the playing side, and then you combine that running off the operation of the football club, our medical bills are roughly 90 grand, you’ve got players that you’re playing, you know, we have to get additional in, and you’re still paying the other people in rehabs and medical, I’ve never seen so many scans and operations in my life, then your cost of, you know, utilities and scooters, everything’s gone up, so, and to still give 20, well, I say 20, but 19% increase, however we do it, you know, that to me shows that we can do as much as possible pushing it above our boundaries to make sure that we are competitive on the football pitch.”
Interviewer: “Well, yeah, that leads into perfectly, obviously you’re mentioning increasing the budget and things, one of the things that you do see on social media is that money’s being taken out of the club, so is there any truth in that, Shahid?:
Shahid: “I mean, I just find that absolutely ludicrous, right, I was on previous, so 11 years or whatever I’ve been in as a chair, I had board members come and go, I can tell you categorically, not a single, even if I might have fallen out with some board members, none of them, none of them ever taken a single penny out of the football club, and if anybody thinks you can take money, make money out of the football club, they are in cloud cuckoo land, mate, cloud cuckoo land.”
Interviewer: “And I mean, another thing on level with that maybe is, is that you might be profiting from the redevelopment, I mean, can you quash those ones as well?”
Shahid: “I’d love to, you know, to profit from it, okay, our vision always is to make a football club sustainable, the football club doesn’t belong to me, John, Dean or any of the other directors, it belongs to the people and the supporters.
“The council, Rushmore Borough Council, they have complete trust in us, because they’d never would have given you a 118-year lease if they didn’t trust you, because a football club has never ever had more than 10 or 15-year lease, okay, so somebody’s give you 118, there’s trust there, but they also have a trust there that any money comes in, money’s not coming straight into the football club, the money’s going to go into almost, once we’ve got the redevelopment planned, it goes straight into an account, which the council will also have an officer, a scrutiny officer overseeing it, so anybody who thinks they’re going to make money out of it, they are on another planet.
Interviewer: “And again, another kind of rumour, I know they’re all rumours on social media and things like this, but it’s good to chat about it, there’s been some criticisms coming your way that there’s a refusal to sell the club, I mean, have you had any opportunities to do that over the last few years?”
Shahid: “Last years, I can tell you, going back to 2014, 2015 and 2016, the trust wanted to take over the football club, and John and I, Leppard, for the record, we offered the club to the trust, it was a £100,000 overdraft facility, we said take over the overdraft facility and we’ll just walk away, didn’t want that, twice we offered it to them, so that was around about then.
“In between there, there’s people showing interest buying there, but when you do due diligence, they’re not the people that you want, because, and to be honest, and those have proved right, because they have gone to other clubs, and there haven’t been that, there’s been pretty much a turmoil there.
“I had a great discussion, being blunt, Nick, I can’t pronounce his surname, but the guy who just invested in Wealdstone, he was very keen, well he came and had a number of discussions with us, mainly on the phone, based in America, he wanted to get involved in football, we had a long chat, he was one of the most professional people I met, he was a McKinsey type guy, and then sadly his mum passed away, he changed his mind, and then he never came back, I still kept in touch with him, when he just bought, made a shareholding in Wealdstone, I congratulated him, so he was a genuine person.
“We had one other concrete bid, and by the way that wasn’t a bid from him, it was just discussion, the only formal offer we ever had was from a previous fellow director, who made an offer, with the conditions and timeline, which was unachievable, and secondly, the board, the entire board unanimously rejected it.
“Since then, there’s been lots and lots of talks, and quite frankly, it was just talks, nobody ever said, what’s the value of the football club, it’s for the record, what’s at the football club, if somebody wants to buy Lock, Stock and Barrel, there’s 1.3 million shares, if they want to buy those shares, they can negotiate with every shareholder, everybody paid a pound, they don’t have to sell them, but if they want to sell them, it’s a pound, there’s about 1.3 million shares out, and there’s debts of about 1.6, something like that, so somebody wants to take those debts on, take it over, so in reality, you can take Lock, Stock and Barrel, if you wanted that, but nobody’s ever come up with any offers.”
Interviewer: “There you go, that quashes that one, I mean, moving back on to situations with the managerial staff, obviously, we’ve got Dowse in charge at the moment, temporarily, with James Henry assisting him, obviously full support behind him, but is there now a plan in terms of what we’re doing next?”
Shahid: “Yeah, look, a few years ago, we were around about the February time, we were around the bottom end, and we went and got Tommy Whittington, and he’s achieved what he’s achieved, people move on.
“So he’s achieved what he’s done, and I already said it, he’s done remarkable for the football club, and we’re grateful, we’re now looking for a game, and it’s my job and the board job to go and get, you know, a real, just the right person to take us forward again, you know, start pushing us back up the league, get stability in there.
“So now the search has started, and all I can promise you, we are doing all our best at the moment to look for, but at the moment, we want everybody to get behind, you know, James and Alan, because, you know, they’ve come forward, and everybody needs to support the team, and those two, while we go and search, and, you know, at the moment, this week, we haven’t talked to, I mean, I’ve had hundreds of CVs already here, right, hundreds people want to get in touch with you.
“But at the moment, the priority is to get stabilised, you know, get rid of all this bit of a headache we had last week and move forward, because we’ve got a few big games coming up, but, yeah, we’re working very hard at the moment, so now is the focus, is everything settled down for the game on Saturday, now we’ll focus on, you know, you know, the back office, how we start looking at what’s out there.”
