The good news is that you can at least watch a match from Northampton Town’s East Stand now. Its seating is split into two.
Behind them, work is still in progress. The project is on track, the club say, to be completed in the first quarter of 2025, with hospitality areas, a link road around Sixfields Stadium, extra car parking spaces and a new concourse area for the seats in the stand.
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Read MoreAmid some stern competition, this ground is home to perhaps English football’s wildest story of the last decade.
In 2003, businessman David Cardoza and his father Anthony became Northampton Town’s owners.
It was well-received by supporters, but everything then went quiet.
Because that area was situated in a designated enterprise zone, any development needed to create an agreed number of new jobs, meaning the project was to include shops, offices and a hotel.
Northampton’s stadium will remain protected until at least 2029 (Photo: Getty)The council agreed to lend the club around £10m to help complete the redevelopment. You will hear a bit more about that money.
The new intended capacity of Sixfields was reduced to only 8,500 and the development of retail and residential limited to a supermarket, several shops and a couple of hundred homes.
Understandably, Northampton supporters began to lose faith in both the notion of the redevelopment being completed – this was two years after the loan landed – and in the Cardozas as credible owners.
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Read MoreThere had been no progress and precious few extra details on that or the development work.
“My father and I have spent an enormous amount of money making sure when these problems happen, that the football club would be protected, the loan gets paid back and the stand will get built – it will happen.
Later that same month, Northampton Borough Council informed the football club that they had three weeks to repay the £10m loan because a) the building work hadn’t been completed and b) as revealed by the local newspaper, the club had missed two agreed loan repayments.
The council continued to reiterate that the money must be paid back and the club’s players received their wages late.
In November 2015, the police were formally contacted by the council to ask them to investigate whether any criminal offence had taken place over the use of the loan money.
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Read MoreAdministrators’ reports claimed that that company, 1st Land Ltd, received £7m of the total loan from the council.
Speaking on the pitch post-game at Notts County’s Meadow Lane after an away win, Wilder implored change.
“You’ve got a manager, assistant manager, coaches, staff at the club, all not being paid. I’m exhausted. There’s a deal to be done that takes this club forward, that gives it a bright future.
Wilder’s words did the trick (and thus went down in supporter folklore).
There was understandable relief that the immediate future of the club was secured.
Thomas paid non-playing staff, who had gone two months without wages, and promised to spend an initial £1m before committing extra funds to the development of the East Stand further down the line.
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Game no.: 46/92 Miles: 110 Cumulative miles: 7,315 Total goals seen: 130 The one thing I’ll remember in May: Seeing an out-of-town Bella Italia and Pizza Hut next door to each other from my seat. This is provincial football heritage!But 2016 also brought reports that David Mackintosh, a local Conservative MP, had been given a donation by 1st Land Ltd.
Sticking with Mackintosh, in November 2017, it was claimed that the figure of the payments he received totalled £39,000.
Facing potential deselection as an MP, Mackintosh announced that he would not stand for re-election. Mackintosh denied any wrongdoing but said “I now feel it is the right time for my constituents to have a new representative.”
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Read MoreHe was accused of deliberately withholding information of where the £39,000 had come from which he denied and was cleared of wrongdoing.
By then, the police investigation had grown exponentially.
The council also sued Anthony Cardoza to recover some of the money loaned to the club.
Several months later, Anthony Cardoza declared himself bankrupt but the court heard that a portion of the loan money was used to remodel the home of David and Christina Cardoza, David transferring the house to his wife in the process.
David Cardoza was arrested in January 2016 as part of the investigation (Photo: Getty)
Council leader Jonathan Nunn – now of West Northamptonshire Council after the borough council was disbanded following a reorganisation of local government – explained the situation.
“The council has taken possession now, marketed the property, and had an acceptable offer.
Further investigation was hampered by the sheer complexity of the case.
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Read MoreBy 2019, police revealed that they were examining more than four million pieces of evidence, had case files on 30 individuals and had interviewed over 550 witnesses.
The Insolvency Service, who had pursued the case, said Grossman had made dividend payments of almost £1.5m to benefit himself and his family members that caused 1st Land to be unable to continue as a going concern.
They had a difficult choice: either accept defeat, leave a black hole in their own accounts and lose the trust of their public, or fight for their money and spend more in the process.
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Read MoreA new deal was finally reached in November 2021 for the land to be sold to County Developments Northampton Ltd (CDNL), owned by the football club.
That review took until July 2023 to complete, with the verdict in favour of the council and the sale to CDNL.
As for the police investigation, it seems unlikely that any serious convictions may ever land.
They were the first criminal court appearances directly related to the missing millions.
It consisted of just 25 words, as if acutely aware that supporters have heard far too many thousands of those over the last decade and not enough action.
The subtext smacked you in the face: “We really are getting this stand finished”.
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Read MoreThis is the conclusion of a chapter that should have taken two years and led to their club becoming bigger and better.
But you can see why this might be a misery that can never fully heal.
It will have extra areas for corporate guests, but you can see why ordinary football supporters might distrust those around here.
At the last count, Northampton Town are £7.3m in debt and investigations into how this scandal happened are seemingly without end.
Daniel Storey has set himself the goal of visiting all 92 grounds across the Premier League and EFL this season. You can follow his progress via our interactive map and find every article (so far) here
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