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Lincoln City may have endured a heartbreaking finale to their 2020/21 campaign with defeat to Blackpool in the League One Playoff final. Still, now that the dust has settled, their trip to Wembley last season is very much another step in the right direction for a club that was plying their trade in the National League back in 2016.
With greater luck throughout the previous season, The Imps may have occupied the automatic promotion places if it wasn’t for dreadful luck with injuries in March when they showed no fear in the division.
But despite the disappointment, in just five years, Lincoln City have established themselves as a force in League One. With one of the brightest young English managers at the helm in Michael Appleton, Lincoln are a club looking very much towards the future, and the club’s activity behind the scenes is providing plenty of optimism for the next campaign.
In June, Lincoln announced a six-figure investment from American businessman Harvey Jabara and whilst little might be known about Jabara, who has a stake in the San Diego Padres baseball team, Landon Donovan will be a name not so unfamiliar in English football.
Arguably the USA’s greatest player of all time, Donovan, formerly of LA Galaxy, Bayern Munich and Everton, has since moved into football management and ownership of USL Championship side San Diego Loyal. As part of the new investment, Donovan will now serve as Lincoln’s Strategic Director.
Prost International caught up with Lincoln City supporter Gary Hutchinson of the Stacey West Blog to gather his thoughts on recent developments at Sincil Bank.
How excited are you on a scale of one to ten about the investment from Harvey Jabara and the involvement of Landon Donovan?
“I’ll give you two ratings. The monetary input into the club without playing it down, I’d probably scale it at a four or five because we’re not talking about a sheikh takeover or anything like that.
“It’s not going to change the cub’s fortunes forever, but it’s still a solid investment and at the sort of level we’re now becoming accustomed at Lincoln City. Jay Wright (the CEO of Virgin Wines) put in a similar amount a couple of weeks ago, which kind of slipped under the radar, so it’s in keeping with the investment. So from a monetary value. I’m not massively excited it’s just good news.
“But what the investment actually signifies for the club and going forwards, I’d give it a nine out of ten . By attracting investors, we’re not continually tapping on those that are already on board. I think trying to get a foothold in the North American market has potential for the club.
“The name Harvey Jabbar does need a little bit of investigating but he seems a really genuine guy, he’s a part in the Padres. His son Jensen’s a football player as well so there’s a passion there.
“The Landon Donovan connection is big for the club. Again, not in what he will do, because I don’t think he’ll have anything to do whatsoever with the day to day management of the club. But having the biggest soccer player in American history with the club is massive.
“He’s going to raise our profile over there and I think that can only be a good thing for Lincoln City. The MLS continues to grow and Americans love all things English which is why we already have a North American contingent. So in that respect, from a business and brand perspective, I think it’s huge.”
The new investors described that a club ‘on the up’ was important to them during their sourcing of an English club. What do you make of the work Lincoln’s Chief Executive Liam Scully is doing behind the scenes?
“I can’t talk highly enough of Liam, from day one of coming into the club. He’s very empathetic, he understands football supporters and he’s very, very keen to make sure that anything he says, does not put the club in the wrong light.
“They make some really interesting decisions behind the scenes that people don’t necessarily know about which reflects the integrity of the club. That’s the sort of thing the new investors will have seen.
“Everything Liam does is based around this ethos and values. Sometimes in any industry and in any business, you have company statements that say a lot but actually bear no reflection whatsoever to the actual company culture at all. It’s just words on paper.
“I don’t think anything that Liam says are just words. I think everything he does is genuine, and I think that that kind of permeates down through the people at the football club.
“If you look at people on the board like Jay Wright and Clive Nates (Chairman) in particular, they’re the people that set the standard in any company. And that’s all a football club is isn’t it essentially? Although we see it as something different as fans, it’s a workplace and the culture is dictated by those key people.
“That would have been something been seen by the investors. Harvey Jabara said he was looking at several clubs to invest in and during the press conference, kept referring to the proposal as the ‘deck’, all the numbers, the due diligence, all that kind of stuff.
“When he got Lincoln’s ‘deck’, it was a cut above. It was professionally prepared well by those on high at the club. Jabara said they were waiting to meet somebody at the club who set alarm bells ringing but actually what they found was a club which is what they say it is. We’ve got a great team behind the scenes.”
I can’t help but have been impressed with the community engagement from the club and the work of the Lincoln City Foundation. As a supporter, what does the off the field activity mean to you?
“I think generally, the clubs that engage with the community correctly are the ones that actually, do it to be inclusive and to genuinely add value to the local community rather than a more cynical ploy to sell tickets.
“When you delve a little deeper, you begin to see the real difference and the work of the Foundation is genuinely focused to helping the community. And with the greatest respect, as it has been a cynical ploy in the past, it doesn’t matter what area the community you are from nowadays, if you approach the football club and you need some sort of help, they’ll make sure it happens. And that kind of genuine integrity really shines through.”
What would your ultimate hopes to come out of this development?
“I just want to see the club keep moving forward in terms of structure and development. Brand recognition may sound a little too corporate but it would be nice to see an Imps Academy, maybe where we coach in schools over there and discover our own Lynden Gooch, who obviously was an American that was picked up at young age by Sunderland. He kept coming over and training with them and is now one of their key players.
“I’d like long term maybe to see Harvey become a board member and a more invested stakeholder. Although it is just a small investment for now, it’s the possibilities rather than a hope for the future. It’s more what this development signifies right now and shows where the football club is at moment and how attractive it is to investors. We’re on the right path.
“I certainly see this development as the club growing the brand and, hopefully, spreading some roots further around the world. Six years ago, you would have been hard pushed to find somebody in Wales and Ireland that heard of Lincoln City and now we’re making headlines all around the world for the right reasons. It’s very interesting times ahead.”
With a mini re-build required over the summer for Michael Appleton following the loss of influential Jorge Grant and loan stars Brennan Johnson, Morgan Rogers and TJ Eyoma, the American investment may well have come at exactly the right time.
The initial signs aren’t too shabby; Lincoln has just announced their first signing of the season, Manchester City’s promising youngster Lewis Fiorini has joined on loan for the season. Given the relationships built with bigger ckubs, expect that Michael Appleton will be delving into the loan market once more given last season’s successes to nurture and improve younger players.
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