Thursday, April 1, 1999 – the day that Firoz Kassam became the new owner of Oxford United. The businessman paid outgoing chairman Robin Herd £1 for the club and took full control with an 89.5 per cent share.
The club was in a huge amount of debt at the time, with reports suggesting around £15 million was owed. The club was also losing £12,000 per week, but Kassam had promised to take Oxford United fans “on a journey.”
Fans are sceptical at the best of times, but when the 309th wealthiest person in the UK (in the 2009 Sunday Rich list) buys your struggling club, you have reasons to be optimistic.
The club had already started building a new stadium but works had been halted for some time as a result of crippling finances. Kassam (all but) finished the completion of the stadium. This then allowed the businessman to build his leisure complex on the adjacent site, something the council had approved once the stadium construction was complete.
While he ultimately saved the club from entering administration, or worse, he was often referred to as a ‘slum landlord.’ The businessman sold Oxford’s former home of the Manor Ground to his own company, paid off the club’s debts with the money and then sold the site for a huge profit, with the club not receiving a penny of the sale.
Kassam did reinvest back into the squad, but the team over the next few years wasn’t good enough and suffered relegation at the end of his first season on the final day before going down again in 2000/01. The adventure ended in disaster with relegation into non-league.
