Why Liverpool FA Cup tie means so much after once in a lifetime draw: Accrington Stanley’s most famous fan Bumble meets club chairman ahead of Anfield trip

Lloyd: I saw it the other way at first. I was watching with my missus and said: ‘What have we done to deserve this?’ But you’ve to got to dream, and having played professional sport, I immediately thought about what the players will be going through. It will be flipping sensational for these lads to emerge from the tunnel to ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone.’ To see the ‘This Is Anfield’ sign on the way out. It sent my mind back to Bill Shankly, Joe Fagan and those lads who created the Liverpool dynasty: Emlyn Hughes, Tommy Smith, Kevin Keegan.

Accrington reached the third round of the FA Cup by beating Swindon Town on penalties

Holt: A free-kick from Dimitri Payet. He was a top player. It was a screamer. For 96 minutes prior to that we matched them.

Lloyd: For 40 years, no matter where I have gone in the world, people ask me whether I am from Yorkshire or Lancashire and when I tell them I’m from Accrington, I routinely have that Ian Rush milk advert quoted back to me. ‘Accrington Stanley? Who are they?’ ‘Exactly!’ By the way, I think we got £10,000 for that!

Lloyd: Can you remember first agreeing to take over? What made you get involved?

Lloyd: There are all sorts of trials and tribulations in being a football club owner. What does this game versus Liverpool give you personally, Andy?

‘Bumble’ caught up with owner Andy Holt, the local businessman whose money saved Accrington from going under a decade ago, to discuss all things Stanley before heading to Liverpool as one of the near 5,000 travelling support on Saturday.

Lloyd: This last budget has hit sporting organisations massively, hasn’t it?

Holt: I’ve been here 10 years now and there are a handful of games – including cup ties against Leeds and Middlesbrough – I could pick out, but there isn’t a bigger one than playing the top of the Premier League. We played West Ham after we beat Burnley here in the League Cup, which is my favorite ever game because I come from Burnley. We won it in the 120th minute with a Matty Pearson goal, then went down to West Ham and nearly beat them.

Holt: There’s no doubt about that. It’s probably the biggest game we’ll ever play. We are a really happy team here and when you’re happy, you get luck, I believe. It comes because you’ve earned it. You make your own luck in life and when people get bad luck you can see what’s led up to that too. This club has been through changes, applied more common sense to the way things are run and put in rules about the way it operates and this is just reward. I watched the draw at home, sat with my wife and kids and relations. Man United got drawn against Arsenal. Then, when Aston Villa and West Ham were paired together, I just thought: ‘Here we we are again, all the Premier League clubs are playing each other.’ I got up to make a brew, but when Liverpool came out the hat, I turned round. ‘Go on,’ I am saying. ‘Twenty-one! 21!’ When it came out, I nearly jumped through the roof.

Lloyd: Fifteen years ago, Roy Hodgson brought Fulham here in the third round – and they couldn’t change in the Portakabins as there were too many players and staff. They changed at the hotel, instead. Great day, we played well, but lost 3-1.

Holt: I haven’t got an exact figure, but doing some simple mathematics, I am hoping for about £300,000. We will get £75,000 for the TV coverage. We get £25,000 if we lose, but £125,000 if we win, so we’ll be giving it a good shot! Let’s hope they leave Mo Salah and one or two others out. You then get 45% of the gate after expenses; the home club gets the same and 10% goes to the FA. We got as many tickets as we dare – 4700 – and sold them like ‘that’. Anfield’s going to be ram-jam full. The crowd will be 60,000 guaranteed and the top price our fans are paying is 20 quid. When we charge £20 for matches, we make £12.80 net on a ticket, so that’s an overall £720,000 before stewarding costs. To be honest, though, the rules are there and whatever we get, we get.

 

David Lloyd: This is the biggest game in the history of our club. In 1960-61, when I was a lad, we played Preston, who were a top team, and held them to a draw at Deepdale. We brought them back to Peel Park and they beat us 4-0, but what sticks in my mind is that there were 15,000 on, everybody standing. Great atmosphere. In those days, you’d go behind the goals at the end your team were kicking towards and then change to the other end for the second half. There were no advertising boards and so your dad would take you and lift you over the wall, so you could sit pitchside. But today outstrips everything for me.

Lloyd: He’s like a Mr Accrington Stanley, isn’t he? Never misses a game.

A daunting, yet exciting, trip to Anfield to face Liverpool awaits for Accrington on Saturday

Holt: I heard it were five. And the money only appeared after the event. It wasn’t part of the original deal. Apparently, somebody went to them and said: you need to pay us something for that. People focus on the condescending element of it, but I’m of the opinion that there’s nothing better than free publicity, and people love underdogs.

Lloyd: Lloyd: I did something for the Community Trust one lunchtime last month. A Q and A. Peter Beardsley was in the audience. Lovely fella. A far cry from when you came down and couldn’t get a drink!

Holt: As an owner, you need a bit of upside to keep you going. It’s not a bowl of cherries running a football club. You’ve got a lot of stakeholders: fans, people in the community, all with opinions. The Football League are forever putting in more and more rules, then there is the FA and the government.

Accrington will be backed by nearly 5,000 away fans at Anfield in the lunchtime kick-off

Lloyd: We did, yeah. They beat us with a great goal, from the last kick of the match.

Holt: He went to the Manchester United game. Liverpool were here scouting us last week too. We’re going there, hoping for a great game, but if we don’t win, I’m not going to be too hard on him!

Holt: When I arrived at the club, let’s say the accounting system had some irregularities in it. That’s normal when everybody working for you is a volunteer. Not long before then it were non-league. Like most non-league clubs, stewards would get paid with cash from behind the bar. They would only take a grand. They had to do it to survive. When we did a full check of the accounts, I realised that when the tax man paid us a visit, all the directors would be liable. So, I rang you and told you I was sacking you in your best interests. Then, I had to go to the tax man and beg for forgiveness. They were fair, took into account we’d come clean and agreed to pay.

Holt: Not so long ago, if the sprinklers come on at half time, you couldn’t wash your hands in the toilets as we only had a domestic water supply.

I met up with Accrington Stanley chairman Andy Holt (left) ahead of the FA Cup tie at Liverpool

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