Macclesfield face extinction after being wound up with debts of over £500,000

Macclesfield Town have been wound up after a judge was told the football club owe more than £500,000. Judge Sebastian Prentis made a winding-up order at a virtual hearing in the specialist insolvency and companies court, and his ruling is set to bring to an end the history of a club founded in 1874 and which had recently dropped into the National League.

The court was told the club owe nearly £190,000 in tax and two other creditors were owed more than £170,000 each, including John Askey, the club’s former manager. Askey led the Silkmen to promotion back to the Football League at the end of the 2017-18 season before leaving Macclesfield to join Shrewsbury.

Lawyers representing HM Revenue and Customs had applied for a winding-up order. The judge said he could see nothing which gave him “any comfort” that the club can pay the debts, and refused a request by the club’s owner, Amar Alkadhi, who had asked for a further eight-week adjournment so that a takeover could be completed, and also provided a document to suggest he had access to £1.1m of funds.

Judge Prentis said Alkadhi had been given “ample opportunity” to pay off the club’s debts.

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Macclesfield were relegated from League Two into the National League, after being docked 17 points in total for breaches of regulations relating to non-payment of wages, which dropped them to the bottom of League Two. That granted a stay of execution to Stevenage, who had been bottom on points-per-game after the curtailment of the 2019-20 season in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Tim Flowers, the former England goalkeeper, was last month appointed to manage the team, who played a local friendly on Tuesday night against Witton Albion.