Departing Ebbsfleet boss Liam Daish has insisted that he left Stonebridge Road on his own terms.

Daish, 44, has been in charge of the Kent-based club for eight years and famously led them to FA Trophy glory at Wembley in 2008.

At the beginning of the season, the former Coventry and Cambridge centre-half even had a stand named in his honour.

However, Fleet's cash-strapped owners MYFC are in the process of selling up to Kuwaiti consortium KEH Sports - led by former Charlton Chairman Peter Varney - after talks with the incoming owners Daish announced he would be seeking pastures new.

'Sometimes you can look into these things too deeply' said Daish. 'But we both realised it was a new regime and a new era.

'I sat down with the new owners on Thursday. They are good football people and we had a chat about all aspects of the club. And, while I won't go in to specifics, we both decided the club needs a fresh start. So we shook hands and parted amicably. It was very professional.'

For Daish, it seems, this season was a frustration too far. Relegated from the Conference in 2010, Daish stuck around to help the Fleet regain top-flight status the very next year. However, after two years of battling with a part-time budget and regularly seeing their best players leave, Fleet were relegated back to the Conference South.

'This season was the toughest I'd ever experienced' he added. 'On the pitch and off the pitch, the gap between part-time clubs and full-time clubs really caught up with us.

'Any part-time club can always have a great year or two. Some have done really well this season, as we did last year.

'But you can only tread water for so long before you sink and drown. After a good first season back, I don't think we progressed at all.

'We never went back to a full-time budget, couldn't keep our best players. Then you've got all the stuff behind the scenes, the fixture pile up, the travelling.

'Everything that could go wrong for us this year did, and when you operate on the margins we do, you can't absorb that.

'Looking back it's amazing when you think in the last ten or 11 years we've only spent one season outside the top flight. For a club of our resources, that is a great achievement.'

Daish has immediately been made favourite for the vacant Chelmsford City post following the departure of Glenn Pennyfather, but says he has nothing lined up.

'I'm looking to get back in as soon as possible' he admitted. 'But I won't be jumping into something that doesn't suit. I want to join a club with real ambition of building something for the future. I don't want to be building a house of cards which falls down at the end of every season.

'But I'm still getting to grips with leaving Ebbsfleet right now. I need a holiday to take stock and recharge and then we'll see what happens from there.' Add a comment

Five years to the day after Ebbsfleet United under Myfootballclub ownership lifted the FA Trophy for the first time in their history, members were voting on an offer for the club from KEH Sports ltd. The offer is spearheaded by Peter Varney, ex Charlton Atheletic chairman and  a well known and respected figure in the football world.

Almost 70% of the total membership voted and an overwhelming majority (96.4%) have accepted the offer received.

The prospective new owners are now working with club directors and MYFC officials  to complete due diligence on the club and a joint press conference will be held once the deal is completed.

For many members it will be an emotional farewell to a club they have helped to support for over five years. Myfootball club have invested over £1.5M in the club in that time and the name Ebbsfleet United is known worldwide.

Myfootballclub are already making plans for future projects and we are hoping to contact everyone who has been a member of the society with a view to them taking part in planning our next football adventure.

For news of our plans and information on how to join us, simply subscribe to our newsletter on the link below

http://eepurl.com/eJgRs

If you are a journalist interested in our online football community you can subscribe to our Press list to receive regular Myfootballclub press releases on the link below

http://eepurl.com/mBTdn

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Well we've had our vote and although it is not complete, if everything goes well Ebbsfleet Utd will have a new owner and we will of course wish them well and I've no doubt for many of us, Ebbsfleet Utd will still remain very much part of our thinking.

However, where should we go from here?

If due diligence is completed ok and the transfer of ownership happens, we will at least get back around £20k of the huge sums that members have put into that club to keep it alive.
There has been a fair amount of discussion on the forums about what our future plans should be and of course this has sparked a variety of ideas. However, I know that many of you don't frequent the forums all that often but we would still like to hear from you.

Some of the discussions on what to do next are as follows

Should we look to get involved with another club straight away, that is for the new season starting in August? So we take a year out from any major involvement and plan ahead, look around and evaluate possible clubs. Take our time. Try and rebuild the membership
Will we keep members interested enough, long enough, to be able to take that time, could we get ourselves into a postion to get involved with a club by August?

If not, then what sort of activities could we get involved with that will be of interest to members?

Do we want to look at ownership straight away, or could we look to try and secure sponsorship deals with a club instead.If the former, then realistically this would have to be a club pretty low in the football pyramid for us to be able to afford it, certainly in the short term. Perhaps we would have to start a team from scratch. However, that is a lot of work and would we attract enough MYFC volunteers in and around where the club was based to be able to do that? One of our members has already done this in the recent past and made a good job of it but it was a pretty big commitment of time. A new team though would certainly enable us to direct the club in the way that WE want to do it and it would be a great achievement if it was possible for us to do that.

If the latter, then it may be possible to look to be the shirt sponsor for example for a team. This would be less costly and our commitment would only be for the length of the sponsorship deal. Companies are able to promote themselves pretty well on the back of such sponsorship deals so if we did it right we could get some good publicity and this would provide good support for a club, especially a club lower in the pyramid than Ebbsfleet Utd, without having the burdon and total responsibility of ownership.

Against that, sponsorship will not get the influence on a club that members may want. We all signed up initially to OWN a club of course. Sponsorship would not give any rights of decision making at the club, but of course being a major sponsor and by supporting the club in other ways as time and funds allowed, perhaps our influence on the club could be greater than what might initially be thought.

Paying over the odds for a sponsorship deal may enable us to negotiate certain rights that could bring extra value to members. Maybe we could pay to film their matches and therefore get the footage to show to members. If it was lower in the pyramid then we could obtain live streaming rights for those matches. Pehaps we could negotiate a couple of seats in the directors box for their home matches and have members take turns in performing that role. Perhpas we could secure their matchday programme online for members benefit.

Should we look at involving ourselves with more than one club? Perhpas looking at clubs in Europe or North America too and thus reflect our global status.Should we look at supporting Women's football teams? They get little support despite the fact that it is growing and the quality of football is good as shown during the Olympics.

We also need to look to trying to recover the membership numbers. We might have big ambitions but for that we need to get back some at least of the members who have left us and also look to attract new people too.

Perhaps we can try and make it fun again and put our keyboards down and arrange to meet members at matches. Coordinating such meetings around the country (or in other countries) should be easy to do and meeting members is fun and helps build working relationsdhips too for once the serious business starts again.

Obviously this will require good publicity and getting involved with a club will help that but we also may need to look at our subscription charges. Should they be adjusted downwards to help get people back while we ponder and plan for our future?

These are just a few items of discussion.

What we really want is to hear your views and your ideas.

Please feel free to wax lyrical below.

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