Can Southend United even survive this summer? The signs aren’t good

With players and staff still going unpaid and yet another winding up petition issued, there are growing doubts about the ongoing viability of Southend United.

They’ve been used to such things happening in Southend for years now, but with each winding-up petition comes a fresh sense of peril. The last one, believed to have been for £1.4m and carried out at the behest of HMRC, was dismissed upon being paid at the start of March. Speaking to the Southend Echo at the High Court as the order was made, fanzine editor Liam Ager said, “I’m still worried we will be here again in the next 12 months,” while another supporter present that day was a little more pessimistic, asking: “Are we going to be here in four months again?”

It turned out that both of these prognoses were a little on the optimistic side. It took just two months and two days for another winding-up petition to be received and the club is now due back at the High Court on May 17. When the previous petition was dismissed, the club had proudly announced that “funds as working capital have also been injected to help Southend United over the coming months”. Whether that remains the case with another hearing now due in less than two weeks is questionable.

The end to their National League season seemed significantly affected by the goings-on behind the scenes. The team had continued winning throughout February, but from the start of March their play-off hopes were torpedoed by a thousand cuts. They lost seven games in a row, every single one of them by a single goal, five of them 1-0. Recovering their form in the closing weeks of the season turned out to be insufficient, with even five wins from their last seven games leaving them three points and one place short of an outside shot of promotion back to the EFL.

Yet another winding-up petition isn’t the only affliction affecting Southend United at the moment. Though they managed to find (okay, borrow) the money to see the previous petition off, players and staff still aren’t being paid on time, with reports earlier this week stating that they have only been paid a proportion of the end of March’s pay, while the end of April’s remains unpaid as well. This is clearly an intolerable situation. Club staff will not be lavishly renumerated employees. They need that money, and the club’s most basic moral obligation should be to pay them on time each month. That they are failing to do so is a disgrace in and of itself.

And there…