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NORTHFLEET — There is nothing quieter nor more bleak than a closed football stadium that is supposed to be hosting football.

It is two hours before kick-off in mid August at the Morrow Stadium in Northfleet. In any normal season, Ebbsfleet United supporters would be gathering for their second National League South home fixture. As will become clear, this is not a normal season.

The painted wooden turnstiles are peeling and shut to the world. Above them is a sign advertising the next fixture: Gillingham, 31 July. The gate that would usually be allowing players’ cars through is also locked shut with barbed wire around its top railing.

The club shop on Stonebridge Road has a desk standing in front of the doors with rubbish piled behind it. It is, to any visitor who cares about football clubs, devastating.

This has been a pre-season of deadlines for Ebbsfleet and its supporters. On 6 August, the National League suspended their first three league matches of the season because of a winding-up petition served by His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) over unpaid debts. The National League also confirmed that the club are under a transfer embargo and has informed the independent football regulator to investigate.

That suspension was extended on 19 August, which is why I am standing outside an empty stadium and shortly heading off to watch West Ham United rather than Ebbsfleet vs AFC Totton.

The next deadline is 5pm on Wednesday – that is all supporters are waiting for now. Until then, their football club is caught in suspension. If the tax bill isn’t paid, goodness knows what happens next. It doesn’t bear thinking about.

Ebbsfleet have a storied recent history of ownership issues. In 2007, they were taken over by the MyFootballClub scheme, an infamous community ownership where members could sign up for an annual fee and gain voting rights. It started strongly – including an FA Trophy final win – before membership declined badly when annual memberships needed to be renewed.

Two and a half years after the takeover, the membership had dropped tenfold and there were serious concerns about the financial viability of the club. It limped on until May 2013, when KEH Sports Ltd, a group of Kuwaiti investors, took over. Until last week, they were Ebbsfleet’s owners.

It is important to note that there were significant highs under KEH Sports – supporters are keen not to paint an entirely one-sided picture. In 2018, Ebbsfleet lost a National League play-off semi-final after extra-time against Tranmere Rovers, who were subsequently promoted to League Two. After subsequent relegation, Ebbsfleet won the National League South title in 2023 with 103 points.

But as long ago as 2019, serious questions were raised about the funding under KEH.

Players claimed to have been kept waiting for their wages and had been refused a meeting with the chairman to discuss the matter. They refused to warm up before a game against Wrexham as a protest over unpaid salaries. There were also accusations over picking players without insurance cover and a failure to make pension statements.

In 2023, chairman Dr Abdulla Al-Humaidi was declared bankrupt in the High Court in connection to his London Resort theme park project. He was convicted in absentia in Kuwait on fraud-related charges (Al-Humaidi said these were a smear campaign against him and contested the convictions). The chairman also stood aside with his cousin Abdullah taking over.

Ebbsfleet’s accounts for 2023-24 revealed unsustainable losses (to the surprise of few supporters), reported as £3.2m. The first transfer embargo for unpaid HMRC bills came in October 2025, although it was quickly lifted after payment was made.

There is another fascinating detail in all of this. A week before the suspension of their first league fixtures, news broke that the Government had rejected the planning application for the Northfleet Harbourside development which included a new 8,000-seat capacity stadium and 3,500 homes.

The report detailed that the project would likely cause 650 existing jobs to be lost, would put residents at serious risk of harmful levels of lead and expressed significant doubt about the project’s viability because much of the land was not actually owned by the applicant.

The question supporters I spoke to want to know: how much is the ownership of our club linked to this project rather than a desire to take us forward?

It is undeniable that KEH Sports have cut back their financing of the club; this has been a long and messy goodbye. A takeover by Dublin businessman John O’Leary was completed, according to a change in Companies House on Monday, on 18 August.

Supporters met with O’Leary’s representative Roddy Collins at a hastily-arranged event last Thursday, who told them that the development setback did not impact upon their commitment to the club. For now they will be cautious before any optimism is displayed. They have been bitten too often.

It is not just the ground that looks tired when football clubs fall into holes and cannot escape. Crisis, even when those in control of it dismiss all talk of panic, seeps into the pores of those who call it their place of work.

Consider the players: careers on hold as they train for matches that never come, come to work never being quite sure that they will be paid on time. This is not the Premier League where wages allow easily accrued reserves of disposable income.

Consider the staff, paid less than the players and working within an environment where their job security is fragile and depends upon actions outside their control. They have done nothing wrong but feel the fullest weight of crisis.

Speaking anonymously, that was the point that one club employee asked me to make in this piece and it is reflected in the view of supporters: nobody has behaved anything other than impeccably.

So do supporters. Nobody is asking for grand plans of Football League promotion. In fact, every fan I speak to is at pains to say quite the opposite: just give us a team that can build slowly to compete in the higher tier of non-league football and some assurances that there will still be a football club to support in a decade’s time. If that is a pipe dream then something is deeply broken.

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5pm Wednesday is the new judgement day. A fanbase, a staff and a playing squad hold their collective breaths again and pray that the tax bill has been paid. On its most basic level a football club must play matches and Ebbsfleet are not.

Even if it is paid, and the worst calamity called off, this has to be the start of something new because stress is too wearing for it to be the norm.

Ebbsfleet need the nonsense to stop. They need to give their own people a break and they need to sell them a realistic future rather than a dream based upon what is possible but improbable. They need to play some football again, rather than learning their results in statements on government websites.