BARRIE Hobbins has revealed more details about the mystery takeover which failed to happen at Park View Road.

The Welling owner has been trying to find investment for the cash-strapped club for several years and thought he had finally solved the problem this summer when he was introduced to a Bexleyheath businessman by player-boss Jamie Day.

Initially the Wings were on the lookout for a new shirt sponsor but the unidentified businessman quickly became more interested in buying the club, according to Mr Hobbins.

He explained: “Jamie approached him because we were still looking for a main sponsor.

“We had been approached by about six companies wanting to do sponsorship deals and all of a sudden it faded out in each case.

“Jamie wanted to bring some money in and approached this fellow in Bexleyheath.

“As conversations went on before I got involved, he said he wanted to be more than a sponsor and get involved in a football club.

“Jamie arranged a meeting and he came in full of enthusiasm about the whole thing.”

He added: “I told him the situation from day one that Welling United have got £150,000 of debt.

“Some of those debts are not pressing but certainly £50,000 of them will be.

“He said that kind of money didn’t worry him, so I suggested we get things under way as soon as possible because I knew we would have to pay this bill.

“The guy wanted to know how much the club could raise and I told him we would keep back £30,000 from the pre-season money, which fortunately we did.

“He said he could equal that and would also put in another £25,000 at the start of the season.

“Jamie Day was told to his face there would be an extra £1,000 a week added to the wage bill.

“In return he wanted to bring in some players from abroad because he was involved with some football agency which he was a partner in.

“Jamie wasn’t necessarily keen on that because we’ve never interfered with any manager at this club.”

Things came to a head when the club were served with a winding-up petition by HMRC and Mr Hobbins asked to see the colour of the man’s money.

“I said to him two weeks ago we now had the Revenue on our backs and that had to be sorted out,” added the Wings owner.

“That was on the Monday and he said he would come in on the Tuesday at 9am with £30,000.

“He never turned up on the Tuesday, which wasn’t unusual because he was a little unorganised in that sense anyway.

“I tried to phone him on Thursday because there still had not been any contact and then when it got to the Friday I knew something wasn’t right.

“Eventually I did get through to his office at the weekend only to be told he was in Spain.”

Welling have employed the services of a tax specialist to deal with their immediate problems and she is set to discuss the issue with HMRC today.

Mr Hobbins says he is optimistic a deal can be done before next Wednesday’s initial deadline but added nothing was guaranteed.

He said: “The killer blow for us was obviously what happened over the last couple of months when we got to the brink of someone handing over money and then all of a sudden he is no longer around.

“To that extent I’m either very gullible or I’ve been caught out because he looked to be the saviour of the situation.

“What we have to concentrate on is to successfully get through to next Wednesday and beyond that make sure we’ve got things in place which will take the club forward.

“I don’t want to talk about being confident because I was confident we had a deal in place.

“I’m hopeful and optimistic but I’m only guided by this company who are working for us because they seem to know what they are doing and are very professional.

“They deal with this sort of thing every day and hopefully they will obtain a favourable response from the Inland Revenue.”