Peaceful march: West Brom fans unite in show of togetherness against Guochuan Lai

Up to 4,000 Baggies congregated on Birmingham Road and Halfords Lane and filled the air with demands against their beloved club’s absent controlling shareholder.

Lai, majority shareholder since a 2016 takeover, owes the club in excess of £5million via a loan he took from Albion in March 2021. He has missed two repayment deadlines while a vague ‘early in the new year’ promise has also passed. As a result of no investment the club took out a £20million loan from equity firm MSD Holdings against club property including their historic Hawthorns home.

Saturday’s peaceful protest ahead of kick-off against Huddersfield Town, featuring numbers well beyond the expected, was organised by fan group Action for Albion, who launched late last year in an attempt to bang the drum and increase pressure and scrutiny on Lai.

This was a step up in protest from the regular ‘shine a light’ campaign inside the stadium during matches and the swell of fans who grouped on Halfords Lane after the new year clash with Reading.

“We’d just like to bear pressure down on the ownership model and like everyone at the football club we’d like our money back from these loans, these broken promises are absolutely ridiculous,” Action for Albion committee member Paul Faulkner told the Express & Star.

“That will be the starting point, to rebuild trust, we don’t even necessarily want Mr Lai to leave the club, we want the ownership of the club to look after it and work in the best interest, that’s our first mission statement. People say what’s the point of shining the light? That’s the starting point that got us here, it’s not about shining a torch, it’s about you’re with us with what’s going on. We hope that continues.

“The numbers were fantastic, we want to thank everybody for being peaceful as every Action for Albion protest so far has been and long may that continue.

“We asked people to keep the language down and be compliant with the traffic, we had children and elderly there, some in their 70s who can hardly walk, a gentleman suffering from cancer wasn’t coming to the match but came to protest as he believes in what we’re doing.”

Action for Albion have made a difference and in doing so have achieved regular meetings with Albion chief executive Ron Gourlay and director of communications Ian Skidmore.

It was revealed over the weekend in the latest minutes from last week’s meeting that Xu Ke, sole director of WBA Group, of which the club is a subsidiary, is visiting China this month to speak with Lai on Albion matters, with a brief from Gourlay and evidence of growing fan uproar.

Alistair Jones founded Action for Albion and could not hide his pride following the march. He said: “We’re blown away, we’re so proud, we’ve worked night and day for this, we’re all volunteers with full-time jobs. Albion is so important to all of us and we want to be a voice for the fans, we feel with the way we structured our campaign is the right way and we’re breaking boundaries others haven’t because we’re thinking differently.

“We’re getting more exposure nationally because of that and it’s all from our committee’s work, hundreds that have helped us and credit to the football club for listening to us and wanting to talk and facilitating us.

“None of the committee members knew each other before this and now we’ve created something, whatever happens we did this for the club we love.

“It’s like a dream, it was a huge turnout. The police, the football liaison officer, have been brilliant with their time.

“Howard and Gary from the safety group, Ian Skidmore, director of comms, to facilitate what we did.

“This is all against one person, the club are doing their best in a really tricky situation. I’m proud of Action for Albion we’re changing people’s rhetoric against the football club’s board, we believe (CEO) Ron Gourlay has had some unfair criticism and it’s not the fault of anybody here day-to-day.”