Real Bedford appoint former League Two player as new manager with high hopes

The rebranded Real Bedford appoint a former League Two player as their new manager with high hopes that they can achieve promotion.

Bedford Football Club, who have become Real Bedford for the 2022/23 season onwards, have brought in former footballer Rob Sinclair, who had been managing Eynesbury Rovers.

He now has a big job on his hands, with those at the top of Real Bedford, hoping to better their 7th place finish in the Spartan South Midlands League Division One for the 2021/22 campaign.

CLUB STATEMENT:

We are pleased to announce that Rob Sinclair has agreed to join as our new Manager.

We are excited by Rob’s vision for the club and warmly welcome him to McMullen Park.

We are currently planning for the 22/23 season and will announce our summer friendlies soon.

After starting his youth career at Luton Town, Rob played professionally for Salisbury City, Stevenage, Forest Green Rovers and Oxford City.

More recently he started his managerial career at Eynesbury Rovers in Step 5.

Rob’s experience as a coach working with all ages and levels of footballing will also put him in a great position to help nurture our youth teams and develop our young players.

Robert James Sinclair (born 29 August 1989) is an English football manager and footballer who is the manager of United Counties League Premier Division South club Eynesbury Rovers. Sinclair started his career in the youth system at Luton Town, signing a professional contract in July 2007. He was loaned out to Conference Premier club Salisbury City in January 2008, until the end of the 2007–08 season. On returning to his parent club in May 2008, Sinclair was released, and joined Salisbury on a permanent basis later that month. Injury disrupted his time at the club, playing 54 games during his two-and-a-half-year spell.

Sinclair left Salisbury when the club were relegated two divisions after a breach of rules on unpaid debts, and he joined Stevenage of League Two on a free transfer in June 2010. Stevenage earned promotion to League One in his first season with the club. Following a brief loan spell at Aldershot Town in March 2012, Sinclair left Stevenage in June 2012, only to rejoin the club three months later. He was loaned out once again to Aldershot in November 2012. He left Stevenage by mutual consent in January 2013, and signed for Salisbury City, his second spell at the club. Sinclair was a part of the team that gained promotion to the Conference Premier during the 2012–13 season.

He signed for Forest Green Rovers in June 2014, helping them earn promotion to the Football League during the 2016–17 season. In the summer of 2017, Sinclair elected to play semi-professionally for Oxford City and then in November 2018 joined another semi-professional team in the form of National League South club Hemel Hempstead Town. He signed for hometown club Bedford Town in July 2020, where he spent one season. Sinclair made the transition from playing to coaching, joining Dunstable Town as a first-team coach in October 2021 before being appointed as manager of Eynesbury Rovers later that month.

ROB SINCLAIR’S CAREER:

Youth career
2006–2007 – Luton Town

Senior career
2007–2008 – Luton Town
2008 → Salisbury City (loan) – 16 games (1 goal)
2008–2010 – Salisbury City – 38 games (1 goal)
2010–2012 – Stevenage – 27 games (2 goals)
2012 → Aldershot Town (loan) – 4 games (0 goals)
2012–2013 – Stevenage
2012–2013 → Aldershot Town (loan) – 6 games (0 goals)
2013–2014 – Salisbury City – 37 games (2 goals)
2014–2017 – Forest Green Rovers – 100 games (3 goals)
2017–2018 – Oxford City – 42 games (10 goals)
2018–2020 – Hemel Hempstead Town – 24 games (4 goals)
2020–2021 – Bedford Town – 7 games (0 goals)

Teams managed
2021–2022 – Eynesbury Rovers
2022- Present – Real Bedford

Honours

Stevenage
League Two play-offs: 2010–11

Salisbury City
Conference South play-offs: 2012–13

Forest Green Rovers
National League play-offs: 2016–17

Oxford City
Oxfordshire Senior Cup: 2017–18

Individual
Conference Premier Player of the Month: October 2014
National League South Player of the Month: December 2017

A Bitcoin investor and podcaster who bought the 10th-tier football club said he had attracted an “international audience” and global investors.

Peter McCormack bought Bedford FC last month and has since streamed their matches live online.

Since he took over, the club had raised £750,000 in sponsorship, he said.

Mr McCormack said Bitcoin owners “get behind a project and this is a team they want to support”.

Neighbouring Bedford Town play two tiers higher in the Southern League Division One Central, winning the title in 2022, while the nearest league club is MK Dons, about 17 miles (28km) away.

Mr McCormack said: “We’re a town of 174,000 people that doesn’t have a league club, yet Burnley has a population of 90,000 people and they’ve got a Premier League club, so we can support league football.

“Starting so low it gives us a chance to shape a club how we want; how we want to build a team.”

But he added that his main reason for investing was that Bedford was his home town: “I travel the world with my work but I always come home and I want something good for the town.”

McCormack is the host one of the biggest Bitcoin podcasts in the world, ‘What Bitcoin Did’, with more than 1,000,000 downloads a month.

He said his global audience had already led to supporter groups forming in the US, Europe, Africa and Australia with the club’s Twitter having over 14,000 followers as it continues to grow online.

“We are commercially successful already in four weeks. We’ve done £750,000 in sponsorship, we haven’t even started selling shirts and merchandise and this is a sustainable long-term model to build a club here and to build grassroots football,” he said.

“I can go to people all round the world, the 150 million people who own Bitcoin… and get them to stream into a game, I can get them to buy a shirt, I can get them to make their pilgrimage to come here.

“We’ve got that access to an international audience of supporters, an international audience of sponsors, and that gives us a revenue model where we can go and attack the Football League.”

It has not been all straightforward since the takeover with manager Jason Goldman and assistant Martin Wells quitting the club just days afterwards.

“Despite the exciting plans ahead, my coaching team and I feel that our positions have been made untenable by those now running the football club,” Goldman said in a statement.

Kieran Maguire, football finance lecturer at University of Liverpool, said the approach by McCormack was “very innovative”.

“There’s a little bit of reservation the deal to take over won’t be finalised until the end of the season, but utilising a broader interest in the club to monetise the link between Bitcoin and a smaller club is certainly unique.

“There’s a lot of hype and a lot of caution about cryptocurrency but Bitcoin seems to be the leader in the pack.”

As we’re starting to see, 2022 will see a rebrand of the club, a new manager and new signings to begin what is being called a journey to take Bedford to the Premier League.