The man who saved Accrington Stanley

ILYAS Khan is a reluctant interviewee right now.

Not because he is shy, or because he has anything to hide.

Ask him a question and he’ll give you an answer.

But, having come to Accrington Stanley’s rescue two weeks ago, hero worship is not what he’s after.

According to Khan, the focus should be less on him and more on the remarkable achievements of the team in recent weeks.

Despite the club being faced with a desperate financial situation for most of this season, manager John Coleman has guided his side into League Two play-off contention and to within two rounds of Wembley in the Johnstone’s Paint Trophy.

Khan is right. It is an achievement that has perhaps been overshadowed by recent events. It deserves recognition.

But that does not diminish the curiosity many have about the man who saved Stanley from a second humiliating exit from the Football League.

Who is he and why did he decide to give £160,000 of his own money to the club at the time when they needed it most?

The answers are quite impressive.

Most would have reason to be proud if they had done just one of the long list of things he has has achieved in his 47 years since his East Lancashire birth.

He came from a humble upbringing, yet Khan is now said to be worth tens of millions of pounds.

And, although now based in Surrey after 20 years living in Hong Kong, the attachment with the family home in Accrington remains strong.

“Accrington is home,” said the lifelong Stanley fan.

“Technically it was Haslingden and Rawtenstall until I was 10, then Accrington after that.

“I loved growing up where I grew up. Come rain or shine it was football and rugby during winter and cricket during the summer.

“We used to sneak on to the ground at Stanley sometimes and play football there when nobody else was watching.

“The club has been part and parcel of my life.

“But we grew up in a two-up, two-down terrace. My dad came from a modest working class background, he was a bus driver.

“I’m not sure I had very much money in my pocket until my first wage, £500 in 1984.”

Khan was clearly a bright student at Haslingden Grammar School and at the University of London - where he attended the School of Oriental and African Studies - earning a banking job with Schroders in the city.

He moved to Hong Kong for his work in 1989 and progressed up the ladder before deciding to set up his own banking company in 1998.

Success after success has led to an ever increasing and more impressive portfolio of businesses since then, but it was the coincidental timing of his move back to England in January that may have proved vital to Stanley’s survival.

He had been involved with the club as a financial backer rather than just a supporter since 1991, giving hundreds of thousands of pounds in total for various things such as floodlights and sponsorship.

But he had never been in a position to get involved as non-executive chairman, as he became when he paid off the tax bill.

“My oldest child is four and that was the catalyst to move back because of his school,” he said of his return from Hong Kong.

“I don’t know whether it was fortunate that I moved back before everything happened this year, but it certainly wasn’t planned.

“If you go back to when John Alty was selling the club (in 1995), he offered it to me before Eric Whalley bought it.

“I wasn’t able to do it at that time because Hong Kong is a very long way away to be involved in a football club.

“I was posted out there and I worked for a large investment company, but I always had an entrepreneurial streak in me and at the age of 36 I jumped ship and started my own business.

“Of course Hong Kong was so different to Accrington, but there was not a day that went past when I didn’t call home. I’m very close to my family.

“Latterly I was coming back home eight, nine or 10 times a year.

“I’ve lost count of the number of occasions I flew in from Hong Kong, went to a game and just flew back again.

“I remember the Huddersfield game and the last game of the season when we went up. But that goes with the turf.”

Khan’s family are Stanley fans too.

The Accrington Stanley Supporters’ Fund, which he gave financial backing to before recent events as he sought a way to put money into the club, included his brother Idris on the committee.

When he put money into Stanley previously, the Clayton End was renamed the Sophia Khan Terrace in honour of his late mother.

The money Khan gave to Stanley two weeks ago was not technically charity, but it is charity that is now the main focus of his life.

He travelled 250km through difficult terrain in the Racing the Planet event in Namibia in May to raise money for the Hong Kong Juvenile Diabetes Association.

“It was a marathon a day for the first three days, then on the fourth day you run 100km and finish off the next two days with two half marathons,” he said.

“It was the most amazing experience. Once I got back, at my age I looked at myself in the mirror and it was like seeing myself for the very first time.

“Charity is the key part of my life right now. As of July, at my ripe old age I’ve got a new job, a major commitment to Leonard Cheshire Disability (as chairman).

“In Hong Kong I’d been very involved with setting up a school for autism and raising money for the Hong Kong Juvenile Diabetes Association and the Hong Kong Cancer Fund.

“I set up the Stanhill Foundation, too, which has given grants to mostly young people in East Lancashire.

“And in the past I helped with donations to Accrington Cricket Club.

"They were about to be wound up, so I jumped in - in rather similar circumstances to Stanley.

“Equally I donated the main amount to Moorhead Sports College to allow it to become an academy, so my involvement in the Accrington area is not restricted only to the football club.

“I don’t think you need motivation to get involved in charity.

“I don’t think it’s a motivation that one finds outside of oneself, it’s within oneself.”

So was a passion for Stanley.

It’s a fact that the club will remain forever grateful for.