Things aren't looking good at Ebbsfleet United, the MyFootballClub.co.uk team. In case you've forgotten, this is where members paid £35 to be part of the online community that owns the team and votes on key decisions. MyFC bought the club in February of last year for £635,000, and membership eventually rose to around 32,000.

http://www.myfootballclub.co.uk/

For the past two years, I have had the pleasure of being a member of MyFootballClub, the world's first web community owned club. We own Ebbsfleet United Football Club, a professional team in the Blue Square Premier League, the 5th division of English football.

As a lifelong fan of Everton FC, the club given the nickname 'The People's Club' by David Moyes, I feel slightly reluctant to share such a moniker with another team. Everton are The People's Club of Liverpool because the man on the street in that city supports Everton. It is a nickname that sums up [.

Ebbsfleet United travel to Barrow for an important Blue Square Premier League (National Conference) match on Saturday. The Fleet are currently in 22nd place, having won only once so far in 16 league games. Barrow are in 16th place with 17 points. A win for Ebbsfleet could take them out of the relegation zone depending on results elsewhere.

On April 26, 2007 Will Brooks had the bright idea of re-inventing the way soccer is managed. He started MyFootballClub.com, a site that is basically a community of fans who get together and play a fantasy soccer, except the team is real. The community of members pooled all of their money and collectively purchased Ebbsfleet United, a soccer club that plays in the Conference National League in England.

Well, no-one saw this coming: Ebbsfleet United, the "world's first web community owned club", has lost most of its community in its second year of operation and the club is spiralling towards disaster on and off the field.

It's hard to say just how unsurprising this is.