A football club at the heart of a tug-of-war between a Qatari-backed venture capital firm and a rock star probably isn’t that unusual nowadays.

But in the ninth tier?

This is the position that Sheffield FC, founded in 1857 and widely considered the world’s oldest football club, were in earlier this year.

Mud, Sweat and Cheers: Trouble at the Bottom – Sheffield FC, a six-part podcast series from BBC Local and BBC Radio Sheffield and hosted by Sheffield singer-songwriter Self Esteem, goes behind the scenes during an extraordinary season for an extraordinary club.

The Club, as they’re aptly nicknamed given their historic place in the sport, helped to underpin many of the laws of the modern game with the ‘Sheffield Rules’ and are one of just two clubs to have been awarded Fifa’s prestigious Order of Merit, alongside 15-time European Cup winners Real Madrid.

Interest in the club from Qatar isn’t actually anything new, a delegation from the country visited in 2017 in the build up to hosting the 2022 World Cup.

Despite Yorkshire AI Labs, backed by money from the Middle East country, saying they had plans to build a 15,000-seat stadium and a football museum it was Jon McClure, lead singer of Sheffield indie band Reverend and the Makers, who became chairman in March.

McClure is honest and up front about the goals for a club who might be the oldest in the world but have never played in the Football League and whose best FA Cup runs were reaching the fourth round in 1879 and 1880.

“This is not Wrexham. I’m not Ryan Reynolds. Let’s get it clear, I’m in an indie band. I know my place in this world,” McClure told BBC Radio Sheffield in March.

“I’ve taken a lot of advice from football people. I’m not a football person, and I won’t be involved in football stuff.”

In recent years Hollywood actors Ryan Reynolds and Rob Mac have helped Wrexham soar through the divisions from the National League up to the Championship.

This might not be Wrexham but McClure, who has also taken over at the club’s women’s side who play in the fourth tier, has plans for a football academy, eSports hub, national football festival, clothing brand, visitor centre, TV show and getting the club back playing in the city of their and the wider game’s birth.

Since 2001 they have played at the Coach and Horses Ground (behind, unsurprisingly, the Coach and Horses pub) in Dronfield, North Derbyshire.

The ground’s seen better days, with one female supporter telling the podcast the women’s toilets are “disgusting”.

“I think everybody wants the club back in the city, but there’s only Sheffield that could invent football and build a B&Q car park on it,” McClure says in relation to the site of their original home now being occupied by a DIY shop.

With the Club challenging to go up from the United Counties League Premier Division North at the back end of the 2025-26 campaign McClure offers free entry to under-16s to try and boost the atmosphere.

“We’re pushing for promotion. Obviously, we’ve got this under-16s come for nowt,” he says.

“They’re good kids. I’ve said to them overnight, ‘listen, lads, we need more noise out of you’.

“They were a bit quiet. So I said, ‘look, if you bring a drum, I’ll buy you all a pie’. So I owe them all a pie. Well, a fair trade’s no robbery, is it?”

However as good as McClure’s intentions might be, not everyone is delighted with the new fans.

One complains about the abuse of players and an announcement is read out over the Tannoy at one game asking them to “refrain from throwing drinks” after a supporter is drenched in lemonade.

The push for an immediate return to the eighth tier is spearheaded by striker Alex Hardwick.

Off the field, Hardwick, like the rest of his team-mates, has another job. His though is a little more unusual than others.

“I’m a design engineer here at the AMRC (advanced manufacturing research centre). I work in a design and prototyping building. I work on a range of different projects, which range from nuclear to automotive,” he says.

When he isn’t busy with his day job or plundering goals, Hardwick is always willing to help out if one of the lads has an issue with their car and adds that a couple of them “do not know their way around an engine”.

Boss Vill Powell acknowledges Hardwick “brings a different dynamic to the dressing room, in terms of his conversation, in terms of his banter, in terms of how he is in general”.

Watching on from the stands, hopefully not soaked in lemonade, his grandparents are his number one fans.

“I just love it. I enjoy it. I get disappointed when he can’t get a goal,” his grandma says.

“We encourage him all the time. I don’t disappoint him. Marks out of 10? Yeah, I give him 9.5,” his grandad adds.

McClure feels that the Club and the city itself have not done enough to celebrate their role in the history of football.

“For far too long now this city has not shouted about itself. It’s enough now,” he said.

“Now’s our time to stand up and say this city’s brilliant.

“We invented this game, and this club invented this game, and we’re going to celebrate that.”

It’s a sentiment shared by the fans, with one saying “if the first club in the world was based in Manchester, it would be all over everywhere. If it was in London, it would be all over everywhere. We do nothing about it” while another adds “I certainly believe Sheffield Club should be held in higher esteem”.

Like anyone involved in football management and administration one thing McClure wants more than anything else now is something the world’s oldest football club knows all about. Time.

Upon taking over he said: “Judge it in a year. If it’s not tangibly in a better place than it is now, come and see me at a match and discuss why you think that’s not the case.”