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From Matt Davis
BBC Sport
It is February 2018 and Ostersunds FK have won.
The group – managed by Englishman Graham Potter – are from this competition on aggregate, but success in Emirates Stadium is a fitting ending to a fairytale 14-game rush to the last 16.
Their achievement is all the more remarkable once you consider it is only eight years since they were at the division.
But 20 months on from this night the club, in London are currently facing a fight for their future.
For us football lovers there is not any choice, read a club statement posted on their site this week. Ostersund without an elite football team is unthinkable.
The fiscal figures of the club are crude.
They will need to raise 15m Swedish krona (kr) – about #1.2m by the close of the season to keep the team operating, using 10m kr of the sum to be paid by the close of the month. Thus far 6m kr was raised.
A 1.4m kr tax invoice needs to be paid by 2 November.
Fans and companies are being asked to contribute to this cause, and also sponsorship is desperately needed by the team.
We ask you to return on all of the wonderful memories and what pride and joy we experienced with OFK, the club statement said. If we are to experience it again, we must collectively help to get out of this catastrophe.
Potter – currently managing Brighton in the Premier League – has contributed, as have his coaching team and players.
Chairman Daniel Kindberg was the guy who oversaw the rise of the club to the airport for the very first time in 2015 and enjoyed Potter. By winning the Cup that was Swedish, soccer was attracted to the northern city.
Kindberg has been on trial in Sweden convicted with the judges verdict expected on 5 – accusations he denies – of crimes.
The team say they have lost 7m krona in sponsorship earnings and failed to earn 20m kr in player earnings and 5m kr at matchday revenue that they had forged for.
Theyre Also under a transfer ban out of Fifa over Saman Ghoddos into French club Amiens move, a choice they would like to appeal against for Sport.
This is a critical situation, director Ian Burchnall told BBC Sport. This has come fast and from nowhere believing where the club proved to be a brief time period ago.
The club had an unbelievable trip, but a whole lot of things behind the scenes have happened since then.
We arent the only team in Sweden that have economic issues. And its so typical in football – look at Bury and Bolton.
It is really tough to compete at the top and make a sustainable model.
Burchnall succeeded compatriot Potter if the latter left Swansea in June 2018.
The club ended sixth in Burchnalls first season however are 13th, three points off the relegation places, together with three games remaining.
There are just seven English players such as Chelsea midfielder Charlie Colkett, at the club. Ravel Morrison spent there before leaving Sheffield United in July.
This year the team had its best ever start at the Swedish league, but since the summer it has been very difficult with whats happening off the pitch, explained Burchnall, 36.
Weve probably been in the news this year over every other group in Sweden for a lot of different reasons, but mostly because of its off-field issues, the continuing court case, both the financial difficulties and the Fifa transfer embargo.
It is a really young squad. We played with the youngest team in the league for 20 years. Obviously it affects them either consciously or unconsciously.
They are a great group, however, you can sense sometimes you have to work hard to keep them centered on football things.
Burchnall said the loss of this club, which has average attendances of 4,800, could behuge.
Over time Graham and his team and I have sustained top-flight football in the north of Sweden, where they had not had it for decades, he said. To get a group up here competing is a massive thing.
The fans are unbelievable. Regardless of what the circumstance is practically relentlessly supported by them. It is testament to them and a great deal of individuals have come forward to try raise funds fast.
The clubs media manager, Niclas Lidstrom, neglects to talk about the nightmare situation, saying only:We will resolve this.
And Burchnall is planning for next year.
I understand a lot of great men and women are working hard to do the ideal thing, and put a platform set up to maintain growing the group, he explained.
I have brought in a great deal of young and gifted players on contracts that are longer, with a view to creating something for the near future and put a team that has real asset value in terms of that which we could sell players to get later on.
We have to appear forward. Im planning for the next game, but once we talk the team and players, we speak as if weve got a long-term perspective on it.
There was someone out there who did take action and who would do it again
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