Dagenham & Redbridge Ownership Targets League One Return

The ownership of Dagenham & Redbridge has expressed a desire to guide the club back to League One. The team is currently positioned 13th in the National League. The Daggers’ sole experience in the third tier of English football occurred during the 2010-11 season, after which they were relegated to League Two. Following another relegation in 2016, the club has competed in the National League. This weekend, they are scheduled to participate in the FA Cup first round, playing away against Crewe Alexandra, as one of the non-league teams involved. Six months prior, Club Underdog, a subsidiary of the US-based North Six Group, acquired the club. The stated objective of this new ownership is to facilitate the east London team’s return to the EFL. New club chairman Daniel Hall stated earlier this month on BBC Radio London’s sport show, “We have a history of buying teams that we think are underserved and have potential. That’s the whole ethos behind our Club Underdog brand and certainly Dagenham fits that metric very nicely. I think there’s a ton of potential both on the field and also off the field in terms of how we can benefit the community, help raise Dagenham up, and help create something that’s greater than the sum of its parts.” Club Underdog assumed ownership of Dagenham & Redbridge in May 2024. The entity also possesses four other teams: Campobasso and Ascoli in Italy, FC Locarno in Switzerland, and Brooklyn FC in America. Hall, who is London-born, remarked, “We actually took over Campobasso in the Italian fifth tier, so the same spot Dagenham is in right now. The same spot Wrexham was in, or was when Ryan [Reynolds] and Rob [McElhenney] took over there, and we took them to Serie C, which is the League One equivalent – the third tier in Italy. We’ve had a lot of success there.” Hall further indicated that Dagenham benefits “on and off the field” from being part of a multi-club ownership structure. These advantages include a “pathway” for player acquisition, both through developing talent and recruiting from other international teams managed by the group. Dagenham & Redbridge is currently in its ninth season in the National League, having been relegated from the Football League in 2016. After 16 games, Dagenham holds the 13th position in the National League. Hall stated that the “primary focus has been getting squad performing well and we are still working on that”. He further commented, “We have a plan for this year and we have a plan for the next five years. We can’t promise anything. The best laid plans often go awry. You can throw money or not throw money at a problem and it may or may not work out. There’s a lot of luck involved in getting teams promoted, but certainly we would love to see Dagenham, in the short-term, in League Two, and we would also love to see Dagenham in League One. When we were in League One just over a decade ago, it was fantastic and the fans were happy, the fans were going to the games. There was so much engagement. It lifted the community. I was in London at that point as well, so I saw all this first-hand. To recreate that, to do it again, would be fantastic. We obviously can’t put a timeline on that but we are aiming to be a league club rather than a non-league club sooner rather than later.” Hall additionally underscored the significance of managing the club prudently, rather than merely “throwing money at a situation and not succeeding, then getting into trouble”. He stated, “We want to be competitive but we want to be smart as well. We are certainly willing to invest and we have invested. But we want to do so in a sustainable manner. We’re also focused on being smart in terms of the players we recruit. Our sporting director [James King] has a great knowledge of the game from the National League South through to League One. We’re here to win, we’re here to be competitive, but we’re here to do it in a sustainable way.”