Harrogate Town boss Simon Weaver on why he turned down approaches from two other EFL clubs

Speaking at Wednesday night’s fans’ forum, chairman Irving Weaver fielded a question on his son’s future following a wretched run of recent form that has seen the club fail to win in 10 matches and plummet to 22nd in the table.

Weaver Sr said that it is a “bit early” to be questioning the Town chief’s position and went on to explain how loyalty works both ways, asking “is Simon Weaver happy to hang around if we can’t resource, if we can’t build a crowd?”.

He then went on to disclose for the first time that a Championship outfit and, more recently, a fellow League Two team have wanted two-time promotion winner Simon Weaver as their manager.

The 44-year-old was however not tempted to explore either opportunity and spoke to the Harrogate Advertiser about opting to remain at Wetherby Road despite the interest from elsewhere.

“We’ve had some great times here, we’ve been loyal both ways,” he said.

"The times when the phone has rung regarding me, I wanted to stay at those times because I could foresee growth at the club and I still don’t believe we have reached a ceiling which means we cannot continue to improve our status and fan-base.

"I don’t want to mention names because other people are in those positions now, but I feel that these approaches must mean that we were doing okay at the time – and one of them wasn’t too long ago.

"What I think it shows is that our set-up and our team has been punching above its weight at times – and that’s been recognised elsewhere.

"At times when you’re maybe a bit low, you have to remind yourself that if you were good enough then, you’re still good enough now.”

Asked if he could imagine himself managing another team, Simon Weaver replied: "I could, if it ever got to the stage where I don’t believe that we can be a successful Football League club.

"That day might come because football is in my blood, but for now, I’m still adamant that even though we’re in the middle of a rough spell, that we’re still big enough to attract good players and have a big enough fan-base to rouse the team.”

Speaking earlier in the evening to the audience at the fans’ forum, Irving Weaver revealed: "I’ve never disclosed this, but Simon has had a couple of offers because of the success he’s brought to the club.

"One was from the Championship, and they talked to us for a long time, not that we ever discussed anything, they just wanted us to come down to the club and meet them, and we’ve not done that.

"Then, six weeks ago, a League Two club actually went direct to Simon without any protocol of coming to the chairman and made an offer to Simon to join them.

"But, his response was that ‘we’ve got unfinished business, we’ve got something going off here’. We are going to dig deep and we’ve earned the right to have a go at this league. So, it is a two-way situation.”