Jonathan Sayer thought it would be straightforward when he opted to put aside his life as a stage writer and actor to take over the ownership and running of his boyhood football club, seventh-tier Ashton United.

Yet before his first season as an owner in England’s Northern Premier League was a month old, he had been rudely awoken to the harsh realities of life in the world of semi-professional football.

Sayer is better known as the co-writer and star of the West End hit show ‘The Play That Goes Wrong’ and its subsequent BBC adaptations.

The title might have been a better fit for his first year at the helm at Ashton, the club he bought in 2019 in partnership with his dad but which quickly presented far greater challenges than either of them imagined.

Those struggles are the subject of Sayer’s book ‘Nowhere to Run’ which is published on Thursday, an at times comical but mostly revealing look at the realities of balancing a tight budget in the trenches of non-league while striving to keep supporters happy.

Sayer and his dad bought Ashton immediately following relegation after a single season in the National League North, the promised land of the sixth tier that the club had ultimately not been cut out to survive in.

At a meeting to introduce himself to fans, in a rash move he would quickly come to regret, he promised supporters instant promotion. The die was cast for a turbulent campaign.

“The year we were relegated I was filming a TV show in (nearby) Manchester so I was around to go to games on Saturdays a bit more,” Sayer told the PA news agency. “There was a tweet that said the club needed help, so my involvement began like that. I did not at that stage say ‘I’ll buy the club’.

“I’ve had a lot of luck in life and this felt like a way to put back into my community. They had a gap with the wages which I now realise is just an ongoing thing in non-league football.

“I thought it would be a really fun thing to do, particularly for me and my dad to have a project together. I thought it would be easy – put a bit of funding in, be really organised, and it’ll be great.”

The book charts the progress of the pair’s first season in charge, the 2019-20 campaign that was curtailed at non-league level by the Covid-19 pandemic and ultimately expunged from the records.

The season was not a successful one. Despite significantly increasing the playing budget and taking the risk of putting all players on contracts – highly unusual for a club in the seventh tier – in a bid to secure promotion, the team soon became mired in a relegation fight.

Rivals caustically dubbed them ‘Cashton United’, and despite Sayer’s involvement raising the profile of the club locally, the squad failed to gel and results failed to arrive. Despite the investment, there never seemed to be enough money to pay the bills.

There was also farce. After an internal falling out, a club member whom Sayer calls “part of the old guard” absconded with the only keys to the stadium dressing rooms.

A TV expensively installed for the manager to go over footage of matches with the squad stubbornly refused to work even a year later, and an outdoor bar built to raise matchday revenue was shuttered after the council pointed out they had never granted planning permission.

But it was on the pitch where Sayer’s worst nightmares became realised.

“I thought ‘we’ve been relegated, we’ve increased the budget, therefore we’ll go back up’,” he says. “There was all this momentum. But the reality was so hard. The first three or four months we lost a lot of matches.

“I feel like I’m personally letting everyone down when we lose. It’s a robust feedback environment, football. It can be brutal. I’m a sensitive soul and I feel things very acutely.

“Theatre can be similar. You get harsh reviews, people either laugh or they don’t. The difference is that on a show day I can affect things, I can rewrite things and I can rehearse, and all the energy goes into performing.

“With this, you can’t do anything. You have to stand there like an absolute tool. You can clap and cheer, or you can go for the Sven (Goran Eriksson) emotionless approach.”

It is four years since Ashton were relegated to the Northern Premier League. Sayer and his dad are still awaiting the elusive promotion they promised fans in 2019.

Yet this remains a long-term project. After 14th-place finishes in each of their full seasons (Covid also saw the 2020-21 campaign abandoned), there is optimism that lessons have been learnt to finally put the club on track for the step up.

“For me football is just like a play,” says Sayer. “I don’t understand how you can like theatre and not like football.

“It’s exactly the same – it’s people coming together and having shared moments of catharsis and emotion and watching a story with characters play out.”

Erling Haaland has been subject of a tongue-in-cheek loan bid from non-league Ashton United while Manchester City break for the World Cup.

FIFA's global tournament starts on Sunday in Qatar and leaves a schedule gap for the Premier League as elite-level club football pauses for the action in the Middle East.

Haaland will not be going to the World Cup after Norway failed to qualify, and seventh-tier side Ashton have lodged an offer to keep one of Europe's most prolific talisman fit throughout the break.

"It just makes sense," Michael Clegg told the Northern Premier League Premier Division side's website.

"City aren't playing, and we want to help by keeping Erling fit. It makes more sense than him playing golf for six weeks.

"We think he will be a great fit for us and would slot in with our squad dynamic really well."

The Norway striker has scored 18 top-flight goals this season since leaving Borussia Dortmund, with a further five in cup competitions taking him to 23 strikes.

City manager Pep Guardiola suggested Haaland would be allowed some time to rest before returning to training in early December.

While Ashton are based just over six miles away from City's Etihad Stadium, Clegg's side are keenly awaiting a response from City's delegates as to Haaland's interest in nearby non-league football.

"The club are yet to receive any response from Manchester City," the statement on the website added.

City are not back in Premier League action until a visit to Leeds United on December 28, six days after a crunch fourth-round EFL Cup tie at home to rivals Liverpool.