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Where Are We Going?
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Is this club moving forward?
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By:
Eric Hitchmo
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16/03/2010
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I worry where this club is going sometimes. For a fifth year running, I've seen us struggle fruitlessly towards another mid-table finish. Is it any wonder that gates continually slide further away from the 2,000 mark? Similarly, is it any wonder that our followings away from continue to dwindle to paltry levels? How many of us will go to Darlington on Saturday? Why would you go to Darlington on Saturday? There is nothing to get excited about here.
What is the cause of this? Why are we not a realistic shout for a promotion place? Is it down to the manager or the players? On the face of it, of course it is, but as I have said many many times before, we are so limited by our level of income and backing. Ian Hendon, like Paul Fairclough before him is working on a severely tight budget with limited resources open to him. It's no surprise that therefore, the standard of player we are able to attract is not likely push us up the leagues. And when we do get a player with considerable talent, they are often sold as they are shining light in a team that isn't going anywhere.
Nicky Bailey, Dean Sinclair, Simon King, Jason Puncheon, Tresor Kandol, I could go on. All players who have been part of our team in the last five years and have largely gone on to bigger and better things. They were all outstanding performers in teams that were pretty average overall. They get plucked from us for a good sum of money and we are left without our big players. We find some more from the middle of nowhere, and the cycle starts again. I wager that the same could become of the likes of Albert Adomah and John O'Flynn.
It's very easy to ask where the money has gone for all of this and why it doesn't go straight back into the team. Why not take the proceeds from these transfers and put them onto the wage bill, or splash the cash on a big signing? Sometimes impatience gets the better of me and hopes that we may just do that, but I imagine that there are far more 'safe' options that this money has gone towards.
In Tony Kleanthous we have someone who has been very shrewd with the running of this club and I would guess that this money goes towards things like the South Stand - something required to stop us from being removed from the league - or indeed the new and very impressive training facility, or even the day to day running of the football club. Such management should be a sign that we will never go the way of Luton, Mansfield, Chester, Bournemouth, Darlington and so on - the list of clubs who have come under severe financial strain is endless. However, this appears to be at the cost of a potentially successful season.
One imagines that there must be some sort of grand future plan bubbling under somewhere, surely? These new developments have been great to see for this club and will almost certainly reap the benefits in the long term, but the impatience rises again and just wants a bit of money thrown at the team to get us some excitement. Just one year would be nice. It's hard to think pragmatically when you've had to watch us be mediocre for five years. This is reflected in the indifference that writhes its way round the supporters at the moment.
Average gates are down, the atmosphere is appalling and no-one really seems to care. I've missed very very little of the last six or seven seasons, I've seen all but around ten league games in this time, but as my first paragraph suggests, I look at games now and think "What's in it for me? Why should I use my time and money to do this?". When you've got supporters with this mentality, and there are a lot of them, you've got to be worried. What's it going to take to get them back? Good football? But then how do you get that with the difficulties already described? It's a formula that is proving very hard to perfect.
What does seem to have gone quiet after some severe noise is a new ground. Whatever happened to that notion? Since we managed to get ourselves within the Football League's ground regulations, it appears to have been swept under the carpet. Perhaps it's part of this fictional grand future plan that I have conjured in my head. There appears to be no immediate urgency to move but I still think that Underhill is the one thing that is holding us back.
Don't get me wrong, I love Underhill to bits. It is very hard to say that the place is holding us back as it holds so many fond memories for me, for all of us. I'm sure that many of you reading will have double the amount of memories, triple, but even so, we need to go forward, we need a ground and a facility that will generate income to feed results and performance on the pitch. Underhill makes us no, or very little money on a non-matchday. Look at some of the other new grounds in the league and how team performance has improved since. Shrewsbury are a great example. It's a dull, nothing ground, but their gates have jumped and money is flowing very nicely for them. It's a matter of time before they move onward.
Of course I'm not naive enough to believe that a new ground means instant results, far from it. I've already cited three clubs that have had new grounds and gone through some financial hardship (Bournemouth, Darlo and Chester). They are also examples of clubs who were not run as tightly as ours, hence their problems. If we live within our means, build a stadium fit for a club of our size with room for expansion with opportunities to make a seven day a week income, we can really seriously begin to look forward in my opinion. Until then, I think we're just going to have to put up with how it is at the moment, and with no indication on if and when there will ever be a move, I fear that could be a long way down the line and clubs in this league and even the league below will sneak up on us and simply leave us behind. I look at Morecambe as an example. They are a smaller club than us, but soon they will move to a new 7,000 capacity ground. I will look out for their development both on and off the pitch with interest.
So the problem lies a little deeper than Ian Hendon and his team if you ask me. It's very easy to slate them as they are the product of how this club is moving, or not moving, at the moment. The training ground could well be a catalyst to get things going, but we most likely won't see anything significant come out of it for some time yet. Though it is an undeniable step forward, I wish we would take the leap and unveil some big new plans for a ground with a decent bar, a terraced end, conference facilities and so on and so on. A place we can be truly proud to call home. Maybe that's just impatience ruling again, but when I'm sitting watching us lose to Accrington in the manner in which we did on Saturday, it makes me want something to change. Fast. I think we may just have to hold our horses for now.
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