Thetownend.com

Having been a town fan since the 70s, I fear that the current rash of events have left me totally dissollusioned with football as a whole and Town in particular. We all expect players to move on for whatever reasons, however the players that are currently leaving should be the bedrock and future of our club.  Being a non attending, semi lurker I have no idea of what goes on behind the scenes, financially or managerially, what I do know is that as soon as anyone is worth £££s they go. Perhaps after 40 years it has finally dawned on me that we will never achieve a form of greatness, we have found our level and will always take a step forwards and two backwards - perhaps this is the fun of it all ? Sadly, it has got to the point where the football side just irritates me - I must be turning into a grumpy old git ! Finally, thanks Mr Fitton for saving us - the next stage will be far far far more difficult. Ramble over back to the home............................................ :bye:

Have you really been sitting there, supporting Town since the 70's waiting for us to achieve greatness? I can't believe its taken you that long to relaise that we'll never get to that point?! We'll always be a selling club. Fact.

Supporting Swindon isn't about waiting for the next league title, or cup win, its about enjoying those highs ever more because we all know how truly terrible the lows can be.

As far as I'm concerned, we have a stable club with a board who are trying to run it properly. Thats number 1 in my book. We have a club to support and will do for the forseeable future.

So why not wrap up, take stock, and get up to the CG on Saturday?

You have to enjoy matchdays aswell though welsh,thats the whole point. I can be happy the club is stable and being run well from my front room tbh

Every single club is a selling club.

what DRS said. last season good, this season bad... frustrating, but that's life. No-one has done this deliberately, things just haven't worked out for whatever reason. We might have some proper money to spend after today and whether that gets spent now or the summer, is quite exciting in itself.

guess it just depends on whether glass is half full/empty...

i'd be far more concerned if it was fitton and co. leaving.

Thanks Welsh
1) Can't physically get to matches
2) Delighted that club is on a stable footing but
3) Sad that we are constantly selling off our future and the hope of achieving more highs than lows

That's all I was trying to say - at least I am still a fan (of sorts), top the prediction league & have never been called the C word    :D

hahahaha, who's gonna go first?!

If we can crawl out of this mess then i will be relieved, then look forward.

Perhaps its the fact that being there every week isn't an option for me. I have a young family and money is tight, but my old man has a season ticket so I go up with him whenever I can make it.

So I don't have to watch the turgid displays. I listen to them on the computer (they're still difficult to take!)

I just think that when you weigh it all up, the situation we currerntly find ourselves in is so much better than we were a couple of years ago when we were playing poorly, run by crooks, had a team full of rubbish and were in or close to administration.

At the moment we have a team of underperforming players (we all know how they can play), a solid grounding, a possible ground redevelopment to look forward to, money to pay players, potential money to spend, a decent manager (shush) and a brilliant board.

We will crawl out of this mess, whether its this season, or next, or the one after. I've learned that things don't happen too quickly in this world, especially with STFC.

Good post.

I totally understand where you're comign from mate, it's gutting to see these players leave. But the money we have received for players like Parkin, Cox, Morrison (and shortly Austin) is hardly insignificant. If we have a bidding war between four clubs it's only going to push the price up for him and it'll ensure we get a good deal. The challenge now is to get somebody in by next week, and I sincerely hope Wilson and Fitton have been preparing themselves for this.

Totally agree  
I will be delighted to de-plastic myself when the time arrives  :beers:

Cunt. There you go

YAWN................................................

thanks for the insight  :tumbleweed: i can understand your views because we are in the worst league position for 40 years and that we are selling a young striker that cost 50k for rumoured £2million.

well thats bollocks?!

I suspect that may have been the point.

ah, one of those days! i'm gonna go sit in a dark room...

No sense of humour?

I'm sure that's what ran throgh the minds of Blackpool, Wigan and Hull fans for years gone by...this is about hoing it can happen, becauseit might and we've a damn better chance with the current board than we ever have.

I really hope you aren't this pessimistic about everything else in your life!

Why are people seemingly content to stick by the club under several dire regimes over the last 15 years at STFC (regimes that treated the fans awfully) but so keen to ditch us during a mediocre season?

I can cope with the football mediocrity, it's the fickleness I cannot stand.

It seems that both fans and players alike expected success to just be layed on a plate this season.

That's absolutely spot on, Pseudonym.

I agree with the last 3 posts. Some fans are fucking pathetic.

I honestly think it seems like false promises though to some from the outside. Under previous regimes we were under no illusions that we were going to be dealt with shit hand after shit hand but we still had the odd decent season to give us hope.

Now after some great hope we are great off the pitch we seem desperate to just fuck everything up on the pitch. I understand certain deals like the austin one going ahead it's not rocket science but when you lose other players that were so important last year for stupid money or because we wouldn't pay a extra 2k a week people start to get fucked off.

Selling players for 250k then signing a left winger for the same price who has not shown he will be worth more when we come to sell seems odd to me.

Totally agree too.
When the club were literally 24 hours from being wound up some were quite content to let it happen. Don't protest it might upset the team, balh blah. How many actually stood up to be counted behind the Arkells, how many wore orange etc etc. I even remember some bloke getting close to a heart attack calling the protests a bunch of Orang Utans much to the delight of the poison dwarf.
The sitaution we are in now is of no consequence what so ever compared with then. If this had happened back then they'd have snapped Hull's hands off, (as long as it came in a brown paper bag) & the money would have disappeared to stave off liquidation (& the inevitable "other expenses") for another few weeks.

There is only so long we can live off 'being stable'

At the end of the day, football is a sport and the point is to win.

I thought we had a better chance of success this season than many previous ones. the fact we have been so poor, and not played the transfer market well is disappointing. I know it's a common belief, but not replacing Greer and Paynter (and now Morrison to some extent) is shoddy. And as a result, i'm not confident in Austin being adequately replaced now, especially at increasingly short notice.

Also, I'm not sure Fitton's "buy young and cheap, sell after a year for a profit" tactic will ever get us promoted. We're a football club that needs results and a settled, successful team, not just a standard business buying and selling commodities, and i think the model he is employing is wrong.

ScillyRed, maybe you could start supporting Truro City. They seem to be going places. Conference South next season at this rate.

I'm not sure what "form of greatness" you're looking for, but if we were in and around the autos/playoffs I'd be happy and if next season we got settled in the Championship I'd be delighted.
But it doesn't look like that's going to happen.

This season is just a bit shit because we all thought we'd kick on after the play-offs, but we've gone backwards. We've been two or three players short all season, and the players we've added (Rose, Prutton, etc) haven't taken the club forward in the way we all hoped/thought we would and some of last year's performers haven't been as consistent. It seems the board are clearing the decks a bit, writing off the season as a bad job. I guess the thinking is that if it's going to be a shit season on the pitch, we might as well make some money and try again next year. The risk is that the rest of this season goes wrong and we're scrapping for relegation, which would be a disaster.

The Manchester City of the Southern League. It will all end in tears when their chairman pulls the plug.

They were saying that a few seasons back to be fair, when Mr Heaney's former company, Cornish Homes, when into liquidation. A fair few disgruntled creditors in the Duchy for sure. I think they can make a crack at getting to the  Conference Premier, but the football league will be beyond them.

I really don't get it, why do people think things will ever be that much different?  We quite literally get the odd good season.  Anyone who watches us to see a success has barked up the wrong tree, only a few clubs are worth hanging around for that.  Fuck, Rochdale would be playing in front of the subs by now if that was why people watched the game.

Isn't it about watching a club that means something to you, rejoicing when we win, going away frustrated when we lose and returning the next week to start all over again?  Sometimes life gets in the way, money is tight etc, but I doubt many people actually stop going because we lose too often.  Check out our entire history, it gives us a clue, over time we are probably a club that will lose as many as we win, bob between the division above and the one below from time to time.

Thing is Rob looking at the average age of most fans we are not used to having decent proper wealthy owners in charge who actually have the finances to back up what THEY have promised.

That's why it is different from most seasons

And the occasional demotion due to financial shenanigans

I don't think they made any promises, did they? They set out a 5-year plan which is what any business should do. They haven't said that they were going to be throwing millions at this club to achieve the business plan, they've said that they want to run the club properly, which they're doing.

To be fair promised is the wrong word but i'm fairly certain our current situation is not what was on the agenda

the 3 year which became the 5 year which became the 1 year plan......
what a load of bollocks that is-was

Being in or around the relegation wasn't on anybody's agenda. The thing is, there's no magic formula for a successful football team aside from spending loads of money, which our board isn't prepared to do (and quite rightly so imo). I think they've spent enough getting us out of the situation we were in before they arrived.

The best you can do without spending the money is to try and make money that you can afford to spend (which they're doing) and employ the staff who you think can do the job (which they've done).

Yes but we wouldn't need a magic formula in the first place would we if we didn't have a strategy in place that means we will sell every decent player after 12 months if they make a profit.

This season is showing us that this plan is not working and won't work. I appreciate we need to bring money in and if it means losing our star player once a season that's fine but when we let out of contract players go or lose experienced players go and only bring in youngsters in the hope we make a profit in 12 months i find that a bit of a piss take

Well, then whats the point?

Lets just accept we'll be in L1 till we all die and save ourselves some wasted hours and £££

I'm sure fans of Wigan, Blackpool and Fulham thought the same thing.

Wigan and Fulham had wealthy backers chucking money at them and Blackpool took advantage of a massively overachieving season to hit the jackpot in the Premiership. 

I'd prefer our owners responsibly run our club properly than throw money around, putting us back in financial trouble again.

So would we all reeves but i would also like stability on the pitch not just off it.

It'd be boring if we were always mid-table :)

League One is boring full stop.

You're fucking boring.

Yeah, but no one pays their hard earn cash to watch me every week do they!

I would pay for you to fuck off.

how much?

The upkeep of this forum to Barry for a permanent ban on YOU

Well, thats worth fuck all to me, so no.

Keep following me though, that will help.

You really shouldn't watch Swindon DV.  This is the way it will always be.  There will be a couple of years of success, some of real failure, mostly where we are now.  Over a hnundred years of history doesn't lie.  Sure, every so often you get something more, when a major shift occurs like pumping millions of pounds in did for Wigan.  Fulham are an all over the place club, some really heady days, some really bad ones.

I'm sure all fans hope for the good times, they just don't happen very often.

Look, people can moan if they like, but I still doubt very few people will ever stop watching Swindon just because of a league one season being a bit bland or worse.  In the modern game, the pricing may keep a few away more frequently, but if we are seriously saying our fans come to watch success, we'd be dead and buried within 3 years from now.

Don't worry only a few more months to go

I shouldnt.

I dont think im out of line for expecting our club to try and better itself. Isnt that the whole point of the football league system.

Anyone want my season ticket for Saturday?

Want and hope to better ourselves = yes
Expect it = no
Throw our toys out of the pram and sack managers for achieving what everyone else manages to achieve = no

I mean, fans start watching clubs in the bottom league when their club is on the wane - if it was success they were after, that just wouldn't happen.

I agree with Mr Tuck. The fact that we can get by on little success and still support the club with all your heart and soul is what separates us from the plastic Premier League supporters.

We might as well start considering this possibility....wouldn't have bothered me too much if we'd not been there so recently....and I did enjoy that season.

Gates were up on previous seasons as well, as people like to see a few goals and wins.

I recall some while back getting slagged off for the suggestion that our new found status, post financial meltdown might be as a yo yo club between L1 and 2...

I also remember you telling us all that our first season in League 2 would be a consolidation season Reg.

Reg only knows what Google tells him.

I've a suspicion that Reg is Google.

Well no bugger could have predicted what would have happened that season, and its direct aftermath....

What? That we'd go back up? I didn't think it was that surprising ::)

What have Brighton done (that we haven't) this season that have pushed them to the top of the pile?

Beating us here first match gave them a massive boost i should imagine.

That goes without saying  :)

That's exactly my point. What have they done?? They have a fair bit of cash, which helps, a new stadium always seems to go down well too. A decent manager as well and you have a good shot.

We have a redeveloped stadium in the pipeline. Patience grasshopper.

Brighton have been where we are now for the past 2 seasons and classed as under acheivers, bit of stability and the odd good signing here and there have paid off. Nothing to say it won't happen to us next year if we breathe deeply. The foundations are there as we know.

Actually that should read....Glasshopper.

Our season is almost the polar opposite of last season. With this league though I don't think it would take much of a turnaround to start beating teams week in week out, I just don't know what has changed so much to cause this decline. I know some people have said our defence is the weak link, and the fact we are missing an extra striker but for me the team just doesn't look a solid unit, players not playing in the correct position and the regular evaporation of our midfield.

I think I have answered my own question  ::)

Signed Greer? :)

wasn't their form better before he started getting games?

The point I was making is more about fans abandoning Swindon when times have been far, far worse both on and off the pitch.

I saw Swindon as a kid when we were great, I saw Swindon in the Prem but I was far too young to appreciate it. If following Swindon/football was simply about winning then I/we would have lost interest a long time ago.

And holy fucksticks at least some money is going back into the team and not into the pockets of our Greek friend.

I have had a quick look over the League One tables on the FL website and it is interesting to see how well or not so well teams reaching the play offs do the following season. Since 2002/3, on average, only 1 team making the play offs either makes it to the play offs the next year or get's promoted. In fact 2 teams have been relegated (Hartlepool & Brentford).

In seven seasons only 4 of the previous seasons play off partcipants (21 teams when you take out the winners from 7 years of play offs) have gone on to win promotion the next year and of those only Millwall did that by the play offs. If you take out last season with Leeds and Millwall going up only QPR and Forest have done it.

It shows the transient nature of League One football (especially when you compare with the same teams hitting the top 6 in the Premier League. I think it shows how often that teams end up re-building and have to come back again. A heartening note is that Bristol City and Swansea after missing out came back 2 years later to win promotion.

It might just be boring stats but maybe a sense of perspective on our season?

Boring stat...no buts...