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the lack of investment in a decent squad has us where we should be in the league,the mistakes were made at the end of last season.
paying shit money will only bring in shit players.
o'hanlon,evans,cureton,p smith and peacock are the only players that are half decent.cc platt has potential as does holgate but
the others are frankly average at best.
migs is capable of great displays but when was the last one?
i dont blame iffy as he can only work with what he has,but some of the players are going through the motions and that aint good enough.
we will go down thats a certainty now,so we have to hope that the current board either back iffy or get sombody else in and invest in some ambitious hungry players that want to fight and battle for stfc.
forget the new ground as it aint gonna happen,the current one is fine for the football we will be playing for thre forseeable future.
too much time has been wasted on this new ground campaign while the team is falling apart.
i am optimistic that peacock and cureton could fire the goals to get us back up next year but what happens in the summer with new recruits and removal of dead wood is crucial.
oh and fair prices for supporters would be nice too for a change.

Most sensible thing you've ever posted that  8)

Yep. Last season's mistakes are the latest in a long string of mistakes by the current board.

Perhaps the reason we're doing so badly is because half the squad are leaving in the summer owing to shit contract offers - and have decided they aren't going to put the effort it 'cos they ain't going to be there.

Just a thought.

O'Hanlon is not half decent, CCP is our best player by far I reckon. Dont remember him putting a foot wrong in a Town shirt.....

Id add Ifil in as half decent, but we've talked about that before.

the timing fits

Yep. They were all offered just before the Rotherham game, which we lost. Now we're being spanked out of the league.

I'm trying to work out who's out of contract now ...

Jerel Ifil
Rhys Evans
Trevor Benjamin (loan)
Andy Nicholas (I think)
Micheal Poo(k) (I think)
Migz?
Shakes

Anyone remember? This does fit the bill.

O'Hanlon and CCP are both up too...

Sadly ariba you are correct, though other successful squads have been put together on similar budgets the odds are stacked against you.

Personally I don't wholey blame the board. In the cold light of day SSW has invested a lot of money with no return. With the clubs future extremely uncertain he'd be mad to waste more money before assurances can be made. Assuming he has any left to waste.

The thing that grates is after a season of misery, 3 games ago we looked so much better and capable of staying up.  I am not sure the collapse can be totally attributed to injuries to CCP and Smith. Sure they would help, but there has to be something else even if it is as simple as certain players thinking they had done enough to stay up. Migs and Gurns - when the going got tough they hid in the corner.

See above post. I'm pretty sure it's something to do with the contract situation.

Yeah, I wrote that and posted before I saw the contacts issue was raised.

IF that is the case then the plan to keep the nucleus of a challenging squad together has grossly backfired. Perhaps it is all Iffys/the boards fault after all!

Evans
Smith
O'Hanlon
CCP
Ifil
Nicholas
Shakes
Migz
Pook
Smith
Stroud
Jenkins
Roberts
Bulman
Lapham
Holgate

Are all out of contract as far as I am aware....

well even if they want moves they dont look worthy of getting one in most cases.
who would take on most of that shit squad.
i couldn't give a shit if nearly all of them leave

Of all the players out of contract in the summer I'd only keep CCP, Shakes, Jack Smith and maybe Ifil.
Evans, O'Hanlon & Nicholas are all gonna be too 'big time' to play in league 2 so might as well get rid of them if they don't want to be here. Migz can go as well, he's too much of a luxury player & won't be able to play pretty football next year.

On the bright side we'll still have Peacock, Cureton, Paul Smith, Gurney, Brown & a few others which could be the nucleus of a good side, and if we get the few mentioned above to sign then we could do well. Who knows???

I reckon the board should stop wasting time on a stadium and investigate growing money trees  :-))(

Some of you live in a dream world. This is the way it is. Yes it's a bitch, but there's a limited number of things the board can do. The stadium is probably our last glimmer of hope and although it doesn't look good you can hardly say it's an idea worth giving up on.

dont believe it myself,even with our humble ground we should still be a better proposition than others with a superior league position to us.
the whole ground issue is scaremongering in my opinion

The point about the stadium is that it can bring in revenues other than those directly related to football. We are making losses and our squad isn't good; we will only spend less and less on player wages as time wears on and no new source of income can be found.

Have you been inside our facilities?  We only really have one stand generating revenue beyond tickets and burgers.  The Te must be lucky if it can get through 100 orders in that shed and the NW is just a shell with a few burger holes as well.

The Arkells is a cramped hotch potch of little rooms with very little in the way of proper facilities.

Teams like Colchester are having a good season, it happens.  Long term they will be exactly where we are now.

Essentially the stadium idea a chance to wipe the slate clean with the debt, completely.  If ran well, it could bring in some extra revenue.  We are still paying for trying to run above our level for so long.  Our average league position since we joined the league is about 10 places above where we are now!  Sure, someone else might do a better job of runnig the business, but all we'd be talking about is at break even instead of losing money each season.

but maybe if football was the key issue we may not have got into the position we are in.smaller clubs are doing so and are reaping the rewards.
the board want to make money and will do whatever they can to do so,and will tell us supporters whatever suits them.
some believe it others dont,my concern is stfc not a shiny new facility with a shit team playing in it.
i still aint heard fuck all about where the cricket club and athletics track is meant to move to.i think the board know the ground proposals will be rejected and will try to move us out of town and cash in.

Hull have spent £3.8m in salaries for the year ending 2004. That's our annual turnover. It clearly helps a lot of teams get out of this league. Stoke, Reading, Hull, Wigan etc.

It's also interesting to note, that almost without exception, clubs who have built new stadiums or redeveloped big sections of their grounds in the 10 years, have seen attendances rise compared to the 3 seasons before development.  Some by 95%.  Not all these clubs had rich sugar daddy's ploughing in the cash, not all have done so well on the pitch, but all have added new fans.

Take Gurney out of that situation and I'd totally agree with you LGC

of course a new ground will generate more money and attract more people in.
 but of all these new grounds, how many had relegated teams in the bottom league in them.

With respect to pinning hopes onto a new stadium, may I just mention Darlington. What has gone on there? I'm not sure if a new stadium would help our attendances much considering we weren't even selling out in the prem. Admittedly it would benefit us financially unless we had a Kassam in charge

all ambitious clubs with either huge fan base or rich chairmen,what category are stfc????

No doubt we have cut things back so far to the bone that we’re tearing away the chunks of juicy bone marrow but when you study the accounts we are still making losses.  What more can be done?

Our major shareholder Sir Seton Wills may be questionable when it comes to what horses he’s backed but his commitment and investment has been phenomenal.  

When you look at the board can we really expect anything more from them given the bigger picture?

Willie Carson has admitted he was/is a figurehead, wanted to get involved and is not here to invest his hard earned cash.  Out of the remaining members do any of them have the sort of personal assets and wealth where they are in a position to invest?

I don’t think anyone particularly likes the set-up or situation we are in but what does seem evident is that we do require a new stadium if anything to ensure the club do have an asset and don’t end up in the same situation Rotherham are in.

Whether the current board have the know-how, vision and substance to get a realistic County Ground development off the ground is another issue altogether but it's something we have to at least try singing from the same hym sheet on.  There are far to many potential oily sycophants like Jonathon Doyle out there eager to make a name for themselves (rather disastrously for the aforementioned gent given the reaction to his ‘letter’) off the back of any public issue and the CG development is a nugget many are eager to suckle upon it’s teat.

It’s not just easy to be negative it’s a natural reaction and I can’t stand the cheerleaders any more than the erection section negative choir but at times like this while they may not be deserving it’s get behind our sack of shit time and like my mother always said.  If you’re going to go down do it with a smile on your face.

And use your fingers at the same time.

I question the timing of the contract offers. If the list DV posted is correct - which I imagine it is - it would make perfect sense that the uncertain future of various players has contributed to our recent downfall.

Of the eleven players used who started last night, six are out of contract in the summer (Evans, O'Hanlon, Jack Smith, Nicholas, Miglioranzi and Pook), one is a short-term loan and the others were mostly committed and wanted to work for the team - i.e. Peacock and Cureton.

By offering contracts at a stage in the season where nobody can be sure where our future lies, it may have created a rift in the squad. Players who know their contract is up in the summer and haven't been offered the deal they wanted, as if often the case with us now, will have decided their future lies elsewhere and as a result don't really care what division STFC play in next season. However, two of the biggest culprits last night were Gurney and Brown who are both contracted beyond the end of the season, so this could contradict my original thoughts.

When do we offer the contracts though? Leave it too late and everyone will walk or do it too early and everyone decides where their future lies, commitment levels drop and results suffer. The logical thing to do would be to offer contracts when we know where we're playing next season, unfortunately, at this rate it doesn't look like we'll know until the very last game.

It'll be well before that i fear :(

Surely it should be a case of

'well you dont like your contract on offer, if we stay up we'll offer you a better one'

....but....I think the problems lie much deeper than formations and tactics....

Firoz Kassam is the 10th richest asian in Britain according to the Times on Sunday.

Shame he doesn't give the Pox any of it apart from building them a cack legolike stadium!! :mrgreen:

with 3 stands  :mrgreen: