Accepting failure

I said the other day on here that we the fans have a habit of accepting failure and making excuses for it .
From now on from top to bottom of this club if something isn’t right I expect to see it called out.
If balls aren’t round , training facilities not right , funds aren’t available , players aren’t interested , I want to see it outed in public.
I don’t want to hear how lucky we are to still have a club , how spoiled we’ve been or how difficult things are as I know this club should be two leagues higher than it is and wound be if run correctly .
I expect our fans , manager and especially board members to put this info into the public domain and I expect us as fans to react and let our feelings known.


We can’t continue to accept second best if we want success

Quoted from grimps

I said the other day on here that we the fans have a habit of accepting failure and making excuses for it .
From now on from top to bottom of this club if something isn’t right I expect to see it called out.
If balls aren’t round , training facilities not right , funds aren’t available , players aren’t interested , I want to see it outed in public.
I don’t want to hear how lucky we are to still have a club , how spoiled we’ve been or how difficult things are as I know this club should be two leagues higher than it is and wound be if run correctly .
I expect our fans , manager and especially board members to put this info into the public domain and I expect us as fans to react and let our feelings known.


We can’t continue to accept second best if we want success

I don't. Our average attendance doesn't put us in that league, it puts us in league 2. Football has changed a lot in the last 20 years and past performance is not relevant to the fact that lots of clubs who had more potential fans have managed to attract those fans yet we couldn't even when we were 'good'.

Quoted from grimps

I said the other day on here that we the fans have a habit of accepting failure and making excuses for it .
From now on from top to bottom of this club if something isn’t right I expect to see it called out.
If balls aren’t round , training facilities not right , funds aren’t available , players aren’t interested , I want to see it outed in public.
I don’t want to hear how lucky we are to still have a club , how spoiled we’ve been or how difficult things are as I know this club should be two leagues higher than it is and wound be if run correctly .
I expect our fans , manager and especially board members to put this info into the public domain and I expect us as fans to react and let our feelings known.


We can’t continue to accept second best if we want success

I agree entirely.

Some of us called it out under Fenty for years, but far too may of our fellow fans seemingly want to accept second rate dross.

All the excuses we have had trotted out for years wont wash. We have the potential to be a successful league 1 club and that should be the aim from day one.

There is only one man to blame for all our ills and it is Fenty. Everybody else, players managers and backroom staff are just pawns in his game of run it cheaply and hope for the best. We never had a chance to succeed.

Assuming the takeover goes through, it will have to be different. Ironically I think the new owners will get far more public scrutiny than Fenty ever got; how he got away so lightly will always baffle me.

Quoted from pen penfras

I don't. Our average attendance doesn't put us in that league, it puts us in league 2. Football has changed a lot in the last 20 years and past performance is not relevant to the fact that lots of clubs who had more potential fans have managed to attract those fans yet we couldn't even when we were 'good'.

If we're using attendances as the primary determinant, the bottom half of League One is about par for the club based on it's infrastructure today. Attendances in recent years have been typically top 8 in League Two, but that's with a consistently bottom 8 side, and we still get higher gates than a number of League One clubs.

If we were to ever find ourselves at that level again (and it feels a million miles away right now), by the time you've accounted for the better quality of football and bigger away followings our attendances would absolutely not look out of place at that level. In the long-term there's no reason we couldn't aspire to achieve similar to what Rotherham have in recent years, flitting between the top of League One and the bottom of the Championship in a modest but modern stadium.

Right now it's all about healing our wounds and beginning to slowly rebuild from the bottom up, but we shouldn't underestimate the club's long-term potential. That hasn't disappeared.

Quoted from grimps

I said the other day on here that we the fans have a habit of accepting failure and making excuses for it .
From now on from top to bottom of this club if something isn’t right I expect to see it called out.
If balls aren’t round , training facilities not right , funds aren’t available , players aren’t interested , I want to see it outed in public.
I don’t want to hear how lucky we are to still have a club , how spoiled we’ve been or how difficult things are as I know this club should be two leagues higher than it is and wound be if run correctly .
I expect our fans , manager and especially board members to put this info into the public domain and I expect us as fans to react and let our feelings known.


We can’t continue to accept second best if we want success

I don’t want to see it in public.

One aspect of the incoming Board’s history that I am confident of is that they will improve fan and club interaction.

As a fan, I wouldn’t want, say (purely random) Harry Clifton moaning on Twitter that the balls were flat at training. As with any company, there should be systems in place so that the players can raise concerns with the managers and the managers can have an open conversation with the directors / owners. It should then be dealt with internally.

We have to give Stockwood and Pettit time to sort out this mess. And by time I mean several years, not the first 45 mins of next season.

You say we accept failure but I would also argue that during our time in the Championship, we didn't actually appreciate how good we had it? How embarrassing were the 'Carr Out' protests after we got relegated from the Championship with hindsight?

Quoted from pen penfras

I don't. Our average attendance doesn't put us in that league, it puts us in league 2. Football has changed a lot in the last 20 years and past performance is not relevant to the fact that lots of clubs who had more potential fans have managed to attract those fans yet we couldn't even when we were 'good'.

You're dead right football has changed over the past two decades. With that statement in mind, why hasn't the club changed? The facilities, the people, the processes. Same people doing the same things for 20 years hoping for a different result.

Thoughts please Mr Pen Penfras

Quoted from Poojah

If we're using attendances as the primary determinant, the bottom half of League One is about par for the club based on it's infrastructure today. Attendances in recent years have been typically top 8 in League Two, but that's with a consistently bottom 8 side, and we still get higher gates than a number of League One clubs.

If we were to ever find ourselves at that level again (and it feels a million miles away right now), by the time you've accounted for the better quality of football and bigger away followings our attendances would absolutely not look out of place at that level. In the long-term there's no reason we couldn't aspire to achieve similar to what Rotherham have in recent years, flitting between the top of League One and the bottom of the Championship in a modest but modern stadium.

Right now it's all about healing our wounds and beginning to slowly rebuild from the bottom up, but we shouldn't underestimate the club's long-term potential. That hasn't disappeared.

That number of league 1 clubs was 5 when covid struck. With 2 NL clubs having more than us. There were 3 L2 clubs with well over 7500, a number we haven't bettered since 1983/84. Our support would go up a bit with more success and more away fans, but it's not going to add 2000 onto the gate, which would have put us 15th in league 1. In 97/98 we averaged 5271 supporters in what was a very successful season with all of the things that you're claiming would put us higher up the standings if we had them.

It's all well and good dreaming that we can bring numbers through the gate, but we're a club in an isolated area with low income jobs and a history of success not driving attendances.

Quoted from SomeSanity

You're dead right football has changed over the past two decades. With that statement in mind, why hasn't the club changed? The facilities, the people, the processes. Same people doing the same things for 20 years hoping for a different result.

Thoughts please Mr Pen Penfras

My thoughts are that like a lot of small northern towns, we haven't had a mega rich owner to gift us money and facilities that would allow us to compete with the sugar daddies and influx of primarily southern clubs with growing support bases as local football has become more popular in the south. That combined with the big clubs being able to take away any player with a modicum of talent for peanuts has led to our stature in the footballing world falling and being unable to punch above our weight anymore.

Quoted from pen penfras

That number of league 1 clubs was 5 when covid struck. With 2 NL clubs having more than us. There were 3 L2 clubs with well over 7500, a number we haven't bettered since 1983/84. Our support would go up a bit with more success and more away fans, but it's not going to add 2000 onto the gate, which would have put us 15th in league 1. In 97/98 we averaged 5271 supporters in what was a very successful season with all of the things that you're claiming would put us higher up the standings if we had them.

It's all well and good dreaming that we can bring numbers through the gate, but we're a club in an isolated area with low income jobs and a history of success not driving attendances.

Apart from being relegated have you any more depressing news? Get the bad sh!t out the way now and prepare for a new begging with positive, not negative, posts.