Next 6 League Games

Unfortunately, my view is that the situation in the past is somewhat different to today so the longer term chances of getting ourselves back in the upper levels of the Football League are pretty slender.

Back in the good old days when our teams were regularly playing (and often beating) the likes of Man City and Wolves in the second tier, the world of football was very different indeed. Unfortunately, pretty much every change since then discriminates in favour of the bigger clubs as money goes to money so, even if (when?  ) we manage to get promoted back into the League, the best we can hope for longer-term is to establish ourselves in one of the bottom two divisions with the (very) odd jaunt up into the second tier for a season or two once in a blue moon. Much like Scunny have been over the past few years, really.

Smaller clubs just can't compete for players with the amount of money on offer from the bigger Championship clubs, especially now that any young talent is hoovered up for a pittance. The Bosman ruling means that any decent players you do manage to sign/develop tend to leave for either nothing or much below their actual worth.

However, that's all rather a long way in the future.

For the present, I think Hurst has gathered together a decent squad, but it is one very much in his image - set up to be difficult to beat and without a huge amount of flair. But then, we are talking about Conference football here! I don't think there is anything wrong with playing this style but we do still seem to be short a player or two who can provide that extra quality we need to push on further. Lots of talk about how well Akinde is doing for them - I seem to remember reading that we enquired about him earlier in the year, but he was already set for a move to Barnet? Hardly surprising that he decided to move there given a choice as he's from the south east and Alfreton was by far the most northerly club he's played for.

Unfortunately, I don't think we have the players to play the expansive game many want to see. Not enough pace in the middle of the park. However, I certainly think we could be a little more aggressive in attack in some games, but how much of this is down to the players and how much is the manager, I don't know.

Bang on the money Maringer.