Colchester at home Tuesday

Quoted from GrimRob

Our budget dictates where our "true" position should be. There are quite a few clubs with much bigger budgets than ours. Even in the National League we didn't have the biggest budget. Do we have a top 10 budget?

I want us to live within our means rather than thinking we "belong" a division higher than we actually do.

Somebody asked the question on another thread 'how long do we blame Fenty for our current situation ?' .

For me the debate of where we currently 'sit' just underpins the argument that he should be accountable for the medium to longer term future .

When clubs were building modern facilities to increase revenue and moving through the gears we were going backwards with seemingly ever depreciating facilities and a worse 'product' on the field .



Is the situation salvagable ? in that are we so far behind now , that it's near impossible to catch up ( see Brighton ,Luton , Brentford and Palace ) and to a lesser extent Rotherham , Lincoln , Blackpool and the like .


I feel we missed the boat through a 'golden period ' of time with the stadium , we took the difficult option with ITV digital which was the morally correct one ; when going into administration was the easy way out and a route to future prosper

Which has left us behind with various revenue streams , still at BP and some portacabins at Cheapside when Doncaster as an example went from getting 2k at Belle Vue to a state of the art stadium ; it's sad we don't even know what our potential is we can only speculate .

The last 20 years have been dire if you look at it on the whole

It's sad that us who have been going a bit longer have to look back so far for any consistent success , and those of the newer generation have not seen much at all barring about 5 games - 5 games in 20 years I would suggest is not a great return .

I just hope we have a brighter future , with Stockwood and Pettit delivering league 1 football + some more off the pitch improvements .

Quoted from Captain Sensible

It's very simple really.  No team has played more of the top teams than us, and no team has played fewer of the bottom teams than us - just one.  We have a decent haul of points against mid-table teams at nearly 2 per game.

Sorry if that doesn't support your narrative.

Lets be honest.. Not many teams below us to play so no good hoping to get many points from them below us is there

Quoted from Captain Sensible

It's very simple really.  No team has played more of the top teams than us, and no team has played fewer of the bottom teams than us - just one.  We have a decent haul of points against mid-table teams at nearly 2 per game.

Sorry if that doesn't support your narrative.

This argument lost its credibility weeks ago IMO.

We're 20th in the league after 14 games for crying out loud. If we're clinging to the hope of getting some points on the board when we play the 4 teams below us then this is a sad state affairs the management have got us into.

Quoted from GrimRob

Our budget dictates where our "true" position should be. There are quite a few clubs with much bigger budgets than ours. Even in the National League we didn't have the biggest budget. Do we have a top 10 budget?

I want us to live within our means rather than thinking we "belong" a division higher than we actually do.

Historic average attendances are a reasonable barometer of what “par” looks like for a given club. Clearly it doesn’t tell you everything, we’re above Bournemouth for instance, but the notion that we have the footprint of a mid-table League One club feels about right to me.

This season’s League Two is a bit of an anomaly in terms of the amount of money sloshing about, but in general, this is a division that shouldn’t be beyond our grasp to escape (in the right direction for once). I think others are right who suggest that we shouldn’t let 20 years of below par finishes cloud our perception of what the club should be capable of.

https://fanbanter.co.uk/how-englands-top-four-divisions-look-based-on-all-time-average-attendance/

Good post.
My guess, if it was a league table based on playing budget, is that we are probably about 8-10 places below that equivalent. Just a guess. Nonetheless. 20th in L2 in 2023 is not, and should not, be acceptable to anyone associated with GTFC, all things considered.

By another metric I remember maybe 20 years or so ago looking at the all time league position for all clubs.

If I remember rightly we were well in the top 30, I think mid 20's of the 92, miles ahead of a lot of clubs that have left us for dead.

I darent look now, but it is quite remarkable how the last 20 or so years have clouded how the club is viewed.

Quoted from Tommy

This argument lost its credibility weeks ago IMO.

We're 20th in the league after 14 games for crying out loud. If we're clinging to the hope of getting some points on the board when we play the 4 teams below us then this is a sad state affairs the management have got us into.

Which club's supporters don't hope for points on the board when playing lower placed teams, I wonder?

And anyway, who said anything about 4 teams?  Of Doncaster, MK Dons, Newport, Tranmere, Forest Green, Colchester and Sutton, we have played just Tranmere.

I don’t think that’s what he’s saying exactly….

Quoted from Mappers

Somebody asked the question on another thread 'how long do we blame Fenty for our current situation ?' .

For me the debate of where we currently 'sit' just underpins the argument that he should be accountable for the medium to longer term future .

When clubs were building modern facilities to increase revenue and moving through the gears we were going backwards with seemingly ever depreciating facilities and a worse 'product' on the field .



Is the situation salvagable ? in that are we so far behind now , that it's near impossible to catch up ( see Brighton ,Luton , Brentford and Palace ) and to a lesser extent Rotherham , Lincoln , Blackpool and the like .


I feel we missed the boat through a 'golden period ' of time with the stadium , we took the difficult option with ITV digital which was the morally correct one ; when going into administration was the easy way out and a route to future prosper

Which has left us behind with various revenue streams , still at BP and some portacabins at Cheapside when Doncaster as an example went from getting 2k at Belle Vue to a state of the art stadium ; it's sad we don't even know what our potential is we can only speculate .

The last 20 years have been dire if you look at it on the whole

It's sad that us who have been going a bit longer have to look back so far for any consistent success , and those of the newer generation have not seen much at all barring about 5 games - 5 games in 20 years I would suggest is not a great return .

I just hope we have a brighter future , with Stockwood and Pettit delivering league 1 football + some more off the pitch improvements .

Some good points. We can't change the past, and things could certainly be a lot worse now. I was prepared for at least a decade in non-league last time and so many clubs have gone down the trapdoor the fact that we are an EFL club is something never to underestimate. Really League 2 and the NLP should merge, the population has gone up and a lot more professional teams exist than they did do when we all started watching the game. Many teams have dropped down a rung or two. We need 5 divisions and that should be enough to hold all the "serious" teams, as 4 once was enough (even 2 long ago).

It's incredibly hard for the owners because they have to have one eye on the long term as well as address the short term. They have had an incredible honeymoon but as you say it's going to take a long time to bring things around.

Everyone is incredibly impatient, me included. I would probably have sacked PH last weekend with no succession plan. Even though I know that changing the manager rarely is an answer in itself.

For me though the bottom line is we have to live within our means. This season the league seems considerably harder than last year, the number of clubs chasing a small number of prizes is big, the amount of money sloshing around unbelievable (hard to think that 2 years ago during the pandemic it was feared for a while that many teams might disappear). If we can't keep up with them then we have to be patient until the day when we can.

Just received a weather warning for tomorrow - heavy rain from the early hours to 4pm.

Possibility the game could be called off and a bit of a reprieve for hursty?

Also be interesting to see how well the new drainage system under the pitch copes?