Our failings have been

- the summer transfer debacle. Yes we had fewer weeks than other teams but by all account we had no proper recruiting infrastructure in place. That's on the CEO, for me, and by extension the Board who should have been making sure we were set up correctly

- youth setup not delivering first teamers. They've strengthened there and we've started buying people for potential as well as growing our own, so hopefully we're already on the right track on this one. Time will tell.

- difficulties in attracting the right calibre of players. I agree with whoever said that's nothing to do with where we are geographically and everything to do with the wage structure. However, breaking the club for short-term gain would be daft: suppose we break the wage structure, take some debt on our balance sheet and spend, we stay up. Those players are going to expect that new wage structure to continue and new players will expect it as well. That way lies Portsmouth. So while I think we should definitely look at this and see if we can't do a little more, I personally think it's right to consider the long term future of the club and not break the bank for the sake of any one season. It really is important to protect our balance sheet because we don't have crooks from this country or any other to pump money onto it.

- selection/position issues. These are down to a manager learning his craft. We've invested this much in him, I'd like to see us follow through. Stay up or go down I want SAN in charge for a good while yet. The earliest I'd be thinking of "manager conversations" is Christmas, if we're nowhere near top two (or seem at risk of becoming embedded in the bottom three if we do stay up, which I don't think we will now). We need to know our best starting XI and it's not clear to me that we do even now.

- performance issues. To an extent on the team, to an extent maybe expecting players at the level we have to play at the level we'd like them to be. Not always possible. And playing players out of position has never been a great plan.

- shirt/sponsor debacle - minor in the grand scheme of things but again makes me wonder about the CEO, who should be across this kind of thing. The test will be, do we do it better for this coming season.

- communications - our club's comms have been poor for some time and really do need a shakeup. Sorry, but that's another for the CEO.

For this coming window we should know what we have to spend and have the infrastructure in place to spend it wisely. I assume we're already talking to potential targets and will look to get at least some business done early. If as seems likely we go down we will lose a number of good players - that's not on the CEO/Board, but making sure we replace them with good enough players to get us back up is. The commercial terms around the shirts should be sensible and the comms around transfers and so on much more professionally managed than the last few windows.

If we stay up I hope they do the ground extension; either way, some of our capex has to be on Colney and I think that's already in place, which is good.

Posted By: Old Man, May 1, 11:01:46