I hate February, and it’s not even Valentines Day yet.
So, another game and another loss. And the first two-in-a-row under the GH regime. A record I’m sure he’ll cherish for as long as ten seconds.
By all accounts, this was one of those stomach-punch defeats, one where we weren’t bad at all but left KM with zero points instead of at least one.
Yet at a time of the season where results matter more than performances, it’s nothing to be happy about.
Sure, we’ve been helped by Tranmere being more shit than we are, and all we have to do is match their results from now on. But we can’t rely on that, especially if they suddenly hit a decent bit of form and we don’t.
Yesterday was a missed opportunity, and we can’t have too many more of those right now.
Especially when we’ve got people like Ipswich on Tuesday, Rotherham on Saturday and no doubt others who will suddenly decide to have their games of the season against us.
Basically, we’ve got to get through February with as little damage as possible.
Mind you, it doesn’t help when you hear about defensive frailties. Especially when one of our players gets bandaged up and we’re down a man for a while.
If we find ourselves in L2 next season, that might be as much of a reason why. I haven’t seen the new goalie in action yet (with luck, I’m at the game Tuesday) but he hasn’t had rave reviews.
As for up front… put it this way, it’s as much use as giving Philip Schofield a copy of Hustler.
I know that January transfer windows are awful for getting in a remotely decent striker, and I certainly don’t doubt GH was trying to replace Forss.
You certainly don’t need me to remind you this is an issue that has never been sorted since Lyle Taylor was here, and our current manager is still having to deal with previous negligence.
I note Mr Championship-Quality has another niggle, by the way.
That said, we are still missing Sanders and Wordsworth, to name but two, and the views from people there yesterday have been more positive than some games where we’ve won.
While it’s always dangerous to overwork the youngsters, it’s good to hear that Rudoni is impressing people. One for the future, if he keeps the form and attitude up that got him there to begin with.
Oh, and to remain injury free at the same time. So, that’s him doing his ligaments before long then…
And wouldn’t it be typical of us if we end up beating the Tractor Fellas on Tuesday? I wasn’t that impressed with them at Portman Road, and they’ve lost their last four straight.
Leaving form aside, it would be a massive psychological boost for us even to get a draw – especially if results go our way.
We do need a shot in the arm from somewhere right now. A good result Tuesday or even Saturday, an unexpected 3-0 win in another game, even a couple of clean sheets will do.
There’s too many games to go, and things are likely to change down at the bottom at least once. But at least it’s currently in our hands…
While the end of the season is still a couple of months away, firm NPL decisions are drawing ever closer.
The Plough Lane Bond is, at the time I write this, over £2.85m. No doubt helped by people getting paid at the beginning of the month and some money getting released from notice accounts.
If you’re reading this on Monday morning, it may have even reached the £3m mark. It could ultimately reach £4m by the time it closes on Friday, it may not.
£5m is a long shot though, not unless all the leafleting finds some eccentric millionaire that is.
I’ll be interested to see what the breakdown of who asked for what, although I would guess the majority would have gone for 4% over five years. If you’re not so worried about putting such money into somewhere unsecured, and you can afford to lose the amount if the worst happened, it’s not a bad incentive.
It’s a very good sum to reach, relatively speaking, and it does make you wonder why this wasn’t done instead of Seedrs.
A bond makes sense because it gets people with money in who otherwise wouldn’t be interested. It’s one of the oldest fundraising mechanisms in the book, and for good reason.
True, bonds do rule out most people contributing, although I note there’s a mechanism for smaller donations to go into a separate WAWF fundraiser, whose aim is £25k.
This method only works if you have a decent enough incentive, and/or a tangible reason, though. The PLB is helping get NPL done, although the as-yet-unobtained loan remains the more important bit.
Likewise, if we need to, say, redevelop the south stand at NPL then by all means do a bond for that. It’s an easy “angle” to sell, just like preventing NPL from being a one-sided stadium is helping the PLB.
But if you’re doing it to reduce shortfalls in the money you have to run the club, then there’s something wrong with the way you finance the organisation to begin with…
A thought occurred to me when writing this – does anyone else find it odd that there was no formal supporter fundraising drive before Seedrs?
I know there was the mooted-then-dismissed community shares idea, so there must have been some expectancy that additional funding from supporters etc would have been a likely option.
And even though the club acted, ahem, strangely in a lot of things around 2016/17 onwards, surely they wouldn’t have missed an opportunity to grab money from the collective pockets?
A bond (or similar) back then may not have raised all it intended to, but it would have struck while the iron was still hot and the well of goodwill hadn’t been entirely wrung dry by then.
Mind you, this week we found out we’re employing a stadium manager and revenue officer after figuring out that Joe Palmer can’t do it all. I mean, the physical NPL construction is only 40% or so done…