Thoughts on the situation

by | Nov 12, 2020 | News

Bad place, but have to look ahead

Players

Someone said yesterday “we can’t keep on using the excuse that they are only kids”. I think we can.
There’s a reason they are at Wigan, and although it is and has been a good Development squad they are not used to playing seasoned pros. With the exception of a very few (eg Gelhardt) most can expect at most a career at Peterborough or Scunthorpe, or yes, even Wigan.

But they would be brought into those teams gently – bench warm a bit. Come on and maybe make an impact. Be surrounded by and coached by more experienced old hands.

They will not be expected to be the cavalry, the saviours, the ones who form the backbone of the team. It is totally unfair to put such weight of expectation on them as a group. Individually they will make mistakes. All players do. But if they are one youngster in a more experienced team they will be supported and the other experienced players can claw back the damage done.

Get off their backs.

Manager

I admired him for stepping into a job that was always going to be a poisoned chalice. He knew there was going to be no money, no chance to bring he players he wanted. There was no security that there would even be a club.

But. And here comes a big but. His comments yesterday were a disgrace frankly. As I said above, the payers are inexperienced. They are raw. Not just one or two, but the whole squad, pretty well. They need protecting. They needed a manager Sunday like the Chorley manager, who gathered the team round before extra time, and gave a rousing speech.

Who encouraged, cajoled maybe, inspired. Someone who looked for fight, someone to inspire them that even though they are young and inexperienced they are League players now. Inspire them to step up to the plate.
He didn’t do that.

Crowd

Lack of a crowd is devastating to us. We would have got behind the team yesterday, cheered them on. Encouraged (in a way the manager didn’t). We would have hounded the referee for the red card. We would have unsettled a team used to playing in front of far less (even though we would not be packing out the ground).

We would have the drummer, we would have Sunshine, we could have made a difference.
But there was nothing but shouts from the Chorley bench.

Senior management

Another thing that is missing. We have been critical of the manager over the last few weeks, maybe justified, maybe not. But he is actually at the moment answerable to no-one.

There is no Chairman, Board of Directors or Chief Executive to say to him “this isn’t good enough” or “what is happening” or “what are your plans for this Saturday’s game” or (maybe) “you shouldn’t have said that”

Yes, one of the administrators is nominally in charge of footballing matters, but the bar is very low – the administrators’ job is to get the purchase over the line. These results won’t particularly bother them – except to devalue the club, and with a deal seemingly in the bag it is of little concern.

The fact this deal is taking such a long time is speaking volumes. There are serious concerns somewhere and they were highlighted by the fact the deal was originally put together with the Supporters Club money included for the purchase of the club.

The Supporters Club then quite rightly came back with a statement clarifying that the money is not there to help buy the club, but to buy a fan stake hold once a board was put together.

The false claim that WASC has withdrawn their support id just that, false. They are quite happy to sit down with the eventual owner to discuss a stake hold. 4% for £870,000 is a non-starter anyway.

But only a stable board challenging results and providing either cash or financial muscle is what is needed. The Supporters stake hold will dwindle as the owners plough money in, but our (the fan’s) money shouldn’t be part of the bidder’s buying stake.

And until that is sorted we are where we are.

Conclusion

We are in a bad place, but we are still alive. There is a lot to do and already League 2 beckons. If it does then so be it, but hopefully we can get the new owners in, we can stabilise enough to survive this season in League One, and go from there.
I’ll still be buying my Latics TV match passes. I still wear my Latics facemask, and my polo shirts and my jacket. I will not be throwing a tantrum on Twitter or wherever how we should just fold, this is the worst team ever, and how they aren’t going again.
UTFT.

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