With the sort of start to the season the club has made, we undoubtedly ask many difficult and often, even harder to answer questions.
I will endeavour to answer a few of the ones I can, as openly, as possible and hopefully we can move on and support the team, through what is a frustrating time.We are not happy with our position in the league or the way we are playing, we just are not consistent enough and a lot of that is down to the enforced changes we have had. To put a team out with so many positional and personnel changes is hard enough, but to do it whilst the season is underway and the pressure of winning matches for points, makes the job almost impossible.
Our injuries have handicapped us immediately and even though our initial budget was more than last season, that again, has increased by almost 25% to cover for the injuries we have had. In real terms we have probably got one of the top 10 budgets in the league now!
I continue to support the budget financially and continue to try and help improve the current squad. If anything is needed it will be there for Russ and his team as we work together to alleviate this poor start to the season.
I like most of you want to see exciting football, attacking football and most of all, the team winning, but I live in a world of reality as most of the fans do and that is just not what happens. This football club will get over this difficult time and come through the other end with a stronger and wiser perspective on it's future, we are all learning!
A few of you are doubting the Team and management and I understand fully, that is football, it has almost become an institution to change things when they are bad and that change seems to happen quicker and quicker in football. I think it is important for all of us here at the club to not only get things back on track, but to learn from the issues we are now having to cope with.
As your Chairman, I will continue to move the club forward with a business plan that will sustain us for the future and one just not based on the one day a week income stream we currently work with. A sustainability that will include success, as well as bringing in a new era for the club, something that started with promotion last season.
I believed we could compete in League One and still think we can, even with all the setbacks I will endeavour to support this club in every way I can to make that work and that starts by supporting the management and team 100%, that is what I have been doing and will continue to do until a decision is made otherwise.
It is disappointing when fans stay away and at times write on forums and in the press on how they would like their team to lose, so they get their wish. You could say unbelievable, but this is football and it is so fickle, it breaks your heart.
I will not stay away, I will continue to support the club, a club I now feel a reel affinity to. Watching some of the performances has been as difficult for me as you the fans and in fact with the continued high investment and commitment to hours and hours of work trying to get it right, shouldn't I be hurting more?
Character is what we must show and that will be led by both the players and management, if they put the performances in, I know you will be behind them, that's what it comes down to in the end.
This club is as open to the fans as it has ever been and I am always available to talk to you on match days, in the week whilst at the club, or at forums so please take that opportunity if you want your questions answered. That's where you will get the facts, nowhere else and that's where you will get the honest comments, not conjecture unlike other media outlets.
See you Saturday!
Peter Swann
Chairman