Originally Posted by
Dodbroon
I reckon there is a fair amount of work, costly work, needing done to sort matters out in the close season because, let's face it, the most optimistic take on the new stadium, if we are realistic, is another 2 years at Dens. Leaving comments about Nelms himself aside and let's just say management had a call to make as to how much work was required on the pitch as the timelines for the new Stadium stretched and we gained promotion. Ok we got it wrong but it was likely a judgement call rather than total neglect. They would have been looking at how much or in our case how little would require to be spent to get through an indeterminate number of seasons keeping play on the park but not spending pointless sums if moving was indeed fairly imminent. This is good management of funds so long as you get it right, which of course we didn't. Imo if we were still in the Championship there would not have been the same furore. Likely some of the postponements would not have happened out with the Premier League; I'm sure many of the pitches passed fit in the lower leagues have been no better than Dens at times this season. The main thing though is that if said judgement call was in fact made any criteria taken into account would have been blown out of the water by the untypical and, even for a climate change sceptic like me, extreme rainfall we have experienced over this season. A year's rain in a couple of months, double annual rainfall and a complete reversal of the usual west/east rainfall distribution falls imo into extreme territory.
This climate input into the equation does not exonerate management from a poor decision regarding pitch maintenance but it goes a long way to being a major contributing factor to our problems which I hope are being strongly articulated to the SPFL.
Finally, and in support of the aforementioned, we are currently in the middle of a severe weather warning for rain today, Tuesday with another set for tomorrow matchday. April showers????