Quote Originally Posted by alexmick View Post
Dave Artell has stated that 'the whole club's future depends on staying up'. 20th November. BBC Sport.

From great expectations at the start of the season, to this. Talk of relegation. These are worrying times. Mind you, the warning signs have been there for the past five seasons to my mind. It would be interesting to work out exactly what our loss ratio has been since we left Wembley with the Football League Trophy (2012-13 season). Bet the figures are dreadful.
Mick, we know what he means but its not actually true as most clubs don't disappear like the Tranmere's, Wrexham, Chester and many others and some get bigger gates than many in L2 including us...But it is difficult to get back in once you are down and its not popular to say this but the board must carry the blame because we have wasted millions on the academy and it must be almost gone now. A slim academy is fine and Dario managed it on a shoe string until he and the board got blind drunk with ambition that it would provide PL standard players for ever and they the board would not be asked to put one penny in. In fact as we know one director at least, thought it was his own personal piggy bank.

The First team must always be the priority and when directors say its not and its the academy, then I give up...No really professional club would starve that at the expense of a Iffy training facility that has no guarantee it will produce the goods and anyway there are thousands of players out there looking for clubs and lots of them will be better than ours..But when you tie all your money to one tree then they will be blind to all the possibilities.

I am still annoyed that when we sold Dean Ashton for all that money, we then went on a death spiral and we signed hardly anybody as the money was reserved for the academy and so on and so on....escaped relegation on goal difference that year, then nothing changed and we got relegated the season after....

Lessons will be learned said Mr Bowler......have they?