⚽ Match Thread vs. Newport County AFC 23.11.24 [EFL L2]

[upthemaggies]

The owners won't be getting twitchy, because they don't see football in terms of "big investment" and an instant need for promotion like previous owners have. They simply look to improve the team - at a sustainable cost - each season, making the odds of promotion steadily greater. They also recognise that there are variables in football, like injuries to your best players, that can hold back even the strongest group of players.

Don't get me wrong, the owners are ambitious and want to climb the leagues, and if the squad this season proves strong enough to win promotion they will be delighted I'm sure, but if it isn't, they'll just look to improve a bit more again next summer. There's no "top five budgets" or "promotion or bust" panic about this regime, and the club is immeasurably better for that lack of chaos and anxiety.

There was desperation at times from fans when we fell just short of promotion from the National League, but never from the owners. They just kept looking to improve within our means, and in the end the success arrived. In fact, three near misses, battling away each season at the top end of the table, did no harm in growing our support base.

As fans we increasingly need to learn to see things in the same mature, strategic and patient way the owners do.

As with supporters of any club, they will get bored and stop attending if they believe momentum has been lost along with any tangible evidence of genuine ambition on the pitch. They don't turn up to be "educated" and told what to think, they pay money to be entertained.

All of the last three gates have been less than the previous one. Too early to tell if that's an indication that people are deciding they've had enough (of Maynard at least) or just other factors (opposition/ko time/weather), but as I've said before, you can't take support for granted and nobody is just going to sit there and accept they "need to be more mature and patient", they will do what fans have always done and go and do something else and spend their money elsewhere until the club gets its' act together again, be that a change in the dugout that gets people excited or a significant upturn in results.

Not saying we're at that point now, we are 4th, but as we saw last season, the tide can turn very quickly and I can't see many fans accepting a repeat and the excuses that go with it. 3 in wins in 11 is likely to become 3 in 12 after Walsall away. That's a quarter of a season's worth of lower mid-table form.

[jackal2]

As with supporters of any club, they will get bored and stop attending if they believe momentum has been lost along with any tangible evidence of genuine ambition on the pitch. They don't turn up to be "educated" and told what to think, they pay money to be entertained.

All of the last three gates have been less than the previous one. Too early to tell if that's an indication that people are deciding they've had enough (of Maynard at least) or just other factors (opposition/ko time/weather), but as I've said before, you can't take support for granted and nobody is just going to sit there and accept they "need to be more mature and patient", they will do what fans have always done and go and do something else and spend their money elsewhere until the club gets its' act together again, be that a change in the dugout that gets people excited or a significant upturn in results.

Without doubt there's some truth in that, but it doesn't justify any panic reactions. We're 4th in the league and have only lost 3 games out of 17 despite having had to soldier on without our best players in recent weeks.

If we're comparing the approaches of previous regimes and the current one when it comes to building attendances at Meadow lane, there's not even an argument to be had. The explosion of gates under the Reedtz brothers over the past few years has been phenomenal, and that has happened as a result of the calm, consistent, mature approach they've taken on and off the pitch. Yes the last couple of attendances have dropped a little, probably impacted by a range of factors including the weather, but previous owners of Notts County - even including Derek Pavis when he took us to Division One - would have killed to get the kind of gates that have been consistently achieved under this ownership.