1

Reading to liquidate, Cambridge to field 2 ineligibles, Fleetwood and Stevenage win, one of those teams forfeit their ground lease so they’re auto relegated under league rules, Bolton lend us some points for selling them our only defender for magic beans, and perhaps the hardest part to secure … a Vale win. Last chance saloon this.

Chizzy will want to play and score I’d imagine, as wouldn’t that be 10 league goals for the season. Nice round number. He could go for 15 but let’s get the 10 in the bag first.

The goalkeeping was a prime concern and almost sent us down last season. That warning caused the recruitment team to earmark and secure a first choice goalkeeping target in the summer. I think something similar will happen this season and we’ll see a striker target secured early. Well put it this way, if we don’t start the season with decent striker options in 24/25 after the way this season’s gone then nothing will convince them to fork out for a striker.

There should be some sort of rule for preventing teams blatantly ruining the competitive edge of the league in the latter games. Didn't Bristol Rovers go up with exactly the required score line, beating Scunny about 314-0 on the last day? Not sure what the rule would be / policing, but it's becoming more of an issue.

Tyrone Loran, anyone remember him?

Or summer, or previous jan, or previous summer

And of course we got him in peak ‘Vale condition’ - injured, unavailable, and lacking fitness

The biggest mistake of all the mistakes was sacking Darrell Clarke. His stock just rises and rises as more of what he had to contend with at the time becomes unravelled.

We had a competitive budget this year, it was just spent unwisely by those who were supposed to be the football and recruitment experts. Short of Carol scouting the players herself I don’t know what else she could do. She could have gotten rid of Crosby and Flitters earlier, but she’ll learn from that. Her biggest mistake has been leaving others in place too long to make too many mistakes with the first team. I do think this relegation will have caused a big wake up call for her decision-making and I wouldn’t be surprised if she got more hands with exactly how the budget is being spent - in terms of holding them constantly and firmly to account. Regarding intentions, financial input and everything else that goes into ownership, she’s got our best interests at heart and she’s obviously the right person to lead us back to L1. Sang, Grant, Lowe, Ripley, Uche, Loft etc. will not have been cheap. There was plenty of money there I’m sure to get a decent striker without having no support players to fund it. She gave the recruitment team the funds and they squandered it. Signing Uche and Loft proves we could have got decent strikers for the funds available. That’s part of my anger with this whole mess; it’s not just a rubbish squad, but an expensive group that are going to be hard to shift before their contracts run out.

He was injured on international duty. Still is injured. Didn’t realise he was still injured.

Someone who's departure has been overlooked somewhat, due to the lament for Ollie and Alfie, is Josh Thomas. He was getting better and knew where the net was. Not only fast, but also chased, which are two different things. Would have grabbed more goals than those who replaced him. Ah well.

Leutwiler Lomax Smith Yak Wynne Walters Chislett Plant Shorrock Garrity Dipepa No loans, none out of contract, no underachievers, only decent seniors, our developing talent (Yak and Smith aside, no-one to replace them)

what does a winger look like? I haven't seen one since 2018.

I think one of the first tests will be his retained list. If anyone is offered a contract, like Uche or Massey, then it'll set alarm bells ringing. Maybe he thinks Wynne will b good enough, but any that have been playing should be leaving. I'm hoping every chance he gets he'll be bringing in better players that play specific roles. If he is stuck with some he can't get rid of, then he'll have to maximise the other spaces.

All aboard super Darren piss the league express. Chooo choooo.