TJHValiant

I agree. Totally agree, but the years spent outside that in league 2 in recent years have hit us hard and we no longer seem to have the resources many third tier clubs have. I remember when we first got relegated to the league 1 again in about 2000, just how small a lot of clubs seemed in terms of stadia and staff.

So half of what Uche was looking at for joining Charlton? 😂

Realistically we are a similar size, working class club like Tranmere and unfortunately a lot of the great old industrial clubs like Oldham, Bury, Walsall, Bradford etc have been doomed due to the fact that there is no working class anymore. The days of everyone finishing a shift and going as a workplace to the football are totally alien concepts. The only reason Wrexham have been saved from a similar fate is due to all the money thrown at them. They had suffered it over the past 10 years or so beforehand. Getting into league 1 is a good achievement for us. I do think we are still capable of spending a decade at that level but doing so in the Championship which give or take is what we did in the 90s will be impossible.

We never had enough strikers anyway. If we had one decent striker but not Uche and Loft we would basically have Wilson, Dipepa and someone decent. That was not enough. This season was a story of us not having a budget to compete. We saw that clearly, when despite not having enough strikers, we decided to let the only one who had played a full pre season go to MK Dons. The fact he wanted to go to a league 2 team in the first place tells us all you need to know. Then, in January, Uche plays one decent game and he is allowed to chat to Charlton for a rumoured 10k per week! He only came back because Charlton thought they had got Clarke Harris instead. At the time, Charlton were our closest relegation rivals and we sought to buy…nobody. After all that despite having no players to mention, March comes round and we decide to give Deklan Wynnne free money for a month. We now know that was a total waste, as not only has he not played, he can’t influence anything as we are relegated anyway. For a club that had a tight budget, we still seem to be failing to learn the lessons of running a tight ship where possible

Not necessarily. Our ability to create those chances to score goals has been as poor as I can remember. Sang is awful at crossing and getting the ball into the box. Our biggest miss is Worrall who was good at that. I think Loft may have had more with him around.

I’ve seen a few claiming this. He went to Vale because he was injured, unwanted and unfit but fitted the most valuable aspect of the matrix. It was not about: Not fitting a system. Not having a good attitude Not even being good. He ticked the most crucial box of all. Cheap. That’s why he was at Vale.

Uche was not the boat being pushed out by any stretch. He had been sitting around all summer without a club and was unfit. If we had the budget for league 1 strikers we would have them. Instead we got the desperate. Cambridge have 9 contracted strikers and are right at the bottom end of league 1. We barely kept hold of 3 and the best one we had, Harrison was let go, under contract, to get a pay increase at a league 2 club. If we had a league 1 budget, you would have kept him and Loft. The only proven league 1 players with experience of regular starts in the division were Ojo and Massey. The rest of our squad came from league 2 or were unproven from higher clubs, like Sang. Then Wilson turned down our initial contract offer, suggesting that it a crock with little obvious options finds our pay unappealing, what will decent league 1 strikers think about our offers? Answer, they did think much of them and went to other clubs in league 1 with bigger budgets. I.E clubs that are league 1 clubs, because they stayed in the division. That gives a massive clue to how bad our budget was. Another clue is that our two best players who started regularly were loans. Further clue, total lack of investment in January, when Reading fans spent more on a statue of Rudge, than Carol did on actual players. Biggest clue is when we look at our league 2 squad and August and say…”it looks better than our league 1 team last season” Final clue, is that every single player released will not be playing league football next season. Not just because they were awful but because they were signed cheap in the hope they would be good enough, not on the evidence from league 1 or better history on the pitch. Why? League 1 standard players cost more.

It was a league 2 squad on a league 2 budget. That’s the reality. We never kicked on with the increase in quality hoped for. The real tragedy of this season is that it is hard to see how we will convincingly consistently compete in league 1 without a serious amount of increased revenue or more debt.

I would expect given how everyone was saying what a well run club we were and how lucky we are to have such an amazing owner, we should expect promotion. Anything less would make Carol look a bit crap really.

I think the money alone is probably going to be the defining factor.

I agree. I was quite impressed with Uche’s attitude. I would keep him.

8? That would do. He’d have increased this years tally by 700%

Much as I would like to laugh, we all know that the crap non league striker route has been very well trodden and has not been successful. Kyle Perry? Ricky Miller? Dior “dire” Angus?

You’d think so, but some guys can do it in league 2 but not league 1. We have seen Loft can’t do it in league 1. Even Pope never really did it in league 1. Not Loft levels of bad, but certainly, even at Bury never set the world alight.

I agree, after all he has in the past. A lot of these names of non league players being thrown about does not mean they would do better. I reckon if Loft was in the national league we’d be gagging to sign him at 26 years of age. To do well in league 1 now, you need half a championship squad. I don’t see any comfortable league 1 team full of non league punts or taken from the released list of league 2 teams. We don’t have any player anywhere near the standard of a Sam Vokes, yet Wycombe are firmly average for the league. I don’t think he will ever do it in league 1, so even if he scored 20 in league 2 next season, we should still not renew his contract if in league 1.