How do we build a team when we only offer short term contracts? Whenever we start to get a decent set of players a few are always out of contract, take the bigger bucks and then we have to rebuild again. That isnt an Ardley decision, its a strategy that ensures we dont carry dead wood but it means a constant need to find more rough diamonds or journeymen and hope they do a job for us. We wont get a 100% success rate every season and the manager has to make do. Ardley does a good job with the tools he's given. If we had got money or kept the likes of taylor, elliott etc I suspect we'd not have issues scoring goals. For us its always a budget issue or a risk management issue. We dont take risks with contracts so theres little upside or downside and we'll roughly perform to where we are in the budget table.

This place is now basically a version of SW19 complete with a comment section

Did anyone who saw the game get a view on whether Wood has anything about him to suggest he’ll solve longer term needs?

That was a party political broadcast on behalf of the AFC Neal Ardley Party

TF, haha. I am out of here.......see you all at Accy!!! ;-)

Unfortunate autocorrect in your second to last post Shergy but since you asked 45 Male Gloucestershire.

Lurker, I agree. I think this is our 'level'. If we have a good season we could make the play offs like Shrewsbury did last season on a low budget.

Out of interest isn’t this our biggest year for players on loan since getting into the league?

There really seems to be something more than the manager to the struggle to attract better players and to develop players. Personally I think we’ve plateaued as far as a club at our current size can go. I’m not sure anyone is going to do better right now. Certainly I don’t see another regular manager getting any further and I don’t see what is going to attract a big name to entice better coaches and players for lower wages than they can get elsewhere.

Spit the academy is still playing catch up. I think on that front we sort of shoot ourselves in the foot by talking about half the team or whatever. Hartigan is probably the first academy product who looks like he has come through at our current league level. Sibbick will probably make league 1 level and Nightingale as well. But look at the previous batch, Egan and Kaja and neither really looks comfortable at our level.

i think Northampton were quite big spenders. I think they were in the top 6 last season but still got relegated. I am sure Oxford asl pay much more than us.

Silk it isn’t but it also is. It isn’t just that we don’t have a big transfer budget relative to the others you named, who are all more competitive on that front than us. We don’t have the structure (yet, hopefully) to support what we do have. Realistically we’re still doing some things on a semi pro basis.

In nearly 6 years,which I thought by now we would of built a team without all the loan players(youth coming through).only the calender year of 2016 ,which was great the other 5 years awful. In my opinion.5/10 for me.

We don’t have a window to buy or loan players. We don’t have the money to hire another coach (although we surely need at least a specialist to work with the attackers). We have admitted our scouting and transfer structure is best endeavours among multi-tasking. We know our facilities are very basic. We are going to struggle to survive in league 1 until we can change a lot of those things. So not sure sacking Ardley changes anything unless the 3 of them all go and get a complete new set up. But the board have more or less said that ain’t happening.

Well the manager Lurker . That’s what’s being discussed

I do not think Northampton and Oxford were able to spend the other teams. And Sheffield United are not big players in League One are currently ninth and could go third if they win tomorrow. Oh, and Brentford are second and they are hardly big spenders in the Championship.

Silk it is a good question - what is his ambition. If he genuinely isn’t looking beyond here and the board “understand” what can and can’t be achieved then what is the shake up? I actually think this board will find it way harder to sack NA and they weren’t entirely happy with ever having to sack anyone, bar the obvious case. But I’d also say what can we change right now to make a difference?

Silk, but I would imagine Wilder has had much biger budgets?

Tintin, yes I except entertainment is important for new fans.

I love the fact we apparently got more money and no one else did so we didn’t we do football Manager and sign every world class defender in football today - cos that is how it works in the real world.

The big problem is that Neal is being allowed to live off his promotion which is fine is he wants to stay as our boss long term. If he wants to progress to bigger and better things then he has to show he can get us to out-perform expectations and budget consistently. If he wants a bigger club to manage.

Shergy the results have been largely shit . For a long time

Shergy entertainment is a big factor for getting new fans to return, there is no shock crowds are down after last season. Tbis season we started better ublucky against Coventry, Sunderland, Barnsley, but as results havent gone our way, the old ways have returned very quickly he made a huge point of getting rid of certain players, but we remain the same, if the players have changed, who is responsible?

I just googled Mona Lott. Filth, OI. Pure filth.

Will let Mona Lott enjoy the misery for the evening.