This is the reality of our situation.
When you look at the make up of the National League, there are around half a dozen teams (Tranmere, Wrexham, Grimsby, Lincoln, Chester, Cheltenham etc) who are "bigger" than us in terms of the gates they are getting. There are also a few "smaller" teams (FGR, Eastleigh etc) who are, largely because of having wealthy backers, able to blow our budget out of the water, who are now edging ever closer to our sort of gates - simply because of the ambition of the clubs and the draw of following Aaron ambitious, successful, winning team! Then you have a number of "smaller" teams (Dover, Braintree, Bromley etc) who because of where they are located (South East) are able to operate a highly successful part time model on gates considerably smaller than ours. They can do that, because just as in the past, wher we have been unable to convince part time players to sign for us and turn pro - these players are more than capable of playing at a higher level but the combination of part time football and meaningful outside employment doesn't make it attractive financially for them to do so. These clubs will always be hindered by having small followings, they are unlikely to progress (or survive) in the Football League but they are more than capable of surviving at this level provided they get their recruitment right.
In straightened times like these, we as a football cub are now having to survive on just the income that we produce, without the benefit of inward investment by a wealthy backer(s) we are, in the words of Paul Cox no longer "big boys" in this League.
We are in effect, more similar to the likes of Kidderminster, Aldershot, Macclesfield etc at this moment in time - all clubs who have enjoyed spells in the Football League and who still generate reasonable attendances but don't have any money/wealthy backers. There are also a number of well established part time teams at this level who have Managers who KNOW what is required to survive at this level - they may not quite match our attendances but they can usually produce pretty solid teams who manage to compete (Woking, Altrincham etc) It is these teams, together with a small group of well run part time teams who are really punching above their weight (Welling, Boreham Wood, Guiseley etc) that in reality we are competing against.
What clubs like ours need in this situation is stability both on and off the pitch and if you get that it can work - I would give you Macclesfield as a prime example - a well run club, smaller than us, who are still able to be very competitive it seems. They even flirted with the play offs last season and are going well again this season too. It is this sort of model we should strive to match, in the absence of a sugar daddy - but you need stability - for all sorts of reasons we have had nothing approaching that over the last six months - and when chaos reins that is when you see clubs in the sort of free fall we now find ourselves in.
Unfortunately, the last thing we have been is "stable" over the last few years in my opinion. Despite giving the facade of stability, the previous owners were just papering over the cracks in reality as the club has been in decline for the last four years - far too reliant on the generosity of one individual whilst at the same time not paying any due care and attention to how a football club at our level needed to be run sensibly - with the wrong people put in charge to oversee matters.
In order to survive this season on just what we produce, we needed in the summer to make good decisions and throw in some luck for good measure. Unfortunately, we got neither - our bad luck probably started BEFORE the new consortium even took over when Mark Bowen of MB Insolvency Services ( who was rumoured to be a main player) pulled out - we could surely have done with his expertise on board! Subsequently, almost half of the new consortium just "melted away" within months - we may never know the real reasons why - but personal and business reasons pretty much covers everything anyway, I guess!
Bad luck also came our way on the field too, when our best player Luke Young got injured and (probably) ruled himself out for the season, further injury to Waide Fairhurst and then the loss of top scorer Ryan Bowman and more recently James Hurst has further blighted our chances of survival - whether the losses of these two was preventable, or not, we don't really know - but both of them allied to the loss of Young have been huge losses to the team and our chances of survival.
As for the decision making, it was always going to be the case that the new owners were going to have to make some big and painful calls - to put right the years of spending as if there was no tomorrow under the previous regime - so the Academy went straight away together with all the staff and of course several other jobs were cut in order to streamline the business. All unfortunate decisions but I think most of us recognised the need to "cut our cloth" accordingly.
Perhaps the biggest call though, and in hindsight the one that carried the greatest risk to the stability of the club, was the decision to place Hargreaves/Hodges and Veysey on gardening leave - with 12 months left on their ( expensive) contracts. I don't think too many called the decision into question at the time, particularly not when we quickly replaced them with a management team with a successful track record in Paul Cox and John Ramshaw. Hargreaves had overseen 18 months of failure with the club losing it's League status and then after a bright start in the Conference National, we saw a rapid decline down the league table - although it should perhaps be remembered that we did actually finish with something of a flourish to give our final league standing (13th) something more close to respectability. Whilst no great tactician in my opinion, Hargreaves did at least bring in some decent recruits ( Young, Bowman, Ajala, MacDonald, Briscoe - the 2014 version at least!) and we will never know now whether with "his team" - bereft of the duds (Tonge, Harding, Benyon, etc) on the wage bill, would have fared any better (on a vastly reduced budget) than where we find ourselves now. I actually feel, with that greater stability, even on a reduced playing budget, we would probably be OK now, nothing spectacular but OK.
Whilst, many of us fans were of course in favour of the decision to change the management team, what we didn't know and couldn't know, which the new Board did, was at what cost this decision would be to the football club. Unlike the Board, we didn't at that time know whether they had substantial funds to throw at it, or not, and likewise we didn't know at what cost to the playing budget these decisions would ultimately have - all we knew was that we were stuck with having to pay them for the 12 months remaining on their contracts - what we ( the fans) don't know but they ( the Board) do is actually how much that equates to in £££s. In the benefit of hindsight I now think that was the wrong decision - simply because we couldn't afford it and ultimately are we really any better off under a new management team of Nicholson/Herrera? We MIGHT be, but no one knows yet whether these two have got what it takes simply because they have never done the job before and whilst Nico continues to pick himself as a player, you could argue he isn't really doing the job fully now, and likewise we don't know whether he will be any good at recruitment because we ain't got any money and so he can't recruit anyway!!!!
Of course, looking back, the new Board put a lot of faith and trust in Paul Cox who we were always told was in it for the "long haul" unfortunately that trust turned out to be misplaced as he upped and left within a few short months having blown the budget and, quite frankly, left us with a bloated squad rammed full of players, a lot of whom are quite clearly not up to the required standard. As for Cox, well you can only really make such bold statements about his long term future at the club when you have the Manager tied to a contract - the sort of one (three and a half years long!!!) that Barrow have just given him.
Whether Nico is the answer, time will only tell, but on the face of it at least the new owners have fallen into the very same trap that led the previous bunch to appoint Chris Hargreaves in the first place - the "safe" option of appointing a previous player who enjoyed success (failure too, mind) on the pitch with us. They are not alone, the likes of Impey, Compton, Saunders, Hodges et al have all gone before them , without it must be said much success. The cheap, local but" POPULAR ex player " option has proved all too much of a preferred route for TUFC Boards to go down from Mike Bateson onwards - whether Nico can turn things around is anyone's guess and in reality his appointment can only have been made with that amount of consideration. No one really KNOWS if he will be any good - but he certainly handles himself well and is both intelligent and articulate - all qualities which I am sure impressed the board .... but what about his CV?
Ironic really that just a couple of months before, Dean Edwards (Director of Football) at a fans forum was asked the question as to whether Kevin Nicholson might be considered as an ideal appointment to assist the newly appointed Paul Cox - the notion was dismissed by Edwards as he felt that "Nico needs to go out and learn his trade somewhere lower down the leagues" before stepping into a job at this level - there were I am sure plenty of "nodding heads" around the top table at this suggestion - certainly no one took Edwards to task over the comment - how ironic then that those very same people should appoint him, not as an Assistant, but as our actual Manager a couple of months later!!! What is also ironic, is that one could mischievously have asked Edwards himself what qualifications HE HAD to be a Directof of Football at a National League club too .... ah well, such is the way at TUFC.
It seems that having played for the club at some point, is far more important than what is actually down on your CV when it comes to making managerial appointments at TUFC. The "appointment" (it never really happened in truth though did it) of Cox and Ramshaw seemed to break the mould - but it didn't last long and as it stands a large part of TUFC's budget this season will have been taken up PAYING Hargreaves, Hodges, Veysey, Nicholson, Herrera and even Edwards himself - all decent enough players in the past - when we really could have done with that money being paid out on an individual(s) who is simply the best candidate for the job (of managing TUFC) based on his CV, rather than what anyone might have achieved for the club on the playing side in the dim and distant past!
