Lets be honest it wasnt our best of late. Myself I think MG has done well at the club. Our club house once the butt of jokes is now very respectable thanks to MG. Hes a very decent fella but his manager days are over. Please God BQ is working on his squad now and we will be up and running as soon as the new season starts..
To be fair it has been more than just the clubhouse which some credit should go to Pure Bar as they first smartened it up, added multi-screens. There's been some errors along the way with some of the appointments but when MG came in I remember the new seats in the old stand going in making it much smarter, new signage on the old off-licence (since re-done again), Wings Bar took off on Friday nights, decent real ale in clubhouse, the re-appointment of Jamie Day, the appointment of Steve King - both excellent managers, one game away from promotion, club deficit balanced each season, increased budget and ground plans designed/submitted. Alright the ground hasn't happened but not through want of trying.
Well it wasn't me who said it it was riverstone. We may be slightly better off off the field but not greatly. The bar nights have been a disaster from day one, the planning applications etc have all gone to waste at a huge cost and now seem to be completely panned.
General maintenance of the ground has been poor and capacity reduced to a level where we wouldn't be allowed to be promoted. Terrible team management and holding onto it for to long although 2 of the managers King & now Quinton have done very well.
I've heard more than once from multiple places in the last month that due to the ground issues he wants out as he cant make a few quid and let's face it, like any other businessman that's all he came here for in the first place. And also that for reasons unknown unless this has now been rectified of course but up until last week the players still havent been paid for the week before and including the billericay game.
-- Edited by Jamison on Saturday 2nd of May 2020 10:37:18 PM
I don't believe he will be the only one who wants out. Vanity projects are fine if you are making profit elsewhere and want a profile. If that profit ceases football clubs will be high up the list of causes to get cut. Same will go for sponsorship, marginal advertising etc.
The turnstiles won't be much better. How many companies either wont exist or will have found through furloughing who they can do without. The consequences of that wont be kind on people.
Given the apparent slowness of officialdom and a good percentage of the population to either want this lockdown to end or contemplate a return to anything near the previous normality I doubt government funds will run for long enough to see us through to when we are playing as we previously would have. It is quite conceivable that the survival of Welling United in its current form, and this will be true of a number of other clubs, will be down to whether the previously maligned owner wants it to or not. It really would not surprise me, even at our level, if there weren't clubs paying expenses only when there is resumption, if indeed they are still there at all.
The above will doubtless prompt someone to give the inference that I am happy for people to tip up in order to save football clubs. People are keen to use the war analogy at this time. In wars, the death of very few individuals is pivotal, it is keeping the total below what compromises your ability to achieve the overall aim that is important. Whilst any death is an unpleasant event for those affected, there has to someone in command who sees past the individual to achieve the aim and mininise the long term overall impact. I remain to be convinced what the actual overall aim is currently (and that it isn't simply to push those deaths further down the road when the focus is less) as the strategy was formulated with little external debate. Because of that, I'll be very surprised if we are allowed to congregate on an away terrace again this year even if we want to. And that is likely to present far more fundamental issues than whether Goldberg is doing a good job or not.
If it turns out better than I expect, you can serve a portion of humble pie on a print out of this at me at a later date, should social distancing permit... or pin it on the coffin with a COVID-19 yoghurt if I am part of the collateral damage!
I think this will be the way for many clubs at non-league level. There will be many players released from clubs, including those at a higher level, who just won't get anywhere near the wages they were on, if at all. A few clubs might get lucky where the main owner/backer has a business that has not been impacted by the virus, or they're rich enough to keep bailing out a club or continue investing in it. Some might take this gamble on as a few quid could really get a team promoted when most others would be struggling.
Would a player play for nothing? My first thoughts are no but when you think about it there will be lots of players without a club who will want to keep fit, play for a certain manager, play for a local club without the travel expense, play with the ambition to get a contract, play to get another club if and when playing budgets come back in. Hopefully we'll get some players who want to play for us.
I can't believe some clubs are announcing the retaining of individual players and staff for next season....
With social distancing and the amount of people allowed in one place looking set to continue well into the new year at present I can't see there being any football at our level for a extremely long time.
It is not viable for games to go ahead behind closed doors at this level, so unless things change very quickly later in the year then we could be looking at middle of 2021.
If things improve, i would hope they look at a play each team once scenario begining in January, players could go back around October for pre season.
If you are looking at what might be perceived as an arbitrary edict of the middle of 2021 before a resumption you'll either be lucky if there are three levels of non league to come back to as we know it currently or there will likely be civil disobedience in the interim because football won't be all it affects. In the final reckoning we don't have an all pervading Stasi in place already and if the volume of current consent wanes significantly there is insufficient police and custodial resources to prosecute even 30% of the public. Once you get to that point any policy caves in or you lose the perceived rule of law as well as the privations already suffered.
You have to remember that, except for those facilities that suffered collateral damage, there wasnt even a complete halt to all sporting activity even during the last war. Things were at least kept ticking over. On current plans, the most accurate charting of the future sporting landscape will be 'There be Dragons' (and they won't necessarily be in Newport!)
