I wonder  if the people who come up with this stuff are the generation, who, when at school were told on sports day there are no losers,  everybody wins, everything has to be fair. I think they also went on  to invent VAR.

Not sure it’s really about that. I think sustainable is the key, club’s spending way beyond their means to achieve immediate success, with Bury being the prime example, usually under the misnomer of ‘investment’. You would think having nearly gone out of existence on a couple of occasions our fans would be more cautious yet all you hear on the transfer thread is we should be ‘investing’ (spending) more and more money. These same fans would then be shocked when halfway through a season we might be unable to pay players and bills. The sad truth is money isn’t the key to everything and there are so many examples of teams punching way above/below their weight.

Forward seems right to me.

I think it is £16, which for a friendly seems frothy but they sold well at our end but looks like they
ain’t shifting many at Northampton

You seem to be mistaking us for a well supported team. Always had a fairly modest following that reflects our league position.

then potentially another £3-4m to complete the stand

No idea on the actual cost of the east stand but one thing’s for sure with all the delays and the economic climate as it is now you can add a huge chunk onto any original costing. Those responsible for the delays have no doubt hurt the club.

Is this really a surprise.
The owners themselves said years ago that without extra investment they couldn’t run us as a successful league one club.
Here we are again
Same owners
No extra investment.

Why is that do you think?

What exactly is the point in getting promoted if your owners by their own admission can’t run you as a league one club without external investment and then continuously fail to acquire it…..

Record season tickets sold , the fans getting behind their club and the same old same old which will have the same old outcome.

The phrase ‘taken us as far as they can’ springs to mind….
Why if they knew this was the case again haven’t they sold up or got new investors on board in return for a share in the club….

Ah hang on…….
I think I know why ??

Awaits the there’s no one buying clubs brigade (except there always is, even clubs with points deductions such as Wigan)

I’m sure the private equity funds would be queuing round the block for the amazing ‘investment’ opportunity that is Northampton Town. A team whose support means it has a budget at the lower end of the division but by ‘investing’ (or more realistically spunking away) a small fortune we could have a middle of the table budget with still no guarantee of staying up.

Plenty of teams with smaller budgets than ours have been able to maintain league 1 status for a good amount of time. I’m pretty ambivalent about new owners coming in but if they did I wouldn’t want them running the club at huge losses just to increase the chance of staying up.

As someone who only watches the odd bit of cricket it often baffles me. Having just watched the Bairstow dismissal, the pundits were to a person quite happily with it. In contrast in a woman’s T20 match between India and England, an Indian bowler dismissed an English batter with a mankad to the fury and disdain of commentators and pundits. Both are allowed within the laws but for me the mankad seems far more legitimate and within the spirit of the game as where Bairstow wasn’t seeking to gain any sporting advantage and was just being dozy, the batter backing up in the women’s match was halfway down the pitch before balls were being bowled when ever run is crucial. So I guess I just don’t understand the opposite opinion from pundits unless it’s less about the nature of the two dismissals and more something passed down that doesn’t stand up to reason.

this shows you the gulf between us and teams like Orient. There is no way we can compete for good players like these . Two brilliant signings by the Os
We are losing out to teams in division 2.

I guess we will see the next season on the pitch. Orient have lost two of their star players in Vigaroux and Smyth which has probably freed up a big chunk in their wage budget while we haven’t lost any high earners.

So Rees-Mogg and Dorries applied improper pressure into the investigation on Boris telling lies. Two contemptible human beings who make my skin crawl.

Check your facts and again no need to repeatedly try to take the topic off subject.

My statement was Peterborough have made good money on a player and have reinvested a chunk of it. That’s a fact.

It must be exciting for their fans, more exciting than ours has been to date. That’s my opinion.

You’re trying to map out their debt profile which I’m not arsed about.

I’m pleased I’ve not mentioned Tottenhams exciting window given their level of debt! 

If Peterborough’s transfer strategy was to just spend a chunk of the transfer income on their own players budget it seems strange they are running up big debts. I think we did something similar, on a lesser scale with the Goode money when fees were paid for a few players like Rose and BAS.

I’m sure it was exciting for Bury fans when they were spending way beyond their means and I’m sure a lot of fans weren’t arsed about their debt profile either.

Not according to the bookies, who are rarely wrong.

So they have us tied 17th at 50-1 with 5 other clubs, doesn’t seem all doom and gloom and probably roughly fits with the size and budget of the club.

Can’t we aspire to as fans though?
Even if it means a change of ownership.

I personally think if the club fails to cement itself as a league one club this time around after failing previously then things will soon become uncomfortable for the board with many fans realising that the current owners will have taken us as far as they can.
There shouldn’t be any excuses this time around, they know from past experience what is required and if the board fail to give the club every chance this time around the fans will let them know….

That’s my reading of the room fwiw.

I hope the club shows ambition in the next couple of weeks and sends the right message out.

It’s an interesting question. If history is anything to go by there is no reason why competing at league 1 level shouldn’t be possible though probably difficult. The likes of Yeovil have been promoted to the championship and not to forget we were one match away under Atkins with a side not that different from the one promoted through the playoffs the season before.

In terms of expectations from owners and putting the whole redevelopment saga to one side, what I want is a well run club that lives within its means and its existence isn’t put in danger. Anyone who thinks we are some sort of sleeping giant is delusional. Maybe having someone willing to throw away a small fortune on the club with no hope of return might be fun but how often has that led to disaster, unless anyone knows any Hollywood celebrities?.

The
I reckon as things stand, we will roughly be in line with Carlise, Cheltenham, Exeter, Cambridge, Burton, Stevenage. A bit behind the likes of Port Vale, Shrewsbury, Wycombe. A chunk behind Oxford, Bristol Rovers, Lincoln, Fleetwood (which could very soon change!). The top8 budgets will be infinitely higher!

I think you’re probably not far off there. It hasn’t helped that the likes of Morecambe and Accrington who would have smaller budgets were both relegated last year, though saying that it didn’t stop Accrington finishing a mile above us the last time we were both in league one. Like the majority of clubs I imagine our budget is somewhere in line with living within our means. I keep hearing the words ‘increased investment’ used though maybe a more accurate way of phrasing it would be ‘mortgaging our future’ as how often does spending beyond your means work out well for clubs?. We are more than capable with a good transfer window and good management of being competitive next year.

Van Veen on the brink of joining Groningen for 500K

A treble for Kyle Walker

Due to see them at Neighbourhood Weekender in May.

Initially read that as due to see the neighbourhood and the weeknd in May!!!

Would  have been a bit strange though for anyone on this forum to mention music from the 21st century!!!

I’d imagine David and Kelvin will be finding extra investment into the club even as we speak
They’ve previously stated that we can’t compete at league one level without extra investment and it’s time to either find that extra investment or hand the reigns over to new owners who can take us forward.
The current owners have proved that they can’t run us as a league one club without extra investment and to have another go knowing that’s the case is futile.
Personally I think it’s time to sell up to someone who can take us to the next level if investment isn’t forthcoming.
What do others think?

I guess it depends on what you mean by ‘Compete at league one level’. What constitutes competing? Is it avoiding relegation? In previous seasons when we’ve gone down it hasn’t been because our budget left us unable to compete with the rest of the league, or even that it has been one of the bottom 4 budgets, it’s just that we’ve underachieved while smaller clubs have overachieved. Next season could actually be tougher though as a lot of those smaller clubs of previous years (Accrington, Morecambe, Rochdale etc) are no longer in league 1.

If ‘competing’ means challenging higher up the table then our support makes that difficult as there will be a number of much bigger teams so we would need to massively overachieve or have a Salford/Rushden style owner who is prepared to spunk away large amounts of money, running up big loses to prop up a team whose fan base doesn’t generate enough income to have the budgets of those larger clubs. Competing above your means against larger clubs is not ‘investing’ there’s never any return it’s about charity from a benefactor.

In the longer term before anyone brings up the fallacy of ‘stabilising in league one’ no matter what has happened in previous seasons we will always be one poor transfer window or managerial appointment from a relegation. Accrington showed that this year as after a number of seasons around the playoffs they were relegated.

I get why Bristol Rovers are in denial. On the face of it winning 7-0 on the last day to claim promotion is an unbelievable achievement. The fact that Scünthorpe showed absolutely zero integrity by putting out a youth team with virtually no league experience changes the narrative and denigrates what they did. So I guess it’s understandable some choose not to believe the truth and hang on to that fairytale. Next season though they will just be another opposition team I have no feelings towards them at all.

Another man’s folly, Rubbish and Dustbins, Salford, Morecambe…….

You can add Darlington to that list too. Building that ridiculously big stadium for such a small club and expecting fans to materialise from nowhere and in the end it bankrupted them.

We get promoted
MK Dons relegated
Scünthorpe relegated
Peterborough blow a 4-0 lead in the playoffs

Surely proof that atheists don’t know what they’re talking about.

Oh dear!