I think it’s a good appointment. Carlisle were referred to as Kamikaze Carlisle due to their high scoring games all the time but he did well there on a limited budget

I reckon Curle and Thomas probably had conversations in the summer and he was always in mind for the job if Austin failed

Remember the reaction when Wilder was appointmedvwas fairly Luke warm....

All this talk of 'off field problems' overlooks the fact that most L2 managers would give their right arm to have our squad, budget and 'set up'. Am I missing something? Where is the firesale of assets and the savage cuts to the budget? Listen to Cowley talking about squad on the opening day. Let's face it: Wilder won this league with 99 points amidst an atmosphere which was far more turbulent.

We are where we are due to poor management pure and simple. Austin's reign has been characterised by poor decision making, both tactically and in the transfer market. He signed Williams and then seemed to have suddenly decided that Van Veen would be the main striker, meaning that we have an expensive and redundant target-man on the bench. He kept Waters when he was wanted by Port Vale and others and now refuses to play him. He spent money on Morais when we clearly lack the wingers necessary to play the 4-4-2 formation necessary to accommodate him.

Money was clearly available for him to bring the wide players/creative midfielders that we desperately need; he chose not to spend it.

Our pre-season was woefully uncompetitive and it soon became obvious that he had no clear tactical system and no idea how to accommodate our three best players - Crooks, O'Toole and McWilliams - in the same side.

Most damningly of all he has done nothing to sort out our miserable excuse for a defence.

And yet I wouldn't call for his head. Not yet. Why? Because as I've said before the level of managerial churn at this club has in and of itself been a big factor in our decline. I don't want to go through yet another January window with yet another new manager who has a 'clear out' which leaves us worse off than we were in the first place.

Austin needs to be asked some stern questions and he is certainly running out of time. However, there is still just about some last vestiges of hope that he will turn it round.

Most managers would love to have our budget but not our squad. Those who keep thinking we have a good squad are deluded, we have an average at best goalkeeper, no decent wing backs, no decent wingers and strikers who can’t seem to stick the ball in the net. You can probably blame mostly Justin Edinburgh & JFH for using up our big budget on average players on long contracts, but Austin hasn’t helped either by not sorting some of the problem in the summer

I would sell Crooks and invest in some quality out wide as my first step.

Ward
Facey Taylor Pierre Turnbull
Foley Mcwilliams
Morias O'Toole Crooks
KvV

I know we won't, but I'd play this formation/team currently. Would offer us much more defensively and keeps all the current underperformers out (besides Taylor... But he's still better than an in-form Barnett).

I agree with this. Thought Morias looked really dangerous on the right on Tuesday when he came on. We need McWilliams back in front of the back 4 desperately

Now is make or break time for Austin, his current tactics clearly aren’t working so let’s see how he changes things round and mixes it up a bit

Wasn’t at the game yesterday but if Cornell’s our number 1 this season we’re going to struggle to be up there. Every good team needs a quality keeper and he does not inspire any confidence in me at all. What was the point in bringing in Ward if he’s no improvement on what we’ve got? We have 10 days left of the loan market if Wards not up for it send him back and get a proper keeper in on loan for the season quick

My local game yesterday being a nice 5 minute walk from home. thought we looked good in spells but lacked creativity. Back 4 I actually thought looked solid and was impressed with Van Veen and Williams up front. We desperately need some wingers in the team, when we went up last time we were very average when Holmes and Adams weren’t playing and it felt the same yesterday. A couple of quality players out wide would make a world of difference

They’ve been talking about the ‘vultures’ taking our best players for weeks now, you’d hope they have a replacement already lined up as part of selling him

Still think we need 1 possibly 2 quality wingers  as well

Why do "we" need 1 more if DA is happy with what he has ......  Stick to playing Championship Manager and et the adults worry about the real world.

I think DA wants a wide man but is quite clever in his interviews. If he came out and said we were desperate for one it potentially gives the seller or the player a bit more power when negotiating costs / wages

I think we’ll see another winger, even if it’s a loan in the next few weeks

I still think we need a new winger. I know others can play there like Waters and Crooks but only having 1 natural winger in the squad is bizarre

Lol Hammy he really has you in his back pocket mate

He has done no develop at the club in almost 3 years, has already said the ground doesn't need to be bigger, has changed almost nothing and nobody in 3 years (including the Chief Exec), had the entire goodwill and positivity of that season totally disappear under his watch based around his decisions etc etc won't even mention £4m sale to Chinese investors farce, oh sorry i did,

KT is not interested in developing the club, when are you going to see that. What is possibly the most important factor of running and developing a football club?  The training facilities, we used the local college, yet since he has been here he has hardly mentioned it and shows no sign he has any intentions to. 

He hasn't been tarred with the same brush as DC only that his actions have been almost identical up to the point of taking the loan, something you can not deny. No-one has accused him of acting illegally

What about if we get relegated to non-league?  is that ok then ?

‘No develop at the club’ apart from deliver the clubs highest ever commercial revenue and biggest playing budget, not that those are important 🙄

Just got back from holiday and catching up on all the statements now...

To me this seems like 2 separate issues
1. Who owns the leases and their boundaries
2. What other developments there are other than the East stand

I don’t see how the first affects the second like the council are suggesting, Thomas & Bower technically own the leases for both NTFC land and CDNL now (I think?) so in theory if they followed the right processes for planning and development and it got approved could go and build a hotel, garden centre, gym etc either way. Likewise if the council didn’t like what they were proposing, they could reject approval on either plot

The issue seems to be more around the fact that part of the land is on both leases, and potentially that some of the land KT and Bower want on the NTFC lease still is on the CDNL plot. This can’t be a difficult issue to sort surely? Either way 6 months+ to reply is deliberately not being cooperative

I can see 100% why KT and Bower don’t want to spend a penny on that stand until this is sorted, if their investment was over 2 leases that could cause major problems further down the line with selling the club, further developments, access etc

Admittedly I don’t really understand it all but that’s my take having a read through and I’m struggling to see why people are criticising KT other than ‘not revealing the proposed plans’

If the council made the deed with the NTFC amendments on public it would make things so much clearer

Look at it this way, if Wimbledon win one of their four they're out of it. Walsall, a win and a draw in four and they're out of it. If Oldham get two wins from their five they're out of it.

If Walsall lose at Sc***horpe, we win against Plymouth, then beat Walsall the following week then things may look prettier, but I just can't see it happening. Nice to listen to some fight for a change.

When was the last time a team were relegated on 52 points, does anyone know? I really can’t see us getting 9 points but if we did and still went down we’d be incredibly unlucky

Thomas has increased our budget massively since he took over with increased income from sponsorship etc and has given us probably our biggest ever playing budget this season. You can’t blame him for the stand, he’s trying to sort this with the useless council and it would’ve been sorted ages ago if it wasn’t for the clown in charge before.

But to me we’ve been let down by our recruitment strategy (or lack of) which he openly says he leaves in the hands of the management team. There was zero strategy last summer and it was exactly the same in January. How on Earth is it 2 years since we lost Adams and Holmes and still don’t have any proper quality on the wings? Why are we handing out 2.5+ year contracts to players who can’t get into Rochdale’s / Coventry’s team? Why did we give Hoskin a 2 year contract before Christmas when he wasn’t even playing? It’s all an expensive mess and to me there has to be a better approach to recruitment as it’s probably the most important part of running a football club, and the main reason we’re in the mess we are today

Can we get Cardoza to appoint our next manager?

weve already had about 8 artists impressions of that stand, I'd much prefer KT finalises exactly what's happening before giving us another one

Seems like he has a decent pedigree.

My big question is: why are Rotherham letting him go and why did they sign this Rodak guy on loan to replace him?

Wages?

In other news I've heard Birmingham are interested in signing Rod McDonald from Coventry

James Hanson and David Cotterill please

Just listened to JFH's comments, to me the 'issues' he's talking about is the playing squad and January can't come soon enough to sort it out. Though he was a bit tactful how he said it as the last thing he wanted to do is slate the current group of players

Completely agree...

When I spoke with KT regarding the possibility of Bunn coming back at Sileby, he said "player recruitment nothing to do with me, down to the manager, not for me to interfere as the manager must be accountable for any recruitment" there you go, straight from the mouth of KT!

I completely agree in terms of personnel that are brought in, but in terms of the recruitment strategy (I.e type of player, positions to strengthen etc) surely there must be a plan that's run by KT at some point. He's the chairman and recruitment is possibly the most important part of running a club

I'm a huge fan of KT and think we're lucky to have him, though we've been through 3 transfer windows and still haven't properly replaced Holmes or Adams and apart from a few games in September last year, have been pretty poor since ....

In what way does KT take the blame for the recruitment?? And I'd say the loanees are probably some of our best players! Ingram is our best GK, Long our best attacker, Grimes our most creative midfielder. Poole...undecided.

Agree on Pierre, I've said from the start he's an accident waiting to happen.

I'm certainly not one for micro managing but if i had a manager overseeing a £2 million player wage budget, i'd want to approve the strategy for player recruitment using this budget

Sadly 7 centre midfielders, 1 winger, 2 OAP's and a bunch of kids up front suggests that KT didn't do that with Edinburgh over the summer.