mikeroyboy

Forget the other teams, I'm going purely on our form. I can see seven games undefeated including a minimum of three wins. Historically 52pts should be enough but no result is accurately forecastable in football. It could easily go to the last weekend.

We haven't had much to cheer goal wise this season but reaction of the crowd to those saves was equal to any goal we've scored. The second probably edged it - all of us would have a little hope for the first but all hope is lost on a second within 4minutes. A remarkable experience I haven't witnessed in 62 years.

I tend to agree. Millwall have just beaten our Premier League Champions and unbeaten last 16 European Champions League contenders. They are playing the Football Leagues 2nd lowest scorers - what could possibly go wrong?

Back for his annual performance - Houdini.

Plucking a figure out of the same thin air I don't see any more than 1500 buying. I can though attach rational facts to support the figure. We were down and out at the time and buyers would in most cases be comfortable supporting the club in L2. You needed to be in from the start to have realistic prospects achieving cash back. Virtually all that were interested would have been in from the start. Winning the first game would have closed the door on any meaningful surge of interest. Missing out on a guaranteed discount would have stuck in the craw most fence sitters IMO. I don't recall any club announcement on the success of the initiative and in my view cost the club dear in more ways than one.

If you ignore the fact that Corney invested circa £25,000 to get as many people into the ground as possible, you could be right.

I don't think so. If an outside interest is involved they will be there on Tuesday night.

This is indeed a puzzling and guaranteed loss leader that defies logic in our current, publicised financial situation. There will be logic in Corney's thinking because he has all the facts behind it. For example: We have no positive notion of the team yet. He has. I'm intrigued and instinctively optimistic. He has created a buzz and interest in an almost dead duck. He's up to something and I hope it comes off for a change.

In another life I drove a cab. The call sign was 'Roy' and I was often called Royboy. I'm not telling you my first name.

The minks!

Not over the moon but on board and optomistic I would love to have been privy to the negotiations.

Not overly impressed on a Sheridan return. Even so, if it is him or Flltcroft or Edinburgh it indicates a change of direction behind the scenes at BP for me. One thing is for sure - the fans won't be doing a hop, skip and a jump up Sheepfoot Lane with circa £150,000 of next seasons playing budget.

"Corneys should be to find someone who will buy the club who will take it forward". Impossible to achieve or forecast. Any buyer will almost certainly find Corney and only time will deliver the outcome of its success. Following the struggle of recent seasons and lack of a buyer I hope Corney and his backers resolution is to be proactive with no giveaways. Pragmatically I just hope we survive and something/someone turns up.

I haven’t even considered not renewing even though home performances are unbelievably dire. I also don’t see 53% of this seasons diehards not renewing even if we were relegated. Even relegation wouldn’t bring it down by that large a percentage based on the seven ST holders around me swearing allegiance next term where ever we end up. I also can’t escape feeling some pangs of guilt for the quality of the manager and squad that was chucked together in hardly a month. I honestly feel the majority of ST sales bought on the ‘home win deal’ were by fans already prepared to watch the team in L1 or L2. We were well adrift of safety with Sheridan signing 3 players, most of us had never heard of, turning out to be jewels and many of us suspecting Sheridan had been brought in to do well in L2. The rest is history. Most of the diehards (me included) were on our toes with a substantial Brucie Bonus and a large chunk, if not all, of Sheridan’s 2016-17 playing budget. Corney certainly won’t be repeating that little stunt again.

In truth the 4 named ‘concerned fans’are just as impotent as Corney and the rest of us – no plan and no investment. As the club lurch from one crisis to the next the club appear to be borrowing money without asking, from clubs with fewer fans than we have. Vociferous concerned fans, patiently loyal fans and stay away fans will have no impact whatsoever in a meeting with Corney. The die is cast, we need a new owner with ambition for the club and an immediate injection (January) of non-returnable funds for on the pitch improvements. And that is a very long shot. Corney arrived with a plan but not a great deal of money to splash on players but it hardly matters, football is such a thoroughly unreliable and wasteful devourer of capital that there ‘never’ will be a plan or amount of investment that is guaranteed to bring success for any club lower than A-list. Catastrophe is just as likely. There is no blue print for clubs like Burton and Fleetwood and it is rarely long term. In my time as a fan I have seen us apply for re-election twice and spend three seasons in the top league. It is my view many football fans are unreasonable in their demands and expectations for their club. Being outside the top four in the Premier League is not good enough for many. It is a fortunate club indeed who have a seriously wealthy fan for its owner. Funding a football club is beyond comprehension to us all. Corney wants out but there is, not surprisingly, no queue to buy. It is my understanding the club and any of its parts are for sale and the price is negotiable. I, for one can’t identify why a wealthy stranger would take the club on. Meanwhile we are heading into January with Corney ready to launch another survival mission. Corney may not have any ambition in an upwards direction but he shows no appetite for relegation. I would also guess it is just as likely to be as important to him for any valuation of the club to depend on staying in L1, hence his reluctance to go down. We are stuffed as a club and as fans and there is only one man in the firing line to be accused. I for one have no appetite for rocking the boat when there is no one else on the planet (to my knowledge) who gives a damn about propping up the club financially - with or without a plan.

For me the interview unequivocally clarified some points that have appeared obvious to me over the last few seasons. Corney does not have the stomach or the clout to fund the club on a run at promotion. Nor has he the stomach for relegation from L1, even with dwindling crowds. His search for a buyer has also highlighted the non existence of a person or group willing to take us forward. For the time being we are stuck on a wing and a prayer and it seems January will one again be the start of the annual 'action for survival routine'. Fair play to anyone who is giving us a club.

I think we are pretty much down to the committed. And I can't see many of those spending £20 on Wednesday and not turning up on Saturday because it's raining. The present price structure is unfriendly for a family club. If the club have evidence a high number of advance tickets are not being used yet call it good business I would be disappointed. It isn't as if it was a cinema or theatre and you have a choice of a cheap day or time slot to see the same thing. Embrace every potential casual customer equally is what I say.

It has been well noted over the last 4yrs by most football fans in the area home wins and goals have been scarce at BP. There is no other meaningful reason why home support has slumped. It pains me to say but no amount of advertising will turn this loss leader into a profit without improved performance, goals and results. Tomorrows all pay game is actually just as important for the club in those 3 areas combined as simply moving into the next round. Failure in all 3 areas will kill the discount initiative stone dead for the game against Wimbledon. The club invited our opinion and this is an instant response to our thoughts on pricing. But it doesn’t have a snowballs chance in hell if we continue to lose poorly and without goals. Like many others I’m disappointed they are continuing with a surcharge on match day admission, I simply can’t understand it. The only thing I can think of is that the club have the numbers for how many have been paying £24 on the day and the number is substantial. Even then I have to guess attendances would be higher without it.

I can’t blame the club for trying, but purely from a business perspective they are valiantly trying to dig themselves out of a hole that is deepening faster than they are digging. It’s exhausting, for everyone connected to the club. We have been declining on the pitch for several years and on income pro rata. Mistakes, poor decisions and setbacks have rolled in on a regular basis and a new stand has been funded (somehow). All while, I for one, have slept soundly. For me the rapid spiral to where we are now began when the club announced the ‘Four Wins’ season ticket deal. My and many others assumption was the club were in financial trouble, later to be confirmed by events. The spiral, for the club, spun into free fall when we won three of them. My guesstimate would be 1500 ST’s at an average of £100 a go. £150,000, cos to the club and the only place it could come from, bearing in mind the desperation that led to it, was the playing budget. The 1500 tickets sold would almost certainly have come from fans willing to support the club next season come hell or high water. Hell or high water was definitely favourite at the time. So no new money and not surprising after our home form over the last three years. What happed next was Roy of the Rovers as we made the Great Escape. All the diehard fans were already on board at a substantial discount. It was now time to tempt the more discerning fans and cash in on the euphoria created by the great escape. Sheridan, Main, Palmer and Holloway were lauded as our saviours. There would have been more than a few poised, ready buy a ST with a modicum of good news revealed. What happened next put a powder keg under any sort of forward momentum and the fact is we were all seriously demoralised. I would be surprised if we sold more than 50 Season Tickets after the rumours about Sheridan leaving started. All in all the decisions made between February and July were made to keep the club afloat. The season ticket deal was catastrophic but, I believe, necessary to settle the winding up order. We all can only imagine how the money people at the club must have felt letting Sheridan and any player of monetary value leave. Unable or unwilling to fund the club forward Corney has once again cobbled something together to keep us going. It’s certainly not good enough for many fans and I can’t blame anyone for not wanting to pay £20 or £24 to watch what is being served up – even to keep us afloat. It is after all a business. Further and again from a business perspective I can’t see why on earth anyone would want to get financially involved with a club like ours – apart from a wealthy fan. Whoever it was would still need to be lucky. As someone with a business background I can't readily imagine a more booby trapped scenario for making a profit with 23 guaranteed open days a year.

By all means report it lost but don't pay for a replacement until it is needed/can be used on 12th November.

Of course £24 is far too expensive to watch the bottom half of L1 and I can’t see many paying it. The club don’t expect/want you to pay it. That is why they have offered season tickets for £13 per game. That’s 11 free games for the season in relation the £24 per game. You would have to miss 12 games to make it unprofitable, 10 if you took out a loan to buy the ST. Every one of the clubs circa 3,500 regulars has differing circumstances of some sort. The club cannot be expected to cater for every fan circumstance. The £24 charge would soon disappear if no one paid it together with not buying the £20 ticket either. In reality I would expect the majority of casually regular supporters don’t mind the inconvenience of buying on-line/phone and collecting their ticket match day or the trip to BP mid-week to buy one. There’s a lot to be said for not being committed to the club over the last 6yrs. But anything is better than paying £24 on match day and those that do will be well able to afford it for the convenience it affords them, IMO.

13th in league with 5pts and not having scored a goal after 4 games has to be pretty unique. Green definitely MOTO. Something we seem to have acquired is height in abundance compared with last few seasons. All in all a very promising recovery from first game. I do think Robinson has got his priorities right in the way he is developing his new squad.

Ha, Caruso, the old journalistic/media trick of quoting something out of context. Let me correct that for you, the full sentence. "What I believe to be foolhardy is believing the principle that a group of different cultures, different languages and different economies can coexist under an unanswerable bureaucratic regime who’s only worry seems to be keeping the substantial gravy train on the rails." A different meaning to what you inferred. Secondly, There has been no meeting us more than half way with the English language by the EU. There has been a natural global progression towards English without any sort of effort or persuasion by us over the last few decades. English may well be a language of communication in the Brussels corridors but not in Parliament and Commissions. I was already financially and politically aware of many of the problems but I spent 3 months pre-Brexit reading everything I could on the subject. 'facts' on Remain were, quite naturally, few and far between. I made my mind up 6 weeks ago and I'm not about to change it yet. Apart from those points you don't appear to have a problem with the other 'facts'.

Crusoe: Point 1: Like piglinbland, the writer of the FT piece doesn’t have a solution to the chronic problem the EU is facing. Piglinbland doesn’t see the relevance to Brexit of the IEO’s damning indictment of the IMF’s lack of due diligence and misrepresentation. Point 2: The author of the FT article espouses complex requirements in support of staying in the EU and punitive measures to get out. They do not enlighten the reader of the dangers of staying ‘in’ the EU. Referring to point 1, of course the IEO’s ruling is relevant. What predicament would Greece, Spain, Ireland and Italy be in now, financially or unemployment, if the IMF had proceeded with the due diligence and utilised unbiased accurate assessments expected of it? While we can’t guess how badly it would have ended if the relevant guidelines had been followed, we can safely assume the end game would have been worse and possibly catastrophic. Within my peer group (mainly small business orientated) we wanted out because of how the EU was run, based on years of actual ‘evidence’ accumulating including easy to interpret statistics. If the referendum voters had been faced with a worse scenario within the Eurozone than the one put forward during the campaign it would be reasonable to assume the majority would have been greater. Referring to point 2, I am assuming the FT writer is a journalist or politician. Many a graduate student could tell you of being asked to write a synopsis ‘for’ or ‘against’ a given topic. This invariably would necessitate research of the subject matter. Journalists are very adept at this, especially when covering a story without an in house expert. There are no experts on Brexit, anywhere, and nothing to research. Bringing together the many unknowable permutations and components of Brexit beforehand would have been quite pointless. Canadian, Jeremy Kinsman, is also quoted as saying: “We’ve always counted on Britain both as a friend and as a sort of ‘Liberal voice’ (the quotation marks are mine, what is he saying about the rest?) within the European Union,” “And its exit worries Canadians, Canadian policy makers, because we don’t any longer have that channel, that particular channel in which generally we vested quite a lot of confidence.” No mention of the spiraling decline in the Eurozone’s immigration policy, debt crisis, unemployment crisis, just concern for Canada. You can see where I’m going with that on a worldwide basis. “Greenland population less than Croydon – fish.” European exports to UK £290 billion goods and services. UK exports to the EU £220 billion. It’s hard to believe a journalist pitched that stat for comparison but not a politician. I would think a £70 billion profit in EU’s favour not to mention the jobs created by £290 billion worth of exports will help focus minds on a little more effort and moderation. Croydon - fish, I ask you! Giuliano Amato serves as an Honorary Co-Chair for the World Justice Project. The World Justice Project works to lead a global, multidisciplinary effort to strengthen the Rule of Law for the development of communities of opportunity and equity.[5] With Amato and Lord Kerr wording it we should be in safe hands. But does it not say something about the EU bureaucrats. It sounds like we could have been done up like a kipper along with the rest of Europe if it had not been for our stubbornness. Not for the first time it’s worth noting. Amato is quoted as likening his wording of Article 50 as a fire extinguisher, never to be used. Perhaps he didn’t expect the European Commission bureaucrats expanding the citadel using highly inflammable material. The rest of the article is nothing more than a worst case scenario slightly more dramatic than Remains’ pitch in the referendum. Ejection, really? Are the Eurozone expecting growth during these negotiations? Are their unemployment figures tumbling? Why can’t Remain identify their will be no profit for ‘anyone’ by stalling. Brutal comments on a Brexit item, or any other item? Nothing new there then. You can’t say ‘I don’t like cats’ without the floodgates of bile opening on comments columns and social media. My only contact with social media is Facebook. While I’m not a daily visitor I have not seen Brexit mentioned once since 23/06. No bragging and no complaining. I can understand misgivings about the task ahead. It is enormous and believed by many to be foolhardy. What I believe to be foolhardy is believing the principle that a group of different cultures, different languages and different economies can coexist under an unanswerable bureaucratic regime who’s only worry seems to be keeping the substantial gravy train on the rails. Their inability to address their failings is what has brought us to where we are now. It is plain for everyone to see the Eurozone is struggling. It is staring us in the face. In my view a fear of the unknown stops more people excepting that than is healthy. The trade gap between us is widening. We are buying more of them because of our healthy economy while they are buying less of us because of their struggling economy. To conclude the UK wants to trade with everyone and we have a massive economy to support cooperation in negotiations. Our cooperation and financial input would remain fulsome in regards to terrorism, crime and security. We cannot change the way the EU is run by the ballot box and while we do have a voice in the European Parliament there are too many countries fearing they have too much to lose by reform for it to be heard. It is a hole not of our making. It won’t be painless nor will it be disastrous. But something does need doing, IMHO.

Obviously you're not.