I cant be bothered to go anymore.

[wiggy]

Ron thinks that we are all gullible, just like he wants the pizza man to be, he's not gonna be conned and nor will we next season!

...of course i will go but Ron can whistle for 4 x £380 season tickets next year, if only i'd entered the 'if England won the World Cup offer'!

 

[canveyshrimper]

...of course i will go but Ron can whistle for 4 x £380 season tickets next year, if only i'd entered the 'if England won the World Cup offer'!

You'd be lighter by 1500+ quid.

 

[Yorkshire Blue]

You'd be lighter by 1500+ quid.

Unless Ron was one of the many bedded by Terry or paid someone to crock Ashley Cole, that offer is looking a more shrewd business move by the week.

 

[Tommy2holes]

I reckon only maybe 250 people took up the world cup offer.

I have already made my mind up not to renew next year and so has the fella i go with. I will still go but only to select games.
I cannot see any investment being put in to the team regardless of what division we are in and the excuse that we have no money because of the stadium has completely worn thin. Either invest in the team or build the stadium. The fact we have yet to see either and both are looking further away from happening each passing day only serves to depress me.

Unless the start of the stadium gets underway before next season , then i dread to think what investment if any will improve a very poor threadbare squad to face another league 1 survival or dare i say it league 2 assault. I can see season cards being down by 50% next season.

 

[Clinton Baptiste]

I agree with many of the sentiments on here. The team is p*ss poor at the moment, made up of journeymen and loanees. Have we ever had a centre back partnership of loanees. The lack of effort is palpable, perhaps affected by off the field concerns, and I think Tilly is beginning to both sound and act like he has had enough. His team selctions and subs have got more baffling, and the logic in his post match interview difficult to find. It never ceases to amaze me how many people on here knock the likes of Maher, Bentley, Wilson, Clarkey yet they played with a passion and a will to win lacking from this current crop.
Once the loanees go back, Macca and Mildy leave, Freedman retires and 2 or 3 others let go, the squad will consist of 9 or 10 players. With no money to spend, relegation will beckon.

Saying that, I will still renew my season tkt as to not do so just dosnt seem right, and even in the low times, you have to support the team and hope things get better. Weve been to hell and back before, I hope we can do it again.

 

[GodblessArthurRowley]

TBH after todays heartless and gutless performance which has left us perilousely close to the drop i really cant be arsed to go.

I have been going to see the blues for like 17 years and i have seen a lot of rough with the smoothe.

Just something changed in me today . I wasnt angry and couldnt care a less. I usually eat drink and sleep southend united , but i really cant bring myself to watch a team that should be comfortably mid table just go through the motions. This team has talent abliet limited , but i can't watch such lack lustre and clueless displays. The chairman talks a load of old **** the manager doesnt seem to know what day of the week it is and his interviews have become embaressing.

I can justify not going anymore because i have already forked out 400 quid.

I will never go an support anybody else.

I booked a hotel sometime ago for Milton Keynes next week and im still going to go but i have no intention of paying anymore money to watch a team that cant be arsed. I'll just get dragged along shopping with the mrs instead.

I will have probably had a re-think for the next home game, but if i didnt go back this season it wouldnt kill me.

I think thats the point like you I wasn't angry and I really didn't give a ****, if you get to that point as I did today you have to ask yourself the question what actually is the point.

 

[Rayleigh boy]

i can be bothered - I think its quite intersting at the moment

 

[Kris]

I've been to a handful of games this season and aren't surprised at the plight we now found ourselves in. It doesn't take a genius to see that if we keep gradually replacing good players with inferior ones then the team will only head downwards.

That's part and parcel of supporting Southend United unfortunately. We remain a small club and players of the calibre of Eastwood, Bailey and Barnard don't come around too often. The chances of replacing them sufficiently when we inevitably have to sell are minimal.

I hate to sound somewhat blasé but football is cyclical for a club like ours. We'll occasionally have good times, sometimes great times but a downward spiral is always around the corner because it's almost impossible to maintain such standards with our budget.

The key is to really cherish any success when it happens because until we move to Fossetts we have no chance of reaching a level where we can compete adequately and consistently.

 

[Tommy2holes]

Saying that, I will still renew my season tkt as to not do so just dosnt seem right, and even in the low times, you have to support the team and hope things get better. Weve been to hell and back before, I hope we can do it again.

Uncle ron is banking on it quite literally.

 

[Rob Noxious]

Weve been toellandback before, I hope we can do it again.

Yes, but only for one more time - April 10th. :)

 

[Reg Martin]

Attending football matches is not an obligation or duty that must be performed so if people don't want to go, then don't go.
I think things feel worse this time because so many of us believed in 2006 that the combination of Ron Martin and Steve Tilson were leading us to the promised land of championship football and a shiny new stadium. At the moment it all seems to have turned sour.
Things will get better again eventually, they always do, though maybe not before they get even worse, they usually do.

 

[Rob Noxious]

'Do not make your happiness conditional upon anything so arbitrary as a game of football' - Winston S. Woodgrange, 1996.

 

[canveyshrimper]

'Do not make your happiness conditional upon anything so arbitrary as a game of football' - Winston S. Woodgrange, 1996.

What the **** was that? - Mayor of Hiroshima August 1945 :)

 

[GBJ]

What the **** was that? - Mayor of Hiroshima August 1945 :)

I have many leather bound books and my apartment smells of rich mahogony - Ron Burgundy September 2004

 

[Swiss Tony]

He who rides the dragon,can never dismount.

Swiss yesterday 10-30.

 

[BoyWonder2]

I can't wait for my next game, Norwich away, and I can't wait to get back to Roots Hall for the Charlton game.

Yes, it has been painful with **** draws against **** sides like Wycombe and Tranmere, but the Club needs us, and our money, more than ever. We have a good squad, which bar Grant, is nearly at full fitness. We have a manager who has worked wonders for us in the past.

I love Southend United, and I was devestated after the final whistle on Saturday. It was the first time I genuinely thought we was in a relegation battle. The players know need to roll up their sleeves, get stuck in, and work their nuts off. Bar MK Dons, Norwich, Leeds and Southampton away, and Charlton at home, we have some very winnable fixtures and we need to start picking up 3 points on a regular basis.

We need to be behind the Club 100% and give it our all from the stands. The atmosphere has been dire just recently, and we have to improve it. We can all moan about the singers been all over the ground, the sound not traveling around, but the bottom line is the vast majority of us aren't doing our bit from the stands, and I include myself in that.

I, personally, can't wait to get back to a Southend United match and improve on my performances with singing, clapping and generally getting behind the lads because they need us to be the 12th man.

Lets get Roots Hall rocking once again!

Keep the faith!

 

[leeblue]

I understand some people dont want to watch the poop on the pitch at the mo but I have to go and see the blues, I cant stop it is actually in my blood, Im not giving the whole loyalty shpeel after an hour of saturdays debacle I wished I wasnt there trust me, its just that if Im not at roots hall when the blues are playing I feel dirty, I have missed about a dozen games in twenty five years at the hall and it pains me to say that even, I will definitely renew our family card for next season and the next and the next etc etc, its not always good supporting the blues but it is rarely boring, utb

 

[Tommy2holes]

The players know need to roll up their sleeves, get stuck in, and work their nuts off.

Thats been my point. The players have talent but no heart. And wether that be non payment of wages or lack of togetherness we are in the mire . Both are the result of lack of cash which again comes back to one person.

Answer me this. The management usd to go on excursions like go karting and paint balling etc to build team spirit. We are we not doing the same now? Because we have no money and also the most disjointed team to try and build spirit i have ever seen.

All roads lead to Ron martin.

 

[Matt the Shrimp]

Keep the faith!

Keep the faith in what, though? Eventually, one gets worn down by the incessant rumour and counter-rumour, bold statements by Ron on the club's website followed by appearance after appearance in the Bankruptcy Court.

If this club were being run successfully at the very top we wouldn't have:

• players alleging that they haven't been paid;
• a side whose backbone is reliant on loanees from Colchester (of all places);
• a side full of loanees in any event - 5 out of a first team squad of 18 (*) represents almost 30% of the squad;
• an ongoing fight with HMRC (e.g. when was the last time you saw Tesco or John Lewis having three successive adjournments in the space of 4 months in the Bankruptcy Court?);
• the sale of our best players and their replacement with kids;
• executive directors who consider it not only their place, but appropriate behaviour, to publish articles on the website and in the press which are deeply critical of ex-players - as if somehow that will exonerate them from the off the field issues (or indeed from the decision to purchase said player in the first place);
• ridiculous schemes to try and acquire next season's ticket revenue now (which leaves you wondering how it is proposed that next season's expenditure will be funded?);
• only 3 wins in our last 15 league fixtures (with a further 3 draws and 9 defeats - relegation form if ever you saw it);
• 12 points out of the last 45 points on offer - only 0.8 points per game (again, cast iron relegation form); and
• no wins in 2010 - we're P6 W0 D3 L3 this year.

...and, despite all the above, people are sticking with Tilly and Brush, because we're not stupid - we know it's not their fault. Tilly needs at least a sow's ear if he's to try to turn it into a silk purse. Right now, he's working with sow's faeces - and even that has been loaned to him.

In pursuit of a dream which appears little nearer today than it did three years ago (we have some pretty drawings and planning permission - but those mean nothing unless you have the means to build anything), our club's hierarchy has spent every last penny this club has, and many pennies that the club doesn't have, it would seem. No doubt the Chairman will have a message up on the site at some point in typical belligerent fashion, telling us how we're all wrong and how everything's fine and there's nothing to worry about. But, like the little boy who cried "Wolf", there's only so often you can say the same thing before people eventually stop listening, stop believing.

If everything was fine at the club, the side wouldn't look this bad and things wouldn't feel this bad. Tilly & Brush have shown that when they're given the right funds to build a squad of their choosing, they're a success. That the team is so palpably unsuccessful right now can only be because they're being denied the funds they need.

So, as I said before, what exactly am I supposed to be keeping the faith in right now - given the wrecking ball that appears to have been taken to the club's squad, its finances and its self-belief?

Yours despondently,

Matt

(* I've said the first team squad is 18 because Joyce has all but left, and O'Keefe and Herd are essentially little more than youth teamers; neither has been given a proper run-out in the first team, that is for sure.)

 

[BoyWonder2]

Keep the faith in what, though?

Tilly, Brush and the squad.

They all need us more than ever. They always mentioned the fans "spur them on", "give them an extra 10%" and "are the 12th man".

At times on Saturday, I think we actually hindered rather than helped.

Yes the football certainly wasn't the greatest, but when JFC in particular, was passing the ball sideways and backwards the groans where incredibly loud, yet when we moved the ball around (which we did at times) a ripple of applause was the best we could muster.

All JFC was doing was retaining possesion, and keeping the ball ticking over which is far better than the aimless ball over the top he played that went through to the goalkeeper. The players aren't playing bad on purpose. They don't sit in the changing room and decide to mis-place passes, pull out of tackles and miss goalscoring chances.

Their confidence is low, and our groans and boos and abuse certainly doesn't help. I heard one fan shout to Francis "slit your wrists". How is that meant to help a player who is at his best when his confidence is flowing.

I was just as disappointed as everyone else as to how things went on Saturday, but I tried to get behind them, constanly shouting at players to "pick their heads up" and the like. I wish some more people would.