Next season - all too familiar, thanks Ron

[Green Wizard]

Look on the bright side, the new stadium will be starting soon!

 

[nick12]

Look on the bright side, the new stadium will be starting soon!

????????????

 

[Holy Joe]

i guess for the first week or two .The managers job is to try to get the players he had re signed first once that has been done he will probable move on to players he wants to join the club .But he only has six weeks to do all this .So i guess we will have to trust Phil Brown on this .

I hope he's not waiting 2 weeks to be tapping up strikers. It's pretty clear to me we need that - why wait

 

[damien]

I hope he's not waiting 2 weeks to be tapping up strikers. It's pretty clear to me we need that - why wait

Agreed, I would say early transfer activity and signals of intent may even be a good injection of enthusiasm for some of the fence sitters on whether or not to sign their new contract offer to get it agreed.

 

[rigsby]

I hope he's not waiting 2 weeks to be tapping up strikers. It's pretty clear to me we need that - why wait

Seeing as strikers are all ready being watched we wont have to worry. Its a game of numbers and near misses and a lot more involved than any fan can fathom.

What you wont get is any tick box clear open and honest up dates on social media to keep fans happy because Its none of our business anyway. There will be hints on the way but when it actually happens we will be told.

Yes we all think we would make a good DoF. Which is fine as a bit of light football escapism in our dull lives but when turns to hate, anger and 100 pages of why didn't we sign X,Y or Z on June the 1st.......Someone on here really needs to be the adult in the room.

 

[KevinJH]

Look on the bright side, the new stadium will be starting soon!

Aye, and plans are also afoot to name the 'open' end as the Mushroom Terrace.....

 

[Jai]

Life will continue to be frustrating for us until Ron is gone. We will never be a well-run club under him.

However, the main reasons we were relegated were the late appointment of a manager, a complete shambles of a pre-season and the transfer embargo. If none of those are the case this year, I think we'll be fine. I don't think we'll be challenging for promotion, but we should at least stop the slide.

 

[Jai]

Agreed, I would say early transfer activity and signals of intent may even be a good injection of enthusiasm for some of the fence sitters on whether or not to sign their new contract offer to get it agreed.

Hardly anything gets done at this time of year though. Players might verbally agree some stuff, but they are all on their holidays now and things shut down really until mid-June.

 

[Shrimper57]

That

Hardly anything gets done at this time of year though. Players might verbally agree some stuff, but they are all on their holidays now and things shut down really until mid-June.

That may be the case. However, the silence over a CEO is deafening. Now a week later than we were led to believe by Ron.

 

[KiwiRob]

Hardly anything gets done at this time of year though. Players might verbally agree some stuff, but they are all on their holidays now and things shut down really until mid-June.

That is certainly true at Southend. But if you look at Bolton last summer they quickly appointed Ian Evatt from Barrow and started signing players almost as soon as the new manager arrived. It certainly paid off and helped the club to reverse their downward trend of previous seasons.

 

[GBJ]

That may be the case. However, the silence over a CEO is deafening. Now a week later than we were led to believe by Ron.

Timing is everything. The deal may well have been completed and contracts signed by now, meaning the new CEO may already be going about his business.

Maybe the club are waiting for the right time to announce that. Maybe they’re waiting for other pieces of the puzzle to fall into place, to give us not just one piece of good news, but possibly more?

 

[Jai]

That is certainly true at Southend. But if you look at Bolton last summer they quickly appointed Ian Evatt from Barrow and started signing players almost as soon as the new manager arrived. It certainly paid off and helped the club to reverse their downward trend of previous seasons.

According to Soccerbase, Bolton's first signing was Eoin Doyle on 10 July. I appreciate that is still two months and two days before the season started, so the equivalent this year I suppose would be the 19 June.

I certainly agree with the principle of your post though. Our preparation for the season was horrendous and it cost us our league status.

 

[Whispering Bob]

That is certainly true at Southend. But if you look at Bolton last summer they quickly appointed Ian Evatt from Barrow and started signing players almost as soon as the new manager arrived. It certainly paid off and helped the club to reverse their downward trend of previous seasons.

Possibly the best recruitment in the lower leagues last year.

 

[mattytheshrimper]

Every year I hope for the same thing and every year I'm disappointed.

-Season ticket info, we've had weeks to put this together and pretty much every other club has had their info out for a while now (some very good deals too) yet nothing for us. On the recent zoom call meeting Ron advised that fans cannot expect cheap ST's if they want good players etc. My argument to that is, we haven't seen good players in years so might as well save us some money. The fact our ST's have been at the top end for the past decade plus, is daylight robbery.

-Pre-season games, yeah sure 4 have been announced. We're still 'talking' to another 4 clubs. Why are we talking still? We all know when the season ends and starts, why not have it organised weeks/months ago. Just be more organised.

-Kits, release them as early as we can, we're always the last one's to release. Even then you typically can't get a medium for quite a few weeks into the season. Last year it was announced much earlier than normal but in past years its all been very poor. Get it all out early and get some money in the bank, again, be organised.

-Signings, this is the main one obviously. I've seen many league clubs announcing many signings already. We know our history with summer signings, typically we're very late to the party and very often, after the season has already begun. I look on with envy season teams getting plenty of signings in early, full pre-season etc etc. Something we can just never manage to do. You'd like to think a list of targets was drawn up weeks/months ago but our amazing head of recruitment (hahahahaha) but I have no faith that's even been talking about yet let alone us being close to signing anyone. We're frustratingly slow starters to most seasons, it's pretty obvious why. I'm excluding the past season to this for obvious reasons.

-CEO, we've appointed a manager, looking at appointing backroom staff, released players, offered contracts etc etc etc, all without a CEO still hired. IF we do employ a CEO A LOT of big decisions would of already been made which could be in place years, crazy business all being done in the wrong order. A CEO should of been in place well before the season ended.

-Pre-season training return, At least this is something we can be happy about. This seems to be planned already which is much better than we're used too. We're always very late at getting even a date organised and typically start weeks behind other teams.

I guess the point I'm trying to get at is that I find it hard to comprehend how unorganised and dysfunctional we are as a club. I want us to be better and more professional but it always seems too much to ask in reality.

 

[TrevorFitzpatrickHattrick]

I think the frustration felt by many stems from a few things.

The age of social media, everything from messageboards to Twitter, means that all of the speculation and rumours are played out in public, with only a fraction of it actually coming to fruition. We're conditioned to want instant gratification nowadays in all facets of life, so from an SUFC perspective, we expect there to be a new signing every week just like the Barry Fry days.

Fans also see the free-spending top-brass paying up early at ridiculous price-tags to secure their targets. I would much rather support my local team, the team I grew up watching, the team that makes me more miserable these days than anything, than be a plastic, armchair-watching, half-and-half scarf wearing Premier League mug. But, deep-down, subconsciously, I think I'd like to see us drop a million plus on a signing and being in the mix for real, talked-about talents. It's never going to happen though, and knowing that is another point of frustration.

Couple the above with the fact that we've been wretched over the last few years and now find ourselves at our lowest ebb in our proud 115 year history, I can understand the negatively oozing out from our fanbase. All I can say is that you'll never know exactly what's happening behind the scenes (much more than you'd expect I imagine) and, unfortunately, you can't actually control much of it either (other than choosing to buy a ticket or not, or choosing to protest or not). Try and keep the faith if you can, try not to let it get you down too much and hopefully in the near future, we can usher in better days.

UTB

 

[Supershrimper]

If we appoint a CEO it will be on the same day that season ticket renewal prices are released.

Good news story to avoid rumblings of discontent when season tickets are announced at 10% less than last year and refunds from last season will come in the form of a free burger (without onions) and a warm pint.

 

[rigsby]

Every year I hope for the same thing and every year I'm disappointed.

-Pre-season games, yeah sure 4 have been announced. We're still 'talking' to another 4 clubs. Why are we talking still? We all know when the season ends and starts, why not have it organised weeks/months ago. Just be more organised.

Alls sorts or reason why we are "talking'. Hullbridge for example are digging up their pitch and having work done. During a Covid, clubs could go bust, delays because supplies are still sketchy summer. Perhaps you could tell us what date is best?

Or how about playing clubs higher than us. It just might be they haven't decided their own schedule yet. So we might have to wait otherwise their will be a thread about being 'underwhelmed" by the lack of quality friendlies.

 

[Leigh_Seasider]

I think the frustration felt by many stems from a few things.

The age of social media, everything from messageboards to Twitter, means that all of the speculation and rumours are played out in public, with only a fraction of it actually coming to fruition. We're conditioned to want instant gratification nowadays in all facets of life, so from an SUFC perspective, we expect there to be a new signing every week just like the Barry Fry days.

Fans also see the free-spending top-brass paying up early at ridiculous price-tags to secure their targets. I would much rather support my local team, the team I grew up watching, the team that makes me more miserable these days than anything, than be a plastic, armchair-watching, half-and-half scarf wearing Premier League mug. But, deep-down, subconsciously, I think I'd like to see us drop a million plus on a signing and being in the mix for real, talked-about talents. It's never going to happen though, and knowing that is another point of frustration.

Couple the above with the fact that we've been wretched over the last few years and now find ourselves at our lowest ebb in our proud 115 year history, I can understand the negatively oozing out from our fanbase. All I can say is that you'll never know exactly what's happening behind the scenes (much more than you'd expect I imagine) and, unfortunately, you can't actually control much of it either (other than choosing to buy a ticket or not, or choosing to protest or not). Try and keep the faith if you can, try not to let it get you down too much and hopefully in the near future, we can usher in better days.

UTB

The trouble is with leaking info/conversations going on behind the scenes ... it raises expectations and if things don't pan out as planned then you look a bit daft.
As a fan, I personally don't want to know the ins and outs of everything going on at my club. I just want to know it's being run decently to give us the best chance. I said on another thread, after all the stuff that's played out and with PB in place it will be pretty unbelievable if we don't start next season more prepared. And that isn't necessarily employing a CEO or some other 'title' for the sake of it or to please people, it's making sure we are ready for the NL. That's first and foremost.

 

[TrevorFitzpatrickHattrick]

The trouble is with leaking info/conversations going on behind the scenes ... it raises expectations and if things don't pan out as planned then you look a bit daft.
As a fan, I personally don't want to know the ins and outs of everything going on at my club. I just want to know it's being run decently to give us the best chance. I said on another thread, after all the stuff that's played out and with PB in place it will be pretty unbelievable if we don't start next season more prepared. And that isn't necessarily employing a CEO or some other 'title' for the sake of it or to please people, it's making sure we are ready for the NL. That's first and foremost.

Pretty much how I feel as well mate. I'm trying to stay positive despite the depths we've ploughed, working on the basis of known knowns rather than known unknowns that we, as supporters, will never truly be privy to.

 

[kentblues]

Timing is everything. The deal may well have been completed and contracts signed by now, meaning the new CEO may already be going about his business.

Maybe the club are waiting for the right time to announce that. Maybe they’re waiting for other pieces of the puzzle to fall into place, to give us not just one piece of good news, but possibly more?

And maybe his under contract to another club...and so that dictates timing