• Welcome to the ShrimperZone forums.
    You are currently viewing our boards as a guest which only gives you limited access.

    Existing Users:.
    Please log-in using your existing username and password. If you have any problems, please see below.

    New Users:
    Join our free community now and gain access to post topics, communicate privately with other members, respond to polls, upload content and access many other special features. Registration is fast, simple and free. Click here to join.

    Fans from other clubs
    We welcome and appreciate supporters from other clubs who wish to engage in sensible discussion. Please feel free to join as above but understand that this is a moderated site and those who cannot play nicely will be quickly removed.

    Assistance Required
    For help with the registration process or accessing your account, please send a note using the Contact us link in the footer, please include your account name. We can then provide you with a new password and verification to get you on the site.

Question When will even the loyalists start to panic?

Joined
Aug 11, 2008
Messages
6,800
Location
Oregon
A number of posters, including myself, have expressed dissatisfaction with the lack of transfer activity at our beloved club this summer, and there have been further murmurings regarding the club's perilous financial situation. My feeling is that SZ is by and large a pro-Ron community (it's obviously pro-Tilly, how could it not be?), and many posters who raise these concerns are roundly lambasted and greeted with 'remember Johnson/Bate/Murphy/Jobson/Alvin Martin' or my personal favourite - 'I'm sick of these negative posts.'

I think it's understandable that there is some negativity in the air, and to dismiss it is at best naive, and at worst, utterly irresponsible. We have a threadbare squad, and whatever amusing spin you like to put on it, having the kitman run out in friendlies is shambolic. I keep hearing the line that we need to 'have faith' and 'give it more time', but now we have 18 days until kick-off and we aren't in a position to even compete for midtable with the squad we have. Those days keep counting down and all we get from the club are platitudes along the lines of 'we need to sign the right players.' It strikes me that the 'right players' are those who will sign for peanuts. If you're not panicking now, when will you start? 15 days before the season starts? 10 days, maybe 5? Or will you only panic when we're propping up the League or facing administration?
 
Last edited:
I have been saying for a number of years that it appears Ron Martin is not rich enough to prop up the finances of this Football Club to the scale that most supporters require.

Thats just the way it is. Now there is no point in blaming Ron for this, he is just trying to keep it all going. You cant blame someone for not having more money than they have.

Until there is a substantial influx of new money, I dont see the Club progressing and if anyone wants to blame Ron, maybe they should try and take it over themselves.
 
I do have to say, with two and a half weeks until Kick Off, having one established Centre Back at the entire club is pitiful. Whatever spin the club put on it, efforts to sign defensive reinforcements have been nothing short of shambolic and woefully inadequate...

I understand the club not wanting to spend money, I understand not breaking the wage structure. I even understand Tilson waiting for the right player, but two weeks short of the season is cutting it fine to say the least and it does strike me that something more synister could well be happening behind the scenes.

It's all very well Tilson coming out and telling us not to panic and that we're waiting for the players to start to panic, we'll ignore the hypocrisy of that and what was said in May, but how are we not supposed to feel more than a little aggrieved at the current state of the squad?
 
I see where your coming from mate, I really do.

But, I refuse to panic as it's the same pretty much every season and we haven't done too badly.

We are operating on a shoestring, everyone knows that. So finding the best possible players for our money is a bloody difficult task for Tilly, Brush and Ron (who is doing his best to keep this club afloat)

We have some very good players here. I believe we are 3 maybe 4 short of a play-off challenging side. I have every confidence that the players we evidently need, will come in eventually. Whether that means a couple of permanent deals tied up on Fri 7th August or a few loanees coming in as August ends, they will arrive...

Yes, this is far from an ideal situation again. We could lack cohesion and numbers for the first few weeks. But, we will have a side out there, which wears the blue we all love and that will do their bloody best to get the points on the board. So I think we just need to realise it is tough times ahead. The only thing we can all do about it is back the team and the club as whole. From the stands and via our pockets.

We still have our football club at this time and that is something we need to be grateful for.

Remember, Tilly always pulls it out of the bag. Just you wait...
 
Fair point, I'm of the opinion that as the accounts show we're in debt what can we do?

If we can pull off some decent cheap catches then fair play, we need to sign up some players with a view to later on balancing the books off the back of some tidy profits soon, my concern is that at the moment we don't really have many, if any 6 figure quick sale to balance the books players.

Unfortunately without a Shiekh rolling up in town and deciding that he wants to make us his play thing we need to just sit back and hope that the players out there can do their best and keep us sitting comfortably.

Tilly made a point in that Echo interview that the players who wanted the bigger deals are now going to drop their demands. I'd expect the club are offering players the chance to firmly put themselves in the shop window off the back of some great displays over the past few years rather than go somewhere like Brighton where despite the promise nothing really will ever happen there.

Sometimes we've just got to sit back, look at the glass as being half full and accept that whatever happens we'll come back from it stronger, we've done it before and we'll do it again and to be honest, I really do think that there is a wealth of crap in this division who can allow us to sustain our place and see it through this time where the big boys have fallen and need to go through a transitional period themselves and unfortunately cherry pick each and every one of our target, tightening belts to them is dropping from offering 5 figure weekly salaries to 4 figures.

Let's just scalp a load of big teams this season put up with the nail biting 3-2 games etc and watch Col U vanish.
 
The implication in the first post seems to be that those of us who are not in a panic must be mad. What's the point in panicking anyway? T&B aren't panicking & they know a lot more than any of us do. Have faith.
 
Loyalists...

More%20loyalists.jpg


loyalists.jpg


All joking aside, until we get to the Huddersfield game, the season hasn't started. If we haven't got a new CB and LB by then, I will start to worry a bit.
 
Last edited:
Of course I would have preferred to have made more signings by now, I'm sure Tilly & Ron would too.

I will be very worried if we haven't at least signed a CB by the season's start.

I will panic if we haven't made any more signings or if those we have aren't good enough, when the transfer window closes.

I'm sure we could have signed several players by now if we'd just signed up any old crap, it's quality not quantity we want.
 
quote

I thought this was going to be about Ulster...but never mind, ''No Surrender!'' to the lack of transfer activity & let's 'hope for the best as it's the best (we) can hope for,' as Pete Wylie once said...
 
Last edited:
We "Loyalists" prefer to be known as the ShrimperZone Orange Men. No surrender to the IRA! (IRA = Is Ron Anti-Christ?)
 
The finacial situation is indeed a concern to me, I may fall into the catagory of pro ron but certainly not blind to the fact we have a sizable debt including the outstanding dosh owed to the government, its plain we are on a shoestring but we will get players in just not as early as wished, I certainly wont be overly concerned until the club come out and say we are going into administration and we are officially in the poop, so we may not be challenging for promotion this season but we certainly not relegation contenders either, this is not my measurement/reason for supporting the blues, I hope hings turn round soon and we can all concentrate on the footy, fingers crossed ron has things covered
 
the market will reach a tipping point soon (august) where the supply of professional footballers available will outstrip the demand ..... ok the guys left behind might not be
the best qulaity but they will cheap and cheerful - and we can probably get two for the price of one and keep some cash for a quality loan -

most clubs and supporters want to BUY BUY BUY but there are more interesting startegies around -
 
All joking aside, until we get to the Huddersfield game, the season hasn't started. If we haven't got a new CB and LB by then, I will start to worry a bit.

On the playing side of things I'm not panicking because with a decent CD and LB I think we should have enough to finish just inside top half. (On the down side that's where we started the summer).

The money side is more of a worry to me and I don't think any of us really know to what extent we should panicking over that.
 
I'm refusing to panic at the moment, just like Tilly & co.

We aren't far away from having a good League One side, and by good I mean top 9/10 places. Yes we are in need of a centre half and a left back, everyone knows that but Tilson is spot on when he says players and their agents play Clubs off against each other to get the best deal. Its completely understandable and I'm sure we'd all do it if we was in the same situation.

Players are now beginning to drop their wage demands to find a Club before its too late. Just looked at Orient signing Scowcroft (think thats how you spell it) yesterday. I very much doubt they could have afforded his wages demands in June, but with the season nearly upon us they are dropping their wage demands, similiar situation with Harding and Southampton I bet.

Tilson only ever wants to bring in players better than what we have, and rightly so. There is no need to panic and buy someone who clearly isn't good enough just because they are available.

Tilson has always managed on a shoe string budget with us and has done incredible things so far, his used to this situation and we should be too.

Keep up chins up fellas and keep the faith.
 
It seems to me that the two criticisms of Ron are that we're skint and that we're not signing players. I'd have an easier time joining in a sensible debate on Ron's stewardship here were the two criticisms not constantly being clumped in together by the same people time after time. We're skint because of the signings that we've made and unfortuately if we're to turn the corner financially then we're going to have to tighten our belt when it comes to player purchases. That means that we probably are going to feed off scraps for a while. But with hundreds of players unemployed now we simply won't not sign anyone. We will have a new centre back and a new left back.

As for the question of when I'll panic - well I've been concerned about the finances for months. I won't be panicing about the lack of signings though.
 
Last edited:
Apart from the fact that I wouldn't panic over hearsay, rumours, suppositions, and speculations; why panic anyway?

I can worry about things, I can be disappointed with things, and I can be angry about things. None of which changes the fact that I can't do anything about the situation myself, and I haven't got a clue how anyone else could do better than RM and T&B either (unless there's an oil sheikh or similar lurking around that I don't know about).

I can though think of lots of ways that things could be handled worse; most of which have been written on this forum. If we followed the advice of some posters we'd have paid £275k for Theo, offered £5k+ / week to harding, offered Wayne Gray a contract, paid the first price that was quoted by Stockport for Raynes, and much more.

I'll stick to hoping for the best, and being supportive of the club and whatever team we put out.
 
Unfortunately, it is not possible that all 24 league clubs can be pushing to win the league and fight for a promotion place. Sometimes you just have to deal with what you have. A financial situation will not change overnight. Why don't concerned fans come up with plans for the club to help or try and get extra sponsorship etc as opposed to moan? Ah yes that is why because that involves hassle and effort ;)
 
Back
Top