Something really has to give…
I’m not going to lie, I feel ever so slightly uneasy writing this. The Football League is not short of clubs who are actively being run into the ground. Whose owners appear to be deliberately ruining them. From Charlton Athletic to Blackpool there are basket case football clubs whose fans have my total sympathy and support in their plights and their fights against poor ownership.
It’s time to accept, however, that Notts County can be added to the list of shame. I don’t believe that Ray and Aileen Trew have deliberately looked to run our club into the ground, but is it really any better to shoot someone in the face if you only do it by accident?
Three consecutive defeats, during which Notts have barely managed a shot in anger, let alone a goal, have brought things to a head, but this has been coming for an awfully long time now. We have regressed as a club in almost every single aspect since the Trews bought an admittedly fairly stricken club for £1 six and a half years ago. There’s no nice way to put this, no sugar coating that I can give. They have failed.
I’m not someone who believes that a football club has to be constantly defined by how they perform on the pitch. The very nature of football means that, each year, only a few teams can be genuinely successful. To fail to meet expectations in every single one of six seasons is still pretty poor, though, and regressing off the field as well is simply unforgivable.
Notts are now a club without an identity or a direction, without a single thing to be proud of. We are a considerably worse football team than we were when the Trews took over. We are considerably more expensive to watch than when they took over, with the most expensive adult tickets in League Two. The match day experience at Meadow Lane is horrible. There is not a single success story to fall back on.
The seats in the Kop are covered in bird shit and cobwebs every single week. The food and drink in the stands is overpriced and tasteless. The Meadow Lane Sports Bar, one of few early successes for the regime, has become run down and tired, far less bustling than the place that was, for a brief time, extremely popular. I haven’t set foot in there for about three seasons now.
Staff turnover at the club, from the management and playing staff to the media team and chief executive, is so high that no one seems to be able to fully invest in and commit to the job. People seem to be moving in different directions, drifting on without any common purpose or passion to unite them.
It’s easy to point at struggling, gutless players turning out at Meadow Lane every week, but they’re merely following the example set by everyone else at the club. The hardest thing to get right for a football club will always be results on the pitch, but it’s unforgivable to be in such a mess away from it as well. At least try and get the variables that are under your control under some semblance of control.
For the game against Cambridge United this Tuesday we offered £10 entry to students. This is fine on the face of it, but dig a little deeper and it’s a boneheaded, illogical offer made by a club who have absolutely no idea what they’re supposed to be doing. We don’t offer student tickets anyway, so there’s no chance of anyone coming back, whilst we began advertising it on social media just twenty four hours before the game. What were we even hoping for!?!
Moving back to the football, the club are no closer to securing their own training facility than they were six years ago. A brief deal in Arnold seemed to lead to a spate of injuries and criticism from managers. We’re now training on a public park. It’s another area where the club needs to move forwards to have any hope of growing but haven’t even been able to maintain the status quo. It’s a similar story in the scouting department, where Notts are still relying on the conveyor belt of free transfer journeymen each summer, whilst talented young players from local non-league clubs and academies continue to pass us by.
There is simply nothing positive that can be said about their continuing ownership of the club. We have regressed in every single facet, whether out on the field, financially or in terms of improving the match day experience. We’re not asking for miracles here. We don’t need a five year plan to reach the Championship, just something at this club that we can be proud of.
There is no saving grace here, no get out card. It’s time to stop the ‘days rather than weeks’ lies, drop the absurd asking price that was rumoured in the summer and move on. The club was bought for £1 last time and, somehow, should now be worth even less. Without some fresh ideas, impetus and some sort of plan, that is soon going to hit zero.
