Gregor Robertson

Quoted from Boris Johnson

Be great to know....who do people think it was

Tondeur
Findlater
Trust Board

can't see past the above to be honest.

Quoted from TheRonRaffertyFanClub

Wise words from the lady there LCL

At the time of Holloway’s appointment we had just dispensed with the services of another rather younger PR mad manager. I have to admit gullibility here because I felt Holloway was going to be a figurehead on the football side, more a Director of Football than a manager. Last season that appeared to be what happened to a large extent. Limbrick was the coach and Ollie the public face.

It went pear shaped when furloughs began and especially when Limbrick went. Then the targets Ollie wanted in the summer declined his invitations and he was left with the lesser lights who were supposed to be bit part players. That was never going to work and in this Jan window Ollie would have had to do like Hurst, chop out the rot and get some new growth.

What I find hard to understand is Ollie’s part in the Fenty business. Over the past few months he will have seen his plans destroyed by Fenty cuts but has blamed Covid at every opportunity rather than the club’s reaction to it. Only when the Mayhem began did Ollie drift away from loyalty to Fenty and that leaves unanswered questions about how much Ollie knew of the Fenty/May plans and how much he knew about the consortium speaking with Hurst.

It is water under the bridge of course, new era, new start, New Fishy and all that. But sometime in the future I have a feeling a lot more may emerge about Town Centre Development, the new BP and regeneration meetings with officers and councillors.

Quoted from Azimuth

My gut feeling is that Holloway was up to his neck in fentys dealings with May and his sudden dissapearing act was to save his face and reputation.

Quoted from Mayaman

He wrote an article previously on his time at Town.  Basically, he said when he signed for us he hated the idea,  We were beneath.  But during his time , he changed his opinion.  He realised how much it all meant to the fans and he by the end he loved pulling on the shirt and wearing those black and white stripes. He had me tearing up.

Quoted from https://www.thetimes.co.uk/art.....4ed64674fbc6d7947370

I didn’t really want to sign for Grimsby Town. I’d played in the Football League — in all three tiers beneath the Premier League — for more than a decade. Dropping out of the professional ranks into the National League was, if I’m honest, a bit of a dent to my pride. An unfashionable town on the north Lincolnshire coast wasn’t the most alluring place to play, but it was all there was.

Grimsby, however, as vividly as any of the six clubs I represented during my career, showed me just what a football club means to its town. To its people. Not all of them of course. But as a place where people congregate in their hundreds or thousands, a central pillar of a community, nothing comes close in provincial towns.

When I joined in 2015, the Mariners had fallen on hard times. They had been exiled from the Football League for five years. Yet every week thousands of supporters criss-crossed the country to watch us in places like Dover, Eastleigh, Halifax, Wrexham — all of whom had their own loyal fanbases — or packed out Blundell Park, the club’s home of 121 years.


When we lost in the play-off final at Wembley that year, they came together to raise£100,000 which was gifted towards the club’s playing budget, and drove us to go one better the following year. Their dedication was extraordinary. Since then, travelling around the country to write The Journeyman column in these pages reaffirmed that their passion, their sense of shared history, are mirrored at clubs across the English football pyramid — the pyramid upon which the Premier League was built, and which now finds its foundations under threat.

Yesterday’s announcement that supporters are unlikely to be allowed inside stadiums for as many as six months will be acutely felt at every level of the game, but for clubs in the National League it may prove fatal. Without fans in attendance, the fifth and sixth tiers, which are scheduled to kick-off on October 3, simply cannot begin. What that means for its clubs, players and staff does not bear thinking about.


National League central funding amounts to just £90,000 per club. There is no online streaming service, such as the EFL’s iFollow platform, to fill diminishing coffers in the National League. No fat TV contract, and by the time Premier League solidarity payments roll down the hill this far they barely register. Clubs at this level rely upon not only ticket sales but takings from hospitality, hiring out function suites — all of which have been decimated.

Putting football, and even the loss of jobs to one side for a moment, the demise of local clubs will have tangible societal repercussions. Take Dagenham & Redbridge, for example, whose managing director Steve Thompson recently listed to me all the ways in which their facilities are used: a deaf society, a diabetic society, a renal society, a local branch of the Royal Naval Association, children’s dance and jiu jitsu lessons, local football leagues, a pensioners’ club, a bereavement club, a weight watchers’ club, a model railway club, community police and ward meetings — all take place at Victoria Road. And again, these community hubs are mirrored across the country.

Without a support package from the government, or the Premier League — and quite frankly we are at the point where it does not matter where it comes from — clubs in Leagues One and Two will not be immune from the effects of no match-day revenue. Reliant upon the extent to which owners are willing or able to fund losses that, pre-Covid, already averaged £1.3 million and £800,000 per club per year respectively. Salary caps of £2.5 million and £1.5 million will do nothing to staunch the wound in the weeks and months ahead.

If, as a supporter of a Premier League club, you see the loss of these clubs as collateral damage in these perilous times, then remember that 17 of Gareth Southgate’s 23-man England squad for the 2018 World Cup in Russia played in the EFL in their formative years. That Harry Kane, the England captain, chose in May to sponsor Leyton Orient, the Sky Bet League Two club with whom he made his professional debut on loan from Spurs as a teenager in 2011, demonstrates how valuable he believes that experience was in shaping the player he is today.

But lower league clubs are much more than just a breeding ground for talent and future Premier League stars. They are central to so many lives — and they must be protected.

Quoted from Boris Johnson

Be great to know....who do people think it was

Tondeur
Findlater
Trust Board

can't see past the above to be honest.

Quoted from BlackandWhiteBarmy2

Gregor Robertson. A former player who gets it.

Decent player and a decent writer too.