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We may not be the first to fall through the relegation trap door. If Hednesford lose tomorrow (home to Hitchin) and Kings Langley win (home to Basford) then Hednesford are relegated as they have massive negative GD.

sussexdiamond wrote: ↑Fri Mar 17, 2023 11:34 am We may not be the first to fall through the relegation trap door. If Hednesford lose tomorrow (home to Hitchin) and Kings Langley win (home to Basford) then Hednesford are relegated as they have massive negative GD.

You can blummin well clear off with all your positive talk, we've worked really hard at being first at summat this season. Our negative goal difference is gonna p!ss all over theirs.
Go Diamonds
#strongestteamintheleague

Three of Diamonds wrote: ↑Fri Mar 17, 2023 12:39 pm

sussexdiamond wrote: ↑Fri Mar 17, 2023 11:34 am We may not be the first to fall through the relegation trap door. If Hednesford lose tomorrow (home to Hitchin) and Kings Langley win (home to Basford) then Hednesford are relegated as they have massive negative GD.

You can blummin well clear off with all your positive talk, we've worked really hard at being first at summat this season. Our negative goal difference is gonna p!ss all over theirs.
Go Diamonds
#strongestteamintheleague

Don't forget we can still be first to concede 100 goals, and go the season without winning a penalty. Plenty to play for

Comparing the 2 Southern League Premier tables makes for amusing reading.

Last relegation team in the South - on 31 points.
Last relegation team in the Central - on 35 points.

Bottom team in the South - on 27 points.
Bottom team in the Central - on 15 points.

If someone had told me this time last year that we would be in a relegation battle one year on - I would have agreed and said "yeah the Conference North is very competitive" as nobody would have expected us to be in a relegation battle at this level after such a good year.

The amusing thing for me is just how bad that 15 points is, it doesn't reflect a team that have really put up a fight at any stage of the season, I don't think we are entitled to be challenging every year but even clubs with no money and players who are almost playing for free have put up a more competitive fight than we have this season.

I think the way the club declined after Peak's left shows that he probably did a lot more than just a normal football manager does because a board that knew what it was doing would have removed Burgess quicker but not only that, a capable board wouldn't have let him run riot with the budget in the first place, my hope is that with an experienced manager like Chris Nunn at the helm, the new board will benefit from his experience and should Nunn ever move on be capable of running the club.

With Burgess the signs were there as early as June, the NLP published an article titled: "Life of Brian is a blueprint Burgess will follow" how on earth could we follow the money bags way of R&D? and this bit:

"And Burgess can’t resist a chuckle as he describes negotiations with a couple of young bucks at AFC Rushden & Diamonds.

“They’re umming and ahhing. Making excuses. But I know exactly what’s going on – I even know the clubs they’ve spoken to!"

The last bit screams egotistical, someone who comes across as belittling, that type of personality isn't going to motivate players or gain their respect.

So my positive for this season is just that every single person connected with this club has probably learnt something along the way, even those who are no longer involved, if you have learnt something that helps you make better decisions in your future, great.

The important thing is not to just blame Andy Burgess, he was appointed, he was given the backing, he was given so much time to sort it out, so being able to identify when to make the big decisions, board members attend games and at some point should have been able to say certain players are not giving it their all or are not playing for the manager.

Currently we have a board who are pulling in the same direction and have genuinely tried to improve things in the last 4 months, they have probably learnt more about running a football club in the last 4 months than they would have done if we were top of the league right now, so in the words of Boris Johnson... Build Back Better - if this terrible season gives us a chance to come back as a better club then I can happily handle a relegation.

Something I think we need to improve on is the average attendances, https://www.footballwebpages.co.uk/sout ... ttendances

They have been dropping since 2018/19, being an ex football league club gave us an advantage on other clubs but last season we slipped down to 10th, we need someone who is good at research to have a snoop around with the plethora of information available on the internet to find out what other clubs around this level are doing to get people to games, growing the fan base also has a say in how far we can progress in future.

The point of the post - although the results are now irrelevant, that doesn't mean we can't still learn something that could be beneficial and make us a better club off the pitch going forward, especially clubs like Redditch that have been around this level longer than us.

We'll be there! 3rd game for Erin - so hopefully 3rd time lucky

John Dean is on the bench.

BTW almost every one of our match day tweets gets spammed, if anyone on here also uses Twitter perhaps an influx of people reporting his tweets will get that place cleaned up a wee bit.