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Thursday, November 13, 2008, 08:00
With crowds dropping through the floor, the need for a cup run was possibly greater than it's been for a long time.
The defeat against Scunthorpe was depressing but, after the abject performance against Luton, not unexpected.
They were a better team than when they came here in August but despite having more players available than we had back in the summer, we don't seem to have improved to the same degree, if at all.
The news financially is not good either.
Despite announcing a trading profit last year, we are clearly not bringing in the dosh that was expected.
Crowds are down as the lessons of the last decade have not been learned – we have always lost fans but have generally brought in more as well.
Now it's these fans that are drifting away.
Instead of filling a bucket with a hole in the bottom, it now seems rather than fix the leak we are trying to fill the bucket through the hole. It's not working.
The conferencing is also affected and I always felt this side of the business was more linked to the Saturday support than might have been appreciated.
Fans attending encourage their companies to use the facilities. Those who don't, won't.
There were 2,000 less marketing executives on Saturday than there were not long ago.
Attempts to encourage people to attend have been 'scuppered' by complaints by season ticket holders. I wonder how many season ticket holders might not renew next year.
They are the lifeblood of the club we were told. We may start to look very anaemic in the summer.
I would suggest that the club might need to do something for the season ticket holders alongside any future promotions because I wonder how many of the empty seats on Saturday were those who had already handed over their cash a long time ago.
I don't know if the club researches this kind of thing; or if their software allows it because although I went ahead of the season ticket holders deadline they had still managed to sell my seat to someone else.
Given the number of empty places this I think is quite some achievement. So there's one positive.
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