There will also be 50 less SL1 squad places available. I can see us releasing all our overseas players, and players retiring as mentioned, but i can't see many teams fighting for players that have played carp all season, or players who have been on the injury list for the most part of this season (fergerson) or previous seasons (donno). With the fewer squad places available, i could see us retaining the vast majority.... st least i hope we retain the vast majority of people!

I think your general point is indisputable. Once Green was in place, everyone knew that having lost our pack (Kopczak, Carvell, Scruton) we could never compete in SL and so it proved. I presume it was fixable, given enough money, because most things are (eg Wigan when they bought Fielden, Noble et al when in the mire) but it's my assumption that the spare money to throw at the problem was simply not there. Tbf green has never painted himself as a sugar daddy, if anything quite the opposite. You say he "failed to deliver what was required" and in the superficial sense that is right, but did you believe that he would? I.e. did you think here was a man who claimed he would be spending whatever it took to save our SL existence? I don't think he ever said or implied that, and while I am as sick as anyone that we got relegated I think it's a bit unfair to accuse Green of failing "to deliver". I reckon he's pretty much done what it said on his tin.

But without loads of money to fill the holes, we were plainly sunk, and in fact we had the opposite of loads of money because (while the figures have never been released) Green also had zero season ticket income, and also had negligible remaining Sky/distribution income. It would have been a Herculean financial effort by him just to ake up the funding gap, let alone pay big money extra to get top level players in.

I don't blame him for not throwing huge wads at the problem simply because he never claimed he could, nor would. He's always more or less stuck to the principle that the business has to tick over itself - though I would be amazed if he hasn't had to put in significant sums this season as well just to pay the bills, whether it's made public or not.

It is a fact that next season once relegated, we'll be on about TREBLE the amount of money that he has had this year, and that's before ticket sales. That fact alone tells much of the story of 2014 to me.

is the new owner better than the old? Well,
1. We haven't gone into admin again
2. We seem to be paying the wages
So yes, probably.

I can under stand all these views but if the club were unable to build a competative side why sack Cummins? I honestly think he would have been a great asset to re-build you and bring you back. He was loyal and had no chance this year. Hopefully Lowes can produce but as an outsider I would have had more confidence in Cummins.

We'll never know, but it sounded from some of his comments that he had lost the dressing room, and certainly he had to take responsibilty for the appalling defensive debacles we saw week in, week out. I would have liked him to be kept on, if I'm honest, especially given his undoubted loyalty to the cause, but don't know enough of the background and if the players wouldn't play for him then maybe Green had no choice. The timing was also odd, too late for the new coach to have any chance of getting us out of the hole.

Agree with everything you say FA in the last few posts, other than the timing, which I would put down to getting the new coach in for planning next season as well as seeing which of the current team would respond and show the new coach if they were wanted or were worth keeping.

So FA, what about the timing, constructive comments please.