Minards has said these first 4 games won't define the season. Surely they will because there's no quality to come in and no signings either. This is the worst squad in our SL history. Fact. Even the John Harbin team in the early 00s or Kears last team in 2011. We at least scalped a few and put points on the board. Poching wanted to rebuild and sign players after last year, we'd have gone if Toulouse hadn't run out of steam. He was promptly removed and replaced by Applegarth who obviously jumped at it and why not. A poisoned chalice with no money and no squad quality, but his only chance of a SL head coach gig. Realistically who can we beat in this division? We are so far behind it's ridiculous. Teams will raise the bar when playing us to avoid the ignominy of not only losing to us but letting us even post points. We offer nothing this season other than an easy 2 points and a good opportunity for teams to improve their points difference. Any team with a solid defence and a bit of zip and high tempo will comfortably get 40+ easily. How has the board allowed this to happen? I'm a season ticket holder and a die-hard but can't face much more of this. Funerals are not entertainment.

Either way. As I understand it, that £500k was part of the money for the stadium as a whole. It wasn't available to us to fund signings. So its a none argument.

The pitch, floodlights & big screen was privately funded and didn't come from the stadium money. Only the floodlights of those was an actual no choice requirement as the old ones no longer met the required spec. The screen was a desirable but not essential. The pitch was our own choice based on a business decision in order to try and raise extra income from it. The old pitch was in poor condition but that was in Carters own words 'on him' as he took the decision to cut all but absolute essential expenditure on it shortly after taking over. Had it been kept up to at its original levels given it was long established, has one of the best drainage systems around and was being cared for by a highly skilled groundsman who treated it like one of the family then it would have likely been able to cope with the extra traffic on it. But the money wasn't there at the time and it was allowed to deterioate to such a degree there wasn't much choice but to replace it if we wanted to use it more. It will bring in extra income but it will take some time to pay for itself and they still have to be looked after and maintained well.

For info the costings were on the planning application. It was based on on the original 4G plan but i believe the prices aren't too dis-similar looking at the pricings on suppliers websites. It will depends on what grade we went for but they are far from cheap. It's worth considering that there will be some remedial costs already as well given the problems we've had with it so far. Anyway from the planning app...

LED Floodlights (installed 2021) £400,000
Display Screen (being installed 2022) £100,000
4G playing surface (to follow other works) [estimate] £700,000
Total £1,200,000

I guess if we'd spent money doing more than basic maintenance on the pitch we would taken the hit elsewhere? Robbing Peter to Pay Paul may have resulted in us having the best pitch in the Championship already.

Quite possibly so.

As ever nothing is ever linear.