Dear Uncle Globnasty,
Thankyou for your interesting post. To reply to your points...
1)Hugh, your loyalty is admirable, you may indeed be Mr Alty, but you really need to take off the GH blinkers and look at the bigger picture. Those blinkers are badly affecting your judgement.
I like to think not. And having said that, I think a number of people are responding "emotionally" to a rare good beating and a run where we have (somehow) not scored for a while. I still think 9 games with mostly a new team is too short a time to judge. Let's wait and see if we regularly get beat by genuine bottom half teams (and I heard we were very unlucky to lose at Eastbourne although admittedly lose we did).
2)Firstly, very few, if anyone, on here are saying that Heathcote has not been an excellent servant to the club, both as player and manager. Nobody is doubting his commitment, love of the club or his non-league knowledge. However, this is hardly the non-league of old. In no other line of work (or indeed in football) would someone be kept in their position, year after year, out of loyalty, whilst the company went down the pan.
To be fair someone used the word clueless. Fact. As I said, it is also three promotions in a row, and we would not have needed any of them if it was not for the FA's bizarre points deduction. Is this not true? And remember we were struggling against rtelegation from the NPL premier when he started here. Hardly down the pan if we're 21st (after nine games and a tough match) in the division above?
3) Secondly, nobody expected us to win at Satanage and we all realise they are in a false position at the moment, but they are not world beaters and what most expect is a little fight from the team. Everyone knows this league is going to be a struggle for us, given our constraints, that does not prevent us from making a fight of it.
I expected more to be honest. Having said that, they beat Burton 4-1, and Wrexham said they played better stuff than some league 2 teams. We are always going to have off days on tjhese long trips down south.
3) Thirdly, you keep on banging on about our improvement last season. I'm sorry Hugh, but what improvement exactly? We were relegated (and I don't count the AGM as a "promotion") and only showed any real fight in a handful of games.
We wouldn't have been relegated if Halifax had not been overspending (probably). After ten games we had 3 points. If we had got 6 points, or nine (which we will hopefully have after ten matches this time) we would have stayed up comfortably. Fact. And I don't look on last season as a relegation either. Halifax deserved to go. 2.5% - what? And after all our work paying off our debt! It frigging crippled me!
4) Fourthly, you keep on banging on about Dario Gradi as if he and GH are inextricably linked. I'm sorry, but there is a world of difference between the two scenarios. The similarity starts and ends with them having had to work within limited constraints in their respective divisions. Dario Gradi's teams were widely regarded as "playing football the way it should be played" (and they stayed up on their own merit most seasons). Now, Hugh, how many people do you think would regard Alty as playing football the way it should be played over the last few seasons?
A world of difference between division 3 and pt conference too.
5)Finally (I could keep going, but frankly this is depressing and soul destroying), you go on about the fact that a change of manager will do no good and we may be even worse of. I'm sorry Hugh, have you been polishing your crystal balls, because they weren't working too well last season when you kept on telling us how we were going to stay up (on playing merits)? You can not possibly know that and saying things may get worse if we make a change is hardly a valid reason for not making one. So Hugh, let's magine you have a personal physician and he tells you that you are going to die and that there is little that he can do given the tools at his disposal. Would you refuse the opportunity to get in another physician who may potentially save your life on the grounds that he may make things worse??
I was wrong last time (just). Things are better this time (fact). If it can be proven beyond reasonable doubt that a change will improve things then fair enough. Doubt remains. Wait a bit longer.