Early season report

By Rab Laverty

So here I am again and I have deliberately waited for a week or so before doing another little report due to the end of the transfer window and until after the Blackburn game.

Firstly on the end of the transfer window, I have been left feeling distinctly under whelmed by the finish of the transfer window. As a club that apparently has premier league aspirations it is a disgrace that Master Bates has failed to back Neil Warnock in his efforts to achieve promotion. Let us not be fooled by the bearded parasites bleatings in the media that he has sanctioned the arrival of 10 or 11 new players to help the promotion effort. These players were signed by an astute manager that has seen what he had to work with, financially, and in my humble opinion for what it’s worth, I am reasonably happy with those dealings.

That being said the only money that old Ebenezer let him use was a small percentage of the money he has brought in by selling our best assets over the last few seasons. Bates will still leave with a very handsome profit from his illicit dealings and his dismemberment of our playing squad. I would imagine that the money brought in for Snodgrass has more than covered the new wages bill for this season. So the question  is, has the dismal end to the transfer window been Ebenezer’s parting gift to a support and a club that he seems to genuinely loathe,  all that remains is for him to pack up and f*#k off into the sunset and hopefully his yacht will sink off the coast of Monaco. I would now envisage, that, now the window has slammed shut that he will sign off whatever deal is on the table, pocket his alleged £50m and leave us to get on with it, leaving our new Arab owners trying to unravel the disaster that he has made of our club. Maybe, and only time will tell, foreign owners will be or maybe not be a good thing for our beloved club but I am convinced that it would not be any worse than the financial mess we will end up in again due to the asset stripping of Captain Birdseye Bates.

Now to our teams early season form. I have to admit to being concerned by our inability to hold onto a lead as in the Blackpool and Blackburn games. Admittedly against Blackpool we got a bit of a lesson on the night from a reasonable team however yesterday v Blackburn at 3-2 we should have been able to close out the game for a vital 3 points and like the past few seasons we may regret throwing away points at the end of games. In saying that I am delighted that we seem to have a front line that I believe, when they really gel, i.e Diouf, then we will blow some teams away in this division. As I said previously when a player pulls on that white shirt we should give them 100% backing and I think all our fans can now see that El Hadji is bringing a real quality to our team and his experience will be vital as long as he maintains his concentration on playing football.

Overall I am quietly satisfied with our start to the season, yes with a bit of better defending we could have been top but I am happy with us to sit in the top group of teams and hopefully Neil can work his apparent valuable footy contacts list and get us a couple of decent players in on loan signings which might give us the edge as the season progresses. There are some good players out there without a team at the minute so I would expect Neil to be in there signing a few up.

The good feeling I have is that we have rebuilt our team and we are sitting pretty in the league without being fully settled, so while saying we must do better I fully expect that in maybe a month or so we will have a pretty decent side playing good footy and scoring goals. Paddy Kenny looks like the best keeper we have had recently and I feel big Pearce, Austin and El Hadji Diouf give us a great backbone to the team which I felt we really lacked the past couple of seasons so onward and upward and I am getting a warm feeling about the next 9 months with my beloved Whites. Keep up the good work Neil. MOT

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