[Theloanranger]

With the club in such a decline.which may yet prove terminal,apportioning blame is something most on here have attempted to do,one way or another,but no single individual can claim sole responsibility for the mess we find ourselves in.

The seeds of doom were sown from the moment we abandoned our heritage and left Saltergate. We lost our soul amid all the hype and delight of moving to a new stadium and all it promised. The stadium is excellent,no doubt about it,but the cost of moving stoked up a debt that barring an amazing level of success on the pitch was,at best,never likely to disappear and at worst,as we have now found out,continue to escalate out of control.Not everyone was in favour of moving,myself included and whether those reservations can now be regarded as foresight or lucky guesswork,there is no doubt the chickens have now come home to roost.

This club could easily fold.Allen is an old man and sooner or later,old men die. Not once have I ever believed Allen was serious about selling up.I,m still not. He has always put too many conditions on any prospective sale to be serious.It would have happened long before now if it was going to and for it to happen in the future assumes there is someone out there with more money than sense, willing to buy it.The club is no longer the attractive proposition it was a few years ago I,m no fan of Allen,s and never have been but to place all the blame at his doorstep is somewhat naive,though convenient.

The financial plight is certainly down to him,or at least the result of his decisions, but matters on the pitch are not quite so simple. Whether Allen,you or me owns the club,all you can do is put someone in charge of the team and hope for the best. I think the playing budget has been comparable to most clubs and no recent manager has complained of being cash starved. The exception might have been Cook and here was where Allen really has to admit his crass decision not to back Cook in a bid to reach the championship.The sale of key players (especially Cooper and Doyle) both then and since has also contributed to our demise.Had Allen decided to go for broke,Cook would likely not have left and we may have been looking forward to life in the championship. This was the moment it all started to unravel on the pitch and is still doing so.

Subsequent managers have come and gone but the one thing they nearly all have in common is dreadful recruitment and a total failure to address the problems which everyone but them could clearly see. We have brought in players for positions that were already well covered and ignored positions that were not.The closest we have ever come to a coherent plan of action has been to sign any unemployed footballer who passes the managers door. Couple that with a clear lack of understanding as to the tactics and requirements to even exist in the National League,let alone challenge for promotion and hey presto, we now find ourselves once again staring at relegation.Sheridan has to go.He is clueless and talks like someone trapped in a dark room searching for a non existent light switch. Whoever takes over from Sheridan has one hell of a task on their hands just to keep us up,but there is no doubt in my mind that maintaining the status quo for much longer will result in certain relegation.The players,as poor as many of them undoubtedly are,also have to take some of the blame. The trouble is,many of them know only too well that come the end of the season they will be out of a job,so expecting them to bust a gut for the cause is something that might not happen,regardless of who is managing them.As hard as it is to believe,we may not yet have reached rock-bottom.