This Season (re-named from 'Today')

The only time the catering queue was a reasonable length was when those providing the food were charging crazy prices: I thought I was at a motorway service station. It was a pity that Tilgate Bakery's tenure had to end due to the pandemic, because I thought they had potential.

As far as the ticket charging goes, I seem to recall the club charged more on the day once before, but dropped it after a short time.

We need to find a way to inject some life into the club. I suspect the pandemic is still having an effect though as I don't suppose I'm the only one uneasy about being in crowds. As a new covid variant is now around, and one that may partially evade the vaccines, I don't see the issue improving much in the near future. However, with crowds that low it should be possible to mask up on the way in and find a quiet corner away from others. I even considered selecting games where the away support is small and going incognito onto the away terrace. Quite why the government decided to label the new variant Omicrom is beyond me; the letter after delta is epsilon and I imagine there will be other nasty variants before we are done. Might as well keep the letters in order and make room for those to follow. I'm wondering how the world might look by the time we arrive at omega. People living in burrows at least fifty metres apart with government ministers doing a Corporal Jones ("Don't panic").

I get the point completely. Apart from a couple of years working abroad I was a regular between 1989 and 2018, many of those years as a STH, with both my kids. We stopped going at the end of the 2017/18 season. I can remember the day, we got stuffed by Cheltenham, it was enough. These days I get more enjoyment from a Rymans game than I did at Crawley.

The football has been rubbish for years. Unfortunately 'Team Eren' did themselves no favours to start with, with the waffle about getting us to the Championship, some poor early decisions (players and management) and selling themselves based on achievements in Turkish football which when subjected to scrutiny were less than stellar. At a time we needed people with experience of the EFL we had a clueless team manager in Cioffi and little experience off the field, especially when Kelly left.

To be fair, in the last couple of years they have steadied a bit. I support the youth based approach, however we have gone too far the other way signing loads of untested youngsters who in the absence of an academy model will never kick a ball competitively for the club. Amongst the huge amounts of dross have been a few nuggets (like Watters and Collins) and this is what has kept the club alive. But surely better to have a decent squad of 22/24 players than an ordinary one of 40.

To be fair it must have been bloody hard these last two years with a shortfall of income and credit to ZE that he never took bail out money and used his own cash instead. He must be looking and thinking what next, bearing in mind he has stuck in millions (and not as loans either) but we are actually lower in the able then when he arrived.

The tensions were obvious at the forum, as is the lack of interest. Low turnout at the forum, and attendances well below 2,000.

I'm not sure what the answer is really. With crowds at current levels we are doing well to maintain League 2 football. Competing in a national division on our income is brutal. However standing still isn't good enough for most people so I'm not sure where the club goes from here. I don't think firing another manager would help - we have tried the journeyman (Yates), the top team coach (Dermot), the big name (Kewell), the random (Cioffi) and now the experienced local guy (JY) and the result has been the same.

Unless ZE decides to step out and a new owner with deep pockets comes in then survival will remain the name of the game. And as we found before with Paul Hayward a sugar daddy is only fun when the cash is flowing, the minute the tap is turned off normal service is resumed.

Yes, but none of it is for the sake of it, is it? There are really good heartfelt contributions in this thread from people who have been going for years, but recognise that things just aren't right.  Articulating those concerns is a good thing. The fact that no-one (understandably) has an answer is admittedly more worrying.     

When you're actually feeling a bit relieved that you haven't got another game for 10 days then something definitely isn't right. The place just feels so toxic at the moment with some staff that aren't good enough at their roles, and there just seems to be no clear strategy apart from stockpiling young players of which some will never make it as an FL player

The football part of the business in my opinion needs a clear review and restructure

Also I know a few people at my old uni that went to the club in order to look at projects and help out, and pretty much all of them told me how it wasn't run very professionally and they had issues with finances

All valid points; penalising attenders on the day, letting the catering go west, the stewards getting heavy in the bar, is just counterproductive and off- putting.

If the owner invests in a few proven quality players in the next window, that settle in and turn the poor form, everyone's morale will go up and fans will be interested in attending. Is his interest in the club just a Turkish domestic prestige thing, owning an English League club; drafting in legions of fringe hopefuls to the squad, is not a policy for progress.

The issue of the differential pricing is obvious. We are a small club with small infrastructure and a small matchday staff. It’s difficult for us selling the majority of tickets on the day because of the pressure it puts on a small ticket office team. Do people not see the big queues before games? Often I think late buyers don’t see kick off. So the differential pricing is to incentivise fans to take the pressure off ticket off staff by buying in advance. It’s on the face of it a logical policy - whether it works or not someone with better sources inside the club than me would have to say, with knowledge of advance sales figures