He's not

[Hempstead Gaz]

Quote:

Andy Y. (G&NFC) said:
What would you sooner have?

A small decent squad with the chance of a couple of good loan signings.

Or a larger squad of poorer quality?

With our budget your not gonna get both!

What I want is irrelevent.
The club will expect 2 or 3 players injured at any time + the odd suspension.
A squad of only 17 simply cannot cope.
The gaps need to be filled somehow.

[Andy Y. (G&NFC)]

So where are the rose tinted spectacles?

 

This is the best you are going to get.

 

If we have any injuries or suspensions they have to be filled with loan players....... like last year.

 

Its a sad fact of life but we are (even as a full time club) punching well above our weight. Theres no point going on moaning about it at some point during the season we are going to be well stretched.

 

Welcome to the wonderful World of Sad Reality. I for one treat it as a great challenge. If we succeed we have done well, if we fail...... they are still my team and thats all that matters.

 

Great isn't it!

[American FLEET FAN No1]

Agree Andy, unfortunately, the majority of people in Gravesham, couldn't give a hoot about the Club!

[Alan W (GNFC)]

Whats happened with Jamie Darville? Is he still a PASE player? I thought he was considered a bright prospect last year?

[Slartibartfast]

I seem to remember hearing that Jamie was offered a football scholarship at a university in America.

[Hempstead Gaz]

I feel one of the reasons we had to draft in so many loanees last year was that very few of our promising PASE players were actually registered to play in the Conference.

Perhaps there are a number of reasons why this was so that I not aware of, but clearly having the best 6-8 PASE lads registered would

 

1 obviate some of the need to hastily arrange loan players,

 

2 would be an economic way to ensure all the places on the bench are filled with fit players, who are familiar to the manager and the team

 

3 Give the PASE lads a real incentive to imporove as players in the knowledge the manager is prepared to have them on the bench or even blood them in the first team, and that long term they could be offered professional contracts.

[jc]

Quote:

Chatham Gary said:
I feel one of the reasons we had to draft in so many loanees last year was that very few of our promising PASE players were actually registered to play in the Conference.

But surely loan players would have been brought in anyway, since it's safer to go for players with experience at this level than untried youngsters. Obviously, there is the argument that youth players have to be given their chance if you're ever going to find out whether or not they're good enough, but you'd expect most Conference managers, rightly or wrongly, to more often than not bring in cover on loan whether the youth players are registered for the first team or not.

Quote:

Andy Y. (G&NFC) said: Our squad looks a good deal stronger than last year.

The loan signings will be crucial to demonstrating whether or not this is indeed true - after all, no-one would say, especially with the presence of a couple of last season's PASE/reserve players as first-team squad members this time around, that the squad has a lot of depth at the moment. The team may be stronger, but even then we can't be sure whether or not it is until the season is well underway.