the_bully_wee

Absolutely, yes. The promotion season and DL's first half a season before it were fantastic but came at the cost of incurring £170k of debt, something I don't think any of us knew the extent of at the time and which clearly wasn't sustainable. When we achieved promotion there was a sense of real forward momentum, but recruitment in particular has been poor since and that's the only area where we can be completely objective about club performance. Geography obviously isn't quite on our side in the same way as it is for Montrose, but we should've been looking to do exactly what they've done and maintained an extremely settled core of players with a clear and defined playing identity and minimal squad turnover. To have only retained one of Cuddihy, Grant, Howie and McStay from recent seasons is extremely disappointing.

Folk, myself included, have been harping on about the recruitment record since it became evident that Chris Johnston, Darren Smith and Tony Wallace weren't going to do much at all in a Clyde shirt. Even before then there were questions over the retention of Lyon, the two-year deal for Rumsby, Petkov on loan etc and there'd been some dross further back too (but, crucially, an impressive first XI to lock them out). I'm certain I've covered this before, but the players we've signed and the fashion in which we've signed them (after having a look on trial) both smack of complete desperation. For all the bluster about each player fitting into what he wants, there is a significant contingent of hodge-podge guff throughout that squad that, no matter where and how utilised, don't fit into one cohesive system which will improve us versus last season. My favourite part of that overtly optimistic (if not deluded) bluster was about Billy Mortimer: Billy, I'm afraid, ticks none of those boxes. We clearly don't have a big budget, but Dumbarton and East Fife won't either. Do we simply have far too much of it tied up in the likes of Lennon, Goodwillie and Mitchell? Why, when so many talk about Danny Lennon's full-time attitude to the job, is he continually so bad at recruiting players? I heard a story a while back about a failed pursuit of Mark McGuigan soon after he fell out of favour at Stenny upon Davie Irons' return. Admittedly this is tantamount to third-hand information, but what I was told is that McGuigan was very interested until Danny had a phone call with him and spent the entire time talking about what a pleasure and privilege it would be for McGuigan to have the chance to play with Goodwillie. If that is spot-on, I can see why he'd struggle to sell the club and his vision to players with that kind of patter. So many of the good players we've had seem to have fallen into our lap, if they weren't already at the club. Mitchell was brought in by Chris Fahey, Boyle and Cogill (despite both ultimately not working out) were one-offs from, I believe, a Moore connection at Huddersfield. Grant and McStay were both likely a result of Celtic connections (perhaps even Diamond himself), as the latter had been on trial there before winding up at us following a tip-off. Lang was tried everywhere but centre-back and only got a gig there after Cogill got injured before establishing himself as fantastic. Love has a great character (in terms of football, of course) and has given us many great and important moments but he's never really excelled consistently for us. Rankin, hardly a secret, was well-known by Goodwillie and in the papers a fair bit about his next move. Syvertsen is another who landed in our lap after a chance meeting in a church and a failed trial at Hamilton. Who else have we got after that? Howie was a decent player and grew into an important one for us, but for whatever reason couldn't be retained. Cunningham and Livingstone were good additions on loan, the former a talented but frustrating player but over the past season we've not played to his strengths whatsoever. The latter now appears to have something of an attitude problem which has Lennon believing that it's better to hang Docherty, and by extension the team, out to dry instead. Some loan pick-ups were good last season but that was probably a result of the law of averages more than anything else. Overall, it's just not good enough and it's made all the more galling by the fact that we have actual paid employees now who were specifically brought in to improve the situation, but have abjectly failed at doing so. Unless today was just some complete anomaly then things are going to get very toxic pretty quickly with consistent showings like that one. DL can't live forever off eighteen great months which ended over two years ago. The big fear I have is that the damage is already done and neither he, nor anybody else, will be able to step in and save us this season.

Well played to Dumbarton today, and although obscenely jealous of you all, it must've been wonderful to be back at the football in the sunshine with your team dishing out a doing. A few more additions and you'll have a good shout at 8th for sure. That was absolutely abhorrent from Clyde and the worst part about it is that you can't pick out many players and say that they played miles beneath themselves today. The starting line-up and formation was an absolute aberration from a manager whose strengths are increasingly eroding at the hands of his glaring weaknesses. Even more worringly, everything that was wrong about today was a thing that was shown to be disastrous through our pre-season schedule. I've nothing against the likes of Rumsby, Mortimer, Docherty and Jones personally and would never single them out for a lack of effort or application, but they (and others we have chucked deals at) are clearly miles off the level required to look at home in League One. We are at least three players away from making a fist of it; for Danny Lennon and his esteemed recruitment department, that'll require an enormous amount of luck. We got one of our key targets in the summer in Gomis; hopefully there are a clutch of game-changers asking for Danny's number a la Balatoni so he becomes aware of them. Plus points to Barry Cuddihy who wrestled us control back, after we moved to a three-man midfield 50 mins too late, and looked like one of the few players who belongs at this level. That's about it.

There is one man who let us down and he has let us down for the last three months. Unfortunately, even if things continue along these lines, absolutely nobody will want to come in and take charge of that rabble he's assembled.

Orsi and MacLean were both very lucky to escape bookings for the exact same thing Balatoni was carded for.

Mfw Livingstone comes back out with a bib on and Nicoll is nowhere to be seen -

Has Danny Lennon completely forgotten about every single thing that happened in the pre-season/League Cup games?

Like asking why someone would buy a Bugatti Veyron as opposed to a Ford Fiesta

This is one of few occasions where I would be looking at playing Cunningham wide right and pushing Cuddihy up to try and exploit this left side of theirs, should Boyle (as expected) not make it. I fully expect us to start with Goodwillie playing wide left and Jones and McGrath up top.

A man involved in the production of many of the 2010s' most anthemic pop songs teaming up with The Boss? It might just be crazy enough to work! -

I, like many, strongly suspect Kelty will be this season's first-class passengers on HMS Piss the League. I must stress, though, that I would quite strongly fancy Stirling Albion for contention were it not for their being managed by Barry Ferguson-lite in Kevin Rutkiewicz, who I'm surprised is still being backed to this extent at Stirling after some really mixed campaigns. If they hit a sticky patch early doors then it'll be interesting to see what the response is, but they've added some very fine players for that level indeed and have overall strengthened markedly despite the departure of Andy Ryan. It's a very interesting league this season and one I'll be keeping a close eye on (particularly if my own team transpire to be, as looks likely, complete cannon fodder), because there are several teams it really could go either way for. In addition to Stirling, you've got Gary Naysmith's pretty brutal clearout policy at Edinburgh City making them a bit of an unknown, the recent returns of some Annan Agricultural stars of yonder, Broomhillmuir's wet-around-the-ears gaffer with his attractive footballing principles and even Stranraer, whose new charge Jamie Hamill seems to be hoping the peculiarly studious aura derived from his bespectacled new look results in a promising debut season in management. I actually think Forfar could be dark horses this term, with the pretty profound caveat of them managing to keep what looks a fairly thin squad, and in particular permacrock Craig Slater, free of injury. It's good to see that Albion Rovers are in better shape these days and, while they won't challenge the promotion playoffs, they'll fancy themselves to avoid that trap door again this season - the Stirling cast-offs they've signed will improve them. You always know what you're going to get with Elgin which is rank inconsistency and a lot of goals both for and against; if Kane Hester can avoid his inevitable stint in the chokey until next year then you wouldn't bet against them for the play-offs. Overall I can't find much fault with the above ranking, although I do genuinely believe that this year will be the one which sees Cowdenbeath finally and deservedly flushed out of the national league system. I recall conducting my immediate post-season reconnaissance in this forum in May and seeing a quite bewildering take from one of their fans (who must've gone particularly hard on the baths salts that day) which elicited a bit of a belly laugh from myself. The chap seemed to inexplicably believe that keeping together the squad which hauled them to a *checks notes* ninth place finish in the 2020-21 Ladbrokes would result in a promotion charge this season. Perhaps I'm blinkered somewhat by my dislike of the club but I do think they'll have a torrid campaign this year. Tl;dr - I am a fan of nine of the sides in this division and will be running with an ABC policy week-to-week

We had away fans at our pre-season games; I'm not sure what our Level 0 max capacity is but certainly don't foresee it being a home gate only. Robert Jones hat-trick in a 4-3 defeat.

Dear lord, I thought there'd have been 15k in it tops but that is stark. ~£30k of a difference is two new players on decent money.

Can someone find out the prize money, crunch the numbers and enlighten us all about what those two goals have cost us financially?

Indeed, it was just an absolutely mental signing. He's not even that young and had played a maximum of about ten senior games as a right back before, having been essentially shunted there out of desperation because he offered so little further up the park. It's the kind of addition that - at best - you'd be looking to make late in a window out of sheer panic after failing to get other targets.

For all the chat about learning lessons from last season, we look just as soft. The manner of the goals we're conceding is very concerning

Ooft.

Take a good goal to beat that in the goal of the season standings. Lovely strike.

Between the 240p Hesgoal stream and this stinking Clyde performance, this is one of the worst things I've ever had the displeasure of watching.

The old midfield diamond, eh? That's how I would line us up personally, with a few personnel changes.

Say what you will about Ferguson, but he is magnificent at shifting players he doesn't rate. If I was going to rock the boat RE: Parry, though, then I would personally be looking for a better replacement than Hutton who's always been prone to a howler and is past his prime.

In the game against Killie he was being walked past by a 500 year old Chris Burke in addition to the penalty he conceded and the goal he gifted. I've got nothing against the guy and he was a very good part time level player in his day - you can still see from his work on the ball that was the case - but his legs have totally gone and that was evident over a year ago when he was chased from Forfar and wound up at Annan. We found out the hard way with McNiff that week-in-the-jail full backs are bad juju at this level, so he should never have been signed. That's not to say people don't wish for him to be a roaring success with us, but we've seen this story before at LB.

What's the threshold of games for folk being allowed to point out that a player is clearly miles out of his depth in the role he was signed to fulfil?

This is all fine and well, but ultimately does absolutely nothing to address the underlying point that we need volunteers with the relevant skillsets in marketing and commercial areas. Other than that you're looking at getting in salaried employees to carry out a job with a club with a public perception of being "that one that employs a rapist". Sponsorship of a lower league football team makes very little fiscal sense to most businesses because the visibility offered is so low, so overall sponsorship deals at this level aren't worth a great deal at all. I do agree with you that the club could do better in these areas and one of the blots on the board's recent copy book from me is the removal of Ian Fitzpatrick from his post with the club. I don't know any of the ins and outs there so can't comment too much on it, but he seemed like an enthusiastic guy with good, progressive ideas and a decent handle on what works social media-wise. I think there is too much of a focus on us appearing extremely professional in our general brand at times when we're not really at a level befitting of that serious tone. Aside from in those areas, communication at the club is once again of the poor variety having been really quite good under the Innes regime, despite all the hyperbole, jargon and bluster. To expand on the above, I think it's naive to suggest that the board members don't work their balls off trying to maximise the club's revenue, even if they're not savvy or skilled enough in some regards to properly execute that. This is where, like I said, we're crying out for someone who is willing and able to step up and apply their expertise in these areas. But like I've said, the general perception of the club probably besets us to some degree in our commercial efforts and it would be expensive, and logistically tough, to source an actual employee capable of improving us in that area. I did see an interesting initiative on Berwick's twitter the other week where they were advertising for a commercial director (or similar) and offering commission to any volunteer who took up the position. Perhaps that's something worth exploring. In any case, the bread and butter of a lower league, part-time football club with a very average support base like ours is always going to be the fans and we've tried just about everything to grow it to no avail. Every club like ours is struggling in the same marketplace for commercial investment and we are not unique among them; no part-time club is ever going to transform its fortunes through the sums gained in that area anyway. The CIC model is very relevant when it comes to serious avenues of improving our fortunes to the extent of existing stably at the level you and others seem to think the club belongs at. People with money to invest who aren't fans of the club are going to want influence, and the legalities of a CIC make it very difficult for them to gain any serious level of control off the back of their investment. There is nothing to back up that many more income streams = more potential for profit and growth? There are scores of clubs in Scotland who make a very good amount of money from hiring out their pitches, stadia and facilities within. Broadwood isn't all bad, but stadium ownership for clubs like ours offers scope for control of your own destiny to an extent that rental does not. As above, the club engages very actively with the community and does very well in those regards without that translating to attendances or fans of the club. As has been established, most folk in the west of Scotland belong to one of the arse cheeks (or even bigger clubs) and Cumbernauld and its locale are no different. Despite many bold and commendable initiatives and efforts, interest in the club simply has not grown. Again, this is not a struggle unique to Clyde. The club's maximum potential at the moment, in an absolute sense, is to be part-time and at the arse end of the Championship. Dumbarton were there for half a decade through sheer overachievement and have slipped back to this level, not because of any great failures but because it was pretty much eventually an inevitability - perhaps @Jan Vojáček or some other Sons fan could pop in and outline just how much that period of huge success for them affected their core fanbase both immediately and beyond. Alloa were there through having a millionaire owner who invests substantially in the squad. Arbroath are there with a much larger fanbase than ours and as a club intrinsically tied to its hometown and which is halfway across the country from the two arse cheeks. My argument has been borne out by the fates of virtually every club around Clyde which faces many of the same issues. The simple fact is that without significant investment from benefactors, an organisational change to facilitate a rich owner (fat chance) or the ownership of our own stadium then we simply cannot reasonably expect our fortunes to change drastically from where they are right now. I'm all for critiquing the board and it is absolutely healthy to do so - just as it is healthy to critique Danny Lennon's recruitment and his signing, every season, of about five players who aren't good enough rather than running with a tighter squad and bringing in more quality. However, in your initial post you described the board as "incompetents" who have "dragged the club (to this level)". That is extremely harsh, without any remote balance and completely untrue. We are operating at almost precisely the expected level based on a variety of known factors, and despite what you seem to believe, we are not an exception to all the clubs of comparable circumstances around us who also harbour ambitions of bettering their standing. That similar clubs don't manage to flip a switch and pull clear of the pack empirically proves my overarching argument.

There's not a lot wrong with the assessments in that above post, really. It is frustrating that we haven't been able to build at least a solid core of L1 players around Mitchell and Goodwillie over the last few seasons; DL has to shoulder a fair bit of blame for his recruitment and retentions through that period. Such a massive player turnover in the summer points quite squarely to him getting a fair bit wrong in times gone by. I'm still really unsure what our reasonably well-paid recruitment team is bringing to the table, if they're still even kicking around, and you'd imagine that a couple of fans with subscriptions to Wyscout could do a better job of identifying targets to consider voluntarily. I don't know the conditions of his departure but losing Howie and retaining Rumsby, alongside binning Bain and bringing in Mortimer, look like backwards steps at the back. Bain-Howie-Balatoni-Livingstone would be pretty reasonable, I think, since Bain appeared to be coming on to a game at the tail end of last season. If they're coached properly into a coherent system (something we haven't seen so far), then we can definitely craft a good midfield out of our pool of Cuddihy, Gomis, Kennedy and Splaine. The former is obviously our least bad option at right back presently, but it's worth remembering that he did toil at right-back upon our ascension to League 1 (when our defence was similarly fragile) and has since then performed much better as a box-to-box midfielder. For all we're stacked with forwards, plenty of them are either projects or outright filler and we are still light on pace in that area. The board complaints have been done to death, but once again all that can be said is that if someone feels there are better candidates to run the club then they should start a campaign to have them elected to the board and the current incumbents removed. Ultimately, we all know deep down that we don't have the personnel within our fan base who possess either the skills or the time and willingness to stand for election, which then makes the only other option a move away from the CIC model to private ownership (which, again, requires a ready and willing buyer). Even if a buyer was found, I don't think that's the best route to go down as a club with no tangible assets, which doesn't appear to have received a credible takeover bid in donkeys and which appears to attract the most audacious of shysters even within the 'safe' ownership structure of present. Bobby Gracey, David Douglas, Norrie Innes (to name but a few) have all found themselves with varying levels of influence at the club in the past decade and all ended up chased for various nonsenses, while we have some fans who lead the club on merry chases with false promises of hefty, no-strings-attached investment. On top of that you've even got a circle of folk who pop up in the news any time they can to discredit the club with apparent designs on taking over, without ever presenting any kind of evidence of their own competencies or vision for the future. Per the latest data I could be arsed to find quite easily, albeit with a few strings attached (from 2019/20 season, some figures may be inflated/deflated by league), we rank about 26th for attendances in Scotland. Teams below us feature Cove, Peterhead, Queen's Park, Stirling Albion and Edinburgh City, all of whom (I believe) attract varying levels of external investment in their clubs from individuals. That puts us down at 31st for customers (bottom end of L1, where we are currently). It's quite understandable why some folk, who'd likely be involved in some form of business, would look at Clyde at the moment and not want to throw cash our way and find themselves linked with some of the furore around our personnel. Additionally, you've then got to consider the fact that many other clubs actually own their grounds (and, in some cases, other properties or ventures too) and have far more available streams for organically generating revenue outwith their own stretched fanbases. We are not punching below our weight, and that long-lingering fart of an attitude should be binned immediately. This is our level, by just about every single metric, and history has absolutely no bearing on that reality. Unless we can attract serious investment from a source which will allow us to own our own ground and have a greater level of autonomy, then we're simply never going to grow into a sustainable full-time club. At the moment, even being the best part-time club in the country is miles beyond us and, while that's not the fault of the current manager (despite his imperfections), it's also not the fault of the current board (despite theirs).