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[cheshire cat]

I've no idea why Mike Garnett chose to write that piece other than there was a blank page in the program that needed filling. Promotion can only happen if you have amassed enough points to be awarded automatic promotion or a place in the playoffs. If you are in the playoffs you have some more work to do but you still have the opportunity to earn the right to be promoted.

The rest is just froth to fill a page.

[Mausoleum Alty]

I've just read the article by Mike Garnett and basically it's a pile of sh*te!!

[casper]

The article is now on the main website.

I find the piece hard to understand and read. It makes far too many generalisations and does not account for the time we eventually adjusted into the Conference National. Whatever league you play in, you have earned that right to be there.

I also think the attempted comparison of Manchester City and Stockport is bizzare and unwise. City were nationally considered to be underachieving and ended up playing in the same division as Macclesfield Town, before being taken over and having millions pumped into them. Stockport County, who have been nationally reported as being financially mis-managed and are very much underperforming giving their respective resources.

The article seems to be going against the strategic review, which states a realistic ambition to be at least a national league club within the next five years. So, why are we accepting that relegation to the lowest ever position is acceptable?

Its shocking enough that bad board decisions cost relegation from the National Premier and yet more atrocious decisions have cost us relegation to the lowest point ever in our proud history.
I don't see any relevance in our fluctuating league position. In all the years we have been in the National North, the worst, until now, was 14th.

A very poor piece that only seems to be setting the scene for next season.

Just seems to sum up lack of ambition and poor mentalities currently at the club.

[wayno]

I've no idea why Mike Garnett chose to write that piece other than there was a blank page in the program that needed filling. Promotion can only happen if you have amassed enough points to be awarded automatic promotion or a place in the playoffs. If you are in the playoffs you have some more work to do but you still have the opportunity to earn the right to be promoted.

The rest is just froth to fill a page.

I dont always agree with you . But I am complete agreement here

[Mick]

The article is now on the main website.

I find the piece hard to understand and read. It makes far too many generalisations and does not account for the time we eventually adjusted into the Conference National. Whatever league you play in, you have earned that right to be there.

I also think the attempted comparison of Manchester City and Stockport is bizzare and unwise. City were nationally considered to be underachieving and ended up playing in the same division as Macclesfield Town, before being taken over and having millions pumped into them. Stockport County, who have been nationally reported as being financially mis-managed and are very much underperforming giving their respective resources.

The article seems to be going against the strategic review, which states a realistic ambition to be at least a national league club within the next five years. So, why are we accepting that relegation to the lowest ever position is acceptable?

Its shocking enough that bad board decisions cost relegation from the National Premier and yet more atrocious decisions have cost us relegation to the lowest point ever in our proud history.
I don't see any relevance in our fluctuating league position. In all the years we have been in the National North, the worst, until now, was 14th.

A very poor piece that only seems to be setting the scene for next season.

Just seems to sum up lack of ambition and poor mentalities currently at the club.

Agree with Caspar.........Defeatist attitude at best, maybe just pack in and play park football or accept a club with a 1000 person fanbase cannot compete with Curzon Ashton or Buxton, let alone Accrington, Morecambe and Southport.
Bizarre comparison of earned vs achieved.......a load of horse$hit really

I don't recall 14th in Conf North ? :-

5th and promoted
8th
4th
3rd and promoted

[casper]

Agree with Caspar.........Defeatist attitude at best, maybe just pack in and play park football or accept a club with a 1000 person fanbase cannot compete with Curzon Ashton or Buxton, let alone Accrington, Morecambe and Southport.
Bizarre comparison of earned vs achieved.......a load of horse$hit really

I don't recall 14th in Conf North ? :-

5th and promoted
8th
4th
3rd and promoted

14th in the Unibond Premier (pre Conference north) in 2002/3

[AFC56]

So this negative drivel is ok to be printed in the programme , yet a a few factual tweets about the walkout is not tolerated by the men at the top? Unbelievable.

[im not really here]

Astonishingly, John Laidlar has now published the article in full on the Club's official website. Rowley is dragging this Club into oblivion.

[arnald]

Rowley step down I don't want him out

[York Alty is back]

Astonishingly, John Laidlar has now published the article in full on the Club's official website. Rowley is dragging this Club into oblivion.

many programme articles get published in full on the website. I'm ok with that to be honest, I no longer buy a programme so reading some of the amount 48 hours after the game is a bonus to me.        As for the content, sometimes I agree with it, sometimes I don't. Its not often we get something so blunt to discuss in the programme and the author has every right to state his / her case.             It would be very interesting to see if a countering piece were permitted to be published.

[taxi Phil]

A countering article might prove difficult to produce convincingly. We can hardly claim to be in good shape on the pitch. I actually tend to largely agree with most of what Mike says, though his choice of words could have been better.

It is an indisputable fact that there are no part time clubs in the top four tiers, and a minority at level five. A handful of part time clubs have been competitive at that level, but generally it is an achievement for such a club to be in the top half.

We have to accept that we will be a level 7 club next season. I believe we can make it straight back to level 6 for 2018-9, and our target has to be level 5 by 2020-21 at the latest.

The five year plan mentioned the possibility of going full time in the longer term, and if we are to consolidate, or eventually reach the Football League, it has to be done as soon as we reach level 5. Otherwise our ambitions can only be top half level 5.

When we were the top level 5 club nearly 40 years ago, there were no full time clubs at that level. When Lincoln came down as the first automatic club to be relegated they stayed full time. A lot of people were sceptical, but when they went straight back up the decision was vindicated and it was effectively a game changer. Incidentally, the only one of the 92 league clubs in our first Championship season who currently sit lower than us are Hereford....but the league is full of teams who have passed us by, all of them on budgets we can only dream of.

We have to be healthy both on and off the field. We simply MUST get straight back up. Having seen Blyth and Matlock this season, we ought to be at least competitive in that league.

Our target is Conference mid table in four years at the most.....and full time football from that point, finances permitting.

But a final word of warning. The success stories of Burton and Fleetwood have not been hampered by having two of the biggest clubs in England a mere tram ride away. We will struggle to attract gates above 2500 on a regular basis no matter how successful we are. But it shouldn't stop us from trying our damnedest to punch our weight.

But we need to put a lot of extra weight on (unlike me !).

[Alty Dave]

Good post Wayno.

I agree with you.

[Leon]

I think half of the argument of this article - essentially that our natural position as a club, given our level of support and playing budget, is the middle/top half of the Conference North - isn't that controversial. But to use that to make out that our relegation from that league is the sort of thing we should have been expecting to happen sooner or later is absurd. We shouldn't be anywhere near the relegation places in Conference North, even at our lowest ebb.

[Sale Holmfield]

It's  a perfectly reasonable article with valid points to create debate and doesn't deserve to be called drivel and so on, although I found its timing very strange. You might even have thought the programme editor had arranged its publication on a day when had a fans' protest and are still, at least in theory, fighting relegation to ensure that somebody else got some flak.

No team has a god-given right to be in a particular division, but I disagree on some of Mike's points.  Since the creation of the Alliance Premier League, we have spent the majority of that time in that league's top division, although we have been one of a number of yo-yo clubs along with the likes of Southport and Tamworth in recent years, as the top division has become more professionalised.  Also, the difference between "earned" and "achieved" performance is really only valid if Altrincham were the only team ever to have achieved promotion through a play-off or to have been reprieved. Since 2005-06, 50% of promoted clubs have come up through the play-offs, and while I don't have the figures to hand to see how well they have performed compared to the champion clubs (it would be interesting to see that), this means that those clubs are also competing at the higher level in some numbers and our performances are judged against them just as against other clubs.

So, we should still be top half National League North at worst, and I don't think we can put this season, where we have been so far adrift, as just a poor season within our usual parameters.

[Uncle Globnasty]

I think half of the argument of this article - essentially that our natural position as a club, given our level of support and playing budget, is the middle/top half of the Conference North - isn't that controversial. But to use that to make out that our relegation from that league is the sort of thing we should have been expecting to happen sooner or later is absurd. We shouldn't be anywhere near the relegation places in Conference North, even at our lowest ebb.

Exactly this.

We should be a top half Conf North / bottom half Conf National team given our current resources, but with ambitions of more. There is no point in carrying on if there's no ambition. This piece appears to be saying that we should all of been half expecting relegation to the lowest level in our history irrespective of 'off the field' goings on and that is total and utter garbage of the worst kind. Some might go so far as to say this is a strategically (that word again) timed propaganda piece.

It appears as if Altrincham FC has become a dictatorship. Propaganda pieces, use of the press to besmirch the name of opponents, family members and friends filling supposedly open vacancies, family members spying on dissenters, shutting down of anyone with an opposing viewpoint and a total inability to admit any wrong-doing.