Accrington away following an interesting week at The Gas...

Where to begin on this grey Friday evening?

I think we'd better start with the Stuart Campbell saga that has grappled its way through the media over the past week or two.

Stuart, or Cams as he is affectionately known, has been left in limbo recently. With all the facts and information now public, here's a little taster in to what has happened;

Cams' agent contacted Paul Buckle and Nick Higgs to test the water in regards to a wage increase and extension in contract, following the interest Exeter City registered during the Summer. His agent made clear it was purely a playing contract that would be considered. Seeing the club had already been negotiating a player/coach role for him, it strikes as being incredibly greedy, as he is still on 'League One wages' according to chairman Higgs. The agent then gives the club an ultimatum - offer him a new improved playing contract, or we'll have to look elsewhere. As you would expect, the club we not happy and didn't entertain the idea at all. In fact, the decision was made to transfer list him and help in his quest for a new deal.

In the game against the Daggers last Saturday some fans, somewhat embarrassingly, sang 'There's only one Stuart Campbell' throughout the game, in support of the long-serving midfielder. It must be made clear that NOT all supporters joined in with this, as they knew what was going on and were 100% supportive of the way Buckle and Higgs had dealt with the situation so far. On Monday however, Buckle felt he needed to put the record straight and he insisted that a player/coach role had been on the table since the Summer but Campbell's advisor had demanded a wage increase and a long-term contract. It was then made clear by the club that no new deal would be offered due to his age and current wages - fair enough really. Angry, Cams then claimed to have not seen the player/coach contract he had been offered and maintained he didn't want to leave the club.

At this point, it was clear that both Buckle and Campbell were telling their versions of the event truthfully. It became increasingly obvious that it was in fact his agent that had caused this whole debacle by demanding a new contract, when Cams had not instructed him to do so. If he had, he would never have tried to blackmail the club, so either way his agent has exaggerated and lied to get his client a new deal. Why would he do that? Money in his back pocket of course for negotiating a contract.

It was becoming quite an embarrassing affair and the argument between player and club had mirrored that of a tennis match, with jibes being exchanged from one side to the other like a rally between Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer. Finally, when the two parties had realised the problem, a truce was called following a meeting at the Mem. It was made clear in a statement that the incident had been resolved and that both the club and the player had moved on.

Stuart is now in the squad for the trip to Accrington tomorrow...

Phew, we finally got to the end of it. What a palaver, eh?
Okay we can now move on to the game tomorrow at The Crown Ground, where we look for our first back-to-back wins of the season. Stanley will be up for it on their own patch and will have been buoyed by their 1-1 draw at league leaders Crawley last weekend. It'll be a game too close to call in my opinion, we'll have to play a certain way to combat their style and we'll certainly have to roll our sleeves up and get stuck in in order to compete. Once we've done that we can then implement our game on them and hopefully score some goals.

The clean sheet last weekend will have been a boost to Scott Bevan and our back four, so hopefully there will be no early goals conceded tomorrow. There's got to be confidence within the side now, so if we can take the chances that come our way tomorrow, I think we have a good chance of winning the game. Having said that, I say it every single week without fail, and Accrington could very easily hammer us if we aren't on our game, which would be absolutely typical Rovers.

Ah well, let's look forward and be positive. A win tomorrow and things look a little rosier, so fingers crossed we can register a victory and shoot up the table.

Those who are making the trip up - have a safe trip and enjoy the away day! I shall see you there!