Crawley-ing over the line?

The managerial situation is rapidly turning in to a farce now. I do not begrudge our chairman having a holiday, God knows he probably needs one, but the fact of the matter is that this next appointment is arguably the biggest in our history and it needs to be 100% the right choice. Being out the country at a stage when potential candidates are being interviewed doesn't reflect very well on us as a club, in fact it makes us look distinctly non-league and amateur. On top of all that we recently lost Rovers saviour Denis Dunford and Higgs didn't even come back for that - it doesn't bode well in truth. We're beginning to look like the biggest embarrassment in the football-league and I'm not liking it.

Like I say, I don't mind Higgs having a holiday. Who am I to say he's not allowed to go away? The point I'm trying to make is that almost EVERY other chairman in England would return from their holiday during the search for a new manager when their club was perilously close to the trap door in to the Blue Square Premier. End of. Higgs is needed here, he's in a position of massive significance within the club and he is relied upon to make the right choices for this football club. He's not done that in terms of the managers during his tenure, but his next decision is pivotal and therefore he needs to make sure the board of directors are interviewing the candidates in a way that will clearly show which of them want to take the club on and move us forward.

My message is this: hurry up Nick and come home. Pick the right man to move the club in the right direction and do it quickly. This is a massive month for us and we're wasting time. It's very apparent that we need to improve the squad, half of them aren't good enough, so the new man needs time to examine the squad he inherits and try to bring in players who will bring quality to us. (As a side note, I do hope the reason Sean O'Driscoll rejected us wasn't because the board refused to change the infrastructure of this football club - we've been heading in the wrong direction for a reason over the past few years and if SO'D took the time to pinpoint where we've been going wrong and was happy to rectify this, it's even clearer than I thought that he is the perfect man for the job).

Looking ahead to Saturday and have arguably our most difficult game of the season... a home match against high-flyers Crawley Town. Red Devils gaffer Steve Evans is sure to receive a barrage of abuse -  and quite rightly so given his previous convictions within the game - whilst in the home dugout it looks very much like Shaun North will be leading the team. I'm not at all confident he can deliver us 3 points, but hopefully the lads will be more confident now they have a victory under their belts. Unfortunately we're still missing half our team due to injury, so we'll be going with what we've got yet again. When those players return though, we'll be in a much better position as we'll get to field our strongest 11 for the first time in a long while.

It'll be an incredibly difficult game. They'll come here intent on winning the game, whilst we'll be trying to do the same to record back-to-back league victories for the first time in God knows how long. Achievable? Probably not. But we have to believe, otherwise what else do we have?

Come on Gas, go out there and do it. 3 points are required... Goodnight Irene.