25/26 Squad

[ExRef]

Compare Hanworth Villa’s website for player welcome and farewell messages and, overall, an impressive piece of local football media.

[tones]

A bad sign when fans are already writing off the season before even a pre-season friendly had been played. Does the manager have no contacts or a little black book to enable him to put a competitive side together.

[RogerB]

Compare Hanworth Villa’s website for player welcome and farewell messages and, overall, an impressive piece of local football media.

One of the problems seems to be the anonymity of whoever is putting the media stuff together. In the days when Les Rance, Rob Overfield or Seb White were the "Press Officer", we knew that club news was being put out by a fan for the fans. These days, I've no idea who the media officer(s) is/are. Come to that, I don't know the identity of the club secretary or the composition of the club board.

[Josh2002]

Dom Revan has joined Salisbury… Getting ridiculous now.

[geedub]

Very sad to have such little continuity in the squad and worrying too.
I guess it's now clear why we couldn't publish a retained list.

[Lord Elpus]

Dom Revan has joined Salisbury… Getting ridiculous now.

It already was ridiculous Josh, now it's just plain embarrassing, even if there was an increasing inevitability about it.
Whatever this is due to...a massive cut in the budget, players not being tied up to the club before that last set of clowns finally departed, we all just have to speculate at the moment.
A Chairman's update is clearly needed, and sooner rather than later I think. We need some real openness and honesty. What an embarrassment of a summer.

[EastTerracer]

We could be in a worse position. Imagine if we were assembling this squad and still had the Petruzzo clowns.

However, this season looks like it could be a struggle with limited resources so open communication with fans will be vital.

[Lord Elpus]

We could be in a worse position. Imagine if we were assembling this squad and still had the Petruzzo clowns.

However, this season looks like it could be a struggle with limited resources so open communication with fans will be vital.

Well put. It is obviously great that the clowns have left the building, and here's to a new start and all that. But we seem to have assembled a squad of players from the league below (with a couple of clearly very talented but obviously injury prone exceptions) who weren't particularly knocking on the doors of clubs in our division.

We now need some openness, honesty and transparency as to why we are in this position and what the plan for this season is. I genuinely think most proper supporters would understand if a decision had been taken to not bother competing with the top 12 this year given the bigger budgets of those clubs, but come on guys, keep us informed a bit. Comms are seemingly getting worse and that needs to change quickly.

[Tony]

I accept that we unable to tie players up early because of the takeover timing but players won’t have signed contracts until after the season ended, so there must have been time to persuade some of the better players to stay. None have so it feels like a money issue again. We still have time to make signings and get loan players in. I think we need four or five more experienced players to make us competitive.

[Tony]

I accept that we unable to tie players up early because of the takeover timing but players won’t have signed contracts until after the season ended, so there must have been time to persuade some of the better players to stay. None have so it feels like a money issue again. We still have time to make signings and get loan players in. I think we need four or five more experienced players to make us competitive.

The Salisbury manager says he was pursuing Dom Revan's signature all over the summer so it was clearly not a done deal ahead of the season's finish. Having given him all the end of season awards I can't think we wanted him to leave.

[Lord Elpus]

Jules must be feeling pretty despondent himself by now if all these players leaving is due to circumstances beyond his control.

[geedub]

I wonder if the club has maybe misjudged the wage expectation for NLS this year or the wage levels have simply increased more than they had hoped. It appears clear that our budget is very tight but you would hope that at least this has been set to be a sustainable level for the new ownership team. I guess Jules demonstrated last year that he was able to get good results with a lot of players from the lower levels - of course he wasn't able to sustain that for the whole season but perhaps other factors were also to blame for that. It does feel like a tough ask to find new Archy Taylors each year, especially when there seem to be less more experienced players around to support them..