[spireitematt]

Problem is Matt I have no faith in Sheridan. I thought it was the worst thing we could have done to bring him back and said so at the time. People seemed to forget the crap and only remember the good. Yes we went up as Champions but how much of that was down to the new stadium feel good factor and big crowds? The following season we had one of the worst squads I can remember and dropped like a whores knickers without any fight.
The start of the next season was no better and if Cooke had not been appointed god knows where we would have finished.
The team selection and subs bench was dire on Saturday, that was down to JS and nobody else. This team is his and it doesn't fill me with any confidence nor does he.
First half we just didn't have a clue and neither did Sheridan, all he could do was stand in the technical area with his arms folded keeping shtum.
If we go up this season not only will I show my arse in Burtons window (which is now in Tesco's), but I will run starkers down Blues street (how could I forget) with a Mansfield flag stuck up my arris.

The season we went up under Sheridan back in 2011 was because we had a good squad. We had Craig Davies who left on a free to Barnsley who was never replaced, same goes with Smalley and Scott Griffiths. The loanee players in that squad should have been signed but instead they moved on and in the close season we signed players like Mendy, Juan, Randall and a lot of loan players on top especially loanee keepers as Tommy was injured.

The new stadium and the crowds would have been a morale boost as well.

The 2012/13 season we started the season with a loss away to AFC Wimbledon and then went on 4 back to back draws and didn't get a win till mid-September at home to Wycombe (won 3-1) that's when Tommy Wright was in charge and I remember that Trotman scored an OG from a corner from Wycombe, it was a great goal but just at the wrong end. Then we beat Accrington 4-3 and then the form then was hit and miss and then hit some good run of form in November under Cook and we just narrowly missed out on the playoffs by 2pts that season.

2013/14 season under Cook was a great season where we played good, attractive football and the same goes for the 2014/15 season. I think Paul Mitchell who was the scout was a great help as he unearthed gems, then he followed Cook to Portsmouth and now he works at Sheffield United as there scout and look where they are.

I know I say it a lot and others have said it as well but if only we had kept Cook and kept majority of that team together we could have been challenging for the league but instead Cook left for Portsmouth and we sold majority of the squad off, hired Saunders as manager and the rest is history.

If we had made it to the Championship we may have struggled and probably would have come straight back down but we would have got 8,000-9,000 possibly 10,000 at every home game and we would have got money from TV rights and all that would have helped with the debt.

[SaltergateBorn]

I agree 100%, Matt, that with hindsight DA made the wrong decision in not giving Cookie the funding he wanted and letting him take the club to the next level before selling out (which is what he has said he wanted but I kinda doubt; why didn`t he do it, then?). To my mind, it was one of a whole series of mistakes that the club made over a period of time that has ended up with us where we are now. But as the feature in the programme on Saturday said, there`s no benefit at all in using the mistakes of the past to beat people up with now. Hindsight is a wonderful thing and it`s no good dwelling on the past and brooding over "if onlys". We have to deal with the present and the future as best we can. Like you, I`d prefer to be optimistic rather than pessimistic; it`s not easy in this oft-sh!tty world, but there you go.

I can understand erverybody`s criticism over the team selection on Saturday - it did seem a bit strange - but surely managers have to and do experiment at times, based on what they see (and we don`t) in training; and surely the best time to do that is at the start of the season when there`s still plenty of time to put things right. Okay, so the game was disappointing and we lost our first match. That`s happened plenty of times in the past and we`ve gone on to have a decent season; we may well do again. (I`m ancient enough to remember the first game of the 1969/70 season that we lost 0-1 at home to Port Vale and we were all saying exactly the same thing as now; we ended up winning the league.)

It was a disappointing start, but I`m not ready to slash my wrists just yet.

[Dancingwilldoit]

My wrists have got that many slashes in them when I wear a t-shirt I look like a zebra.

[Devongone]

I think when we have to go back 50 years to find a positive behind losing the opening game we are running the bathwater deep and getting the sharp knives out of the cutlery drawer.

Certainly decisions, behind which DA was the driving force, have landed us where we are with the history of successes and failures he manufactured for us. Equally certainly that history has now landed us at a level at which being poorly financed is very much the norm. Orient and Salford were unusual in the level of backing behind them last season.

My main bone of contention with Sheridan is over the players he could have got for nothing or next to it if he'd even bothered knowing about them, AND those to whom he has given contracts instead. The team we put out on Saturday wasn't poor; poor was a distant dream of riches only to be imagined. The team's shape was apparently remarkable by its absence and its personnel wholly unremarkable in any positive sense.

Our manager has been lax to the point of somnolent and appears to have recruited only to create a louche convivial atmosphere. Though I'm sure we've got a few lads who'll be a laugh around a bar, our performance in friendlies was largely abyssmal and those tried out, like Bennett, from Sheffield Utd, who impressed, have not been offered anything. We reached the season crippled by injuries having learnt little about our team beyond the urgent need to change it, an impression amply illustrated in our first competitive game.

My guess tonight is we'll try to snatch a win courtesy of parking a bus called Will Evans. Should we succeed it is almost certain he will also be expected to notch the winning goal. I used to be a supporter; now I'm merely an observer. My heart's no longer in it.