[Devongone]

I was astonished every time Jack won because he'd had to work within the very tight limits of the squad GC created. Jack sounds 100% the manager. In fact he sounds Premier League. But there is more to management than sound bytes. He has proved he can motivate a truly poor team. He's shown he can get them playing decent football. But the element of surprise was on his side then, we were down and out ....... Now he has to build a team, recruit players, fit them in, discard players, maintain and improve team spirit, manage setbacks, manage the fans who are one moment ecstatic, the next in despair ........ and he has to do this against a background of rumours that the club has been sold. (Is that a good thing? If the sale happens slowly does that mean there is no owner to invest in the January window? Does it mean we become less attractive to players hoping to build, or resurrect, a career? Does it make Jack feel there's a future, or he's pissing in the wind off the Rother?) I DON'T KNOW THE ANSWERS BY THE WAY! I can't share Matt's optimism either, but I'm no less hopeful because of these defeats. They just proved the obvious. To be a manager Jack has to turn teams round after they've lost a few - he's done it once. On Saturday when we've beaten Colchester will we again be calculating how many points to the play-offs, or might we realise that ALL the other teams are trying to do similar things to us? None of them are superstars. None of them have astounding resources. All of them are fallible.

IMO that the question for us is have we asked ourselves too many questions this season that we are not going to be able to answer?