[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.