[spireitematt]

A couple of weeks back when we had the cold spell, we had a sleeper in one of the sheds. He lived there for a week before anybody realised so people nicking fruit and veg wont be a surprise. Dont tell Jezza though he'll want us to run it as a homeless hostel.

He'll be too busy making his jam.

[SaltergateBorn]

Looks like he`s going to have plenty of time for it from here on.

[Devongone]

If a club like us isn't planning what it is going to do next season it is completely mental. What else has Pembo to do?

Players especially in the lower leagues are desperate for security. A quiet word here and there. An approach. A contract that isn't a contract for the following season ……… especially if it were a step up ……..
Tunde Owolabi FC United
Diego de Girolamo Buxton
Alex Brown Buxton
Courtney Meppen-Walter Chorley
Jamie Jones Chester
Ryan Astles Southport
Joe Wheatley Darlington
Cameron Mason Curzon Ashton

None of 'em would cost. All could do our level. Just for once we could be ahead of the curve - thinking about next season when everybody's so concerned with who'll do what this time round.

While we're on allotments, West Allotment Celtic had scored over 100 goals in 28 games, lost 4 and were top. Desperate for promotion but their season is expunged.

My hero of the moment? LORD SUMPTION. If you want to hear sense, from a genuinely decent man ……. take notice of him. I'd accept his judgement on me any time, no argument, the scaffold sir? Any details you want covered? Length of the rope, weight of the body? Next Tuesday? Certainly sir that's convenient. Thank you sir.

[spireitematt]

If a club like us isn't planning what it is going to do next season it is completely mental. What else has Pembo to do?

Players especially in the lower leagues are desperate for security. A quiet word here and there. An approach. A contract that isn't a contract for the following season ……… especially if it were a step up ……..
Tunde Owolabi FC United
Diego de Girolamo Buxton
Alex Brown Buxton
Courtney Meppen-Walter Chorley
Jamie Jones Chester
Ryan Astles Southport
Joe Wheatley Darlington
Cameron Mason Curzon Ashton

None of 'em would cost. All could do our level. Just for once we could be ahead of the curve - thinking about next season when everybody's so concerned with who'll do what this time round.

While we're on allotments, West Allotment Celtic had scored over 100 goals in 28 games, lost 4 and were top. Desperate for promotion but their season is expunged.

My hero of the moment? LORD SUMPTION. If you want to hear sense, from a genuinely decent man ……. take notice of him. I'd accept his judgement on me any time, no argument, the scaffold sir? Any details you want covered? Length of the rope, weight of the body? Next Tuesday? Certainly sir that's convenient. Thank you sir.

Tunde Owolabi is a cracking player, he was at New Mills before FC United signed him, he could be the next Jamie Vardy. I've noticed you've mentioned 2 former players Dev.

[Devongone]

But the two former players seem different products to the ones we let go. Cameron Mason has reached the England C squad. He never seems to have a really poor game. He's keeping clean sheets and he's fit and ready to play every week, which is vital in a keeper if you want to build a stable defence. We have to get a keeper! And Diego's 23 goals must mean something. I don't believe players lose talent so much as the ability to demonstrate it. He lost his way completely but he seems to have noticed where the goals are in Buxton.

Tunde I fear might be the most difficult to get. He has scored so many this season that bigger clubs have had an eye on him. The virus might just have cooled their excitement though ….. and a tangible quick move from us might just weigh more with him than third or fourth division clubs humming and haaing around the side lines. Of course being quick and decisive have not been in our recent vocabulary.

[Devongone]

Of course when you look at teams below the National League as recruiting grounds the players there are at the end of the non-existent season in which they may have performed very well indeed.

Take a club like Warrington for instance. Last season Ben Garritty held out until the last minute before signing a contract. He was obviously hoping for better. He's a lively midfielder who grabs a few goals too. He seems consistent too. He would probably be a good bet for us, considering our moans about midfield.

They also have Dylan Vassallo. He's about 21-22. Goes wide, makes and scores goals. Another who could almost certainly take the step up. Surely we are already at least considering who the players are at the end of their useful Chesterfield lives. Names like Buchanan, Weir, maybe Hollis, certainly Jalal, Wedgbury and possibly even Boden and sick-note Maguire might be replaced to refresh the squad. So surely we could not even be accused of bending the rules by talking from at least 2 metres to players whose contracts no longer bind them, because not only has their season ended, but it has been expunged - it is one step down the line from the Norwegian Blue!

[Dancingwilldoit]

Dev,
Do you honestly think there will be a "next" season?
The UK isn't suddenly going to get rid of the virus nor is the rest of Europe.
China have all but got rid of it (supposedly) by locking a whole region down for best part of 2 months. It will flare up again - imported over the border from some country or other.
There is no way lets say South Yorkshire would stand for total lockdown. There would be civil unrest on a massive scale. The UK policy of letting it run its course - hopefully, slowly so the NHS can manage it will mean social distancing for the foreseeable future. Probably at least to the end of the year if not more IMO.

Whilstever planes are allowed to fly infections or infected people without any checks, it will be a long hard road for the rest of us (Ryanair were flying people in and out of Bergamo airport in the middle of Lombardy without checks whilst the region was supposedly in lockdown). The airlines will be desperate to get airborne again to get the cash flowing they wont give a toss who is infected or not as we now know.

The Premier league may be cash rich enough to play games behind closed doors with t.v. rights etc, but theres no way the rest of the English leagues will be able to keep going.

I dont think this season will finish nor will next season start.

[SaltergateBorn]

We can all really only guess at what will happen next season but my gut feeling, and that`s all it can be, is that there will be a next season of sorts; I can`t see it being allowed not to happen. I think it will only be a season of sorts, though; perhaps with teams playing each other only once instead of twice, perhaps starting about Christmas, perhaps all cup competitions being cancelled, perhaps behind closed doors. Who knows?

That would allow this season to be wound up by September / October, perhaps, behind closed doors. I can`t see any other way this season could be finished off.

A lot of perhapses in there. Where we go over the next year or so and how quickly we get there depends to a great extent on how responsibly people are prepared to behave over the next few weeks / months. I reckon the jury`s still out on that.

[Devongone]

This season certainly at our level is over. We aren't going to finish by the end of June, but all the contracts will ….. and very few at our level are longer than one year! So clubs won't have enough players.

You do realise that 27,000 people died of influenza and pneumonia in 2018 ………… and you never even noticed.

Yes there'll be a new season in September or basically the world will have been ended by a Pangolin. If football can't re-start, economically the world will have crashed and you needn't worry about filling up your car you'll be pulling a nice little cart.

The Premier League, because of European pressure and its own ridiculous wealth, might find some way of getting to a finish. EFL and everybody else …… eventually they'll have to agree to some method of concluding by mathematical means and perhaps limited promotion or relegation.

We have an enormously death-averse society. Including me none of us can contemplate the death of someone we love, but eventually we have to accept we can't set fire to the whole world to save it from burning. A lot of people like me, old-ish, a bit ill, are going to die. I'm 67. No-one's gonna mourn for too long. We are going to have to accept matters. If we really wanted to protect the NHS the truth is we should have been doing it for the last 20 years. I spent years advising and helping students who couldn't get a place to read Medicine despite superb A-level grades.  That's when we should have been protecting the NHS, not when it was already almost working at capacity when this all started. Equally we pretend prisons are viable. We have a capacity of 86,000 and the permanent figure of inmates always exceeds 85,000. We have no slack in our institutions. We have been dead men walking but were too stupid to notice it.

The reason there will be a next season is the economic and social imperative. Our rulers are already becoming slightly frightened of the lockdown, they have to come up with an exit strategy and don't know how to do it. Like Singapore they may have to go back to lockdown briefly. Much as they might like to run a police state they don't believe they can do it and if our deaths become the world's worst they know they will never be forgiven. Fear of the virus is keeping us locked down. Fear of the people will ensure someone comes up with a key.

And what's the alternative for a club like Chesterfield, sitting there and waiting to die, or planning for the next season whenever it happens?

[Dancingwilldoit]

I really dont understand why everywhere doesnt just let it run its course. Its only the vulnerable that need protection (I include my wife and my mother and probably me). If the most vunerable are protected and carefull for lets say 6 months it will be out of our system. In the meantime the world still turns, industry still makes and economies dont crash.
The NHS would just have to treat the ones that stand a chance of recovery in order to cope. OK its unpleasant but if 100,000 die as a result is it really a huge issue? A good percentage of those would die no matter what levels of protection / delay tactics our Boris comes up with. All he is doing is spreading it out and making life miserable for everybody.
I read something a couple of weeks ago that the figures we are given for deaths includes deaths from normal flu? If thats right then the figures from actual Corvid 19 cant be that bad.

Another thing I dont understand is the panic for hand sanitizer. If you wear plastic throw away gloves every time you leave the house and take them off before you step back in, you wont get infected by touch. Hardly anybody wears gloves but to me its a no brainer. There are things we can do ourselves to avoid infection without our government getting involved and extending it for years.