Posted by sgmboro on 08/07/2009
There isn’t much to talk about at the minute at Broadhall Way. Work is going on behind the scenes to get the players fit and ready for the big kick-off on August 8th, but other than that there is nothing to report on. That’s not the case elsewhere in the Blue Square Premier.
Rushden face an uncertain future after receiving a winding up order. The Diamonds are having problems dealing with the costs of their Nene Park Stadium. Apparently their current financial difficulties are due to the current climate, with sponsors pulling out of deals and crowds dropping. Ex Boro midfielder Daryl McMahon is still hoping to re-sign for Cambridge at some point this summer. McMahon didn’t feature regularly towards the end of last season at the Abbey, but is still highly thought of by boss Gary Brabin.
“He’s a quality player and he’s desperate to come back and play for us, but he knows the financial situation at the club at the moment.” Brabin on McMahon
Just a few miles up the road, Histon are having the opposite problem and have been given a cash injection in order to secure the 3 signings that manager Steve Fallon planned to sign before Setanta collapsed. Ex Cambridge pair Shane Tudor and Adam Tann are 2 of the 3 expected to be playing their football at the Glassworld Stadium next season. Kettering have strengthened their squad further for next season with the signing of former Macclesfield defender James Jennings. The versatile 21 year old impressed Mark Cooper while on loan at Altrincham last season.
Closer to home, Phil Wallace has come out with a few statements this week to the Comet and they both don’t sound good. The first one was that he wanted more people to come and ’support’ the club next season to help get over the Setanta losses. The second one was this article where he criticised the FA for not doing enough to protect the Conference and that the Conference should be looked after when it comes to negotiating TV deals.
There’s no doubt that the collapse of Setanta will have financial implications for the club, but I think they’re being a bit blown out of proportion. The figure is expected to be around £70,000-£100,000 a year. I don’t a few extra people turning up a week is going to help reduce that figure that much. I still think that PW has seen this ‘disaster’ as an ideal window to try and get more people through the gates and reduce the amount of money he’ll put in at the end of the season. Fair enough because it isn’t good for the club to keep relying on one man to keep it afloat, but to be honest these pleas to the supporters and FA are not going to bring another 1000-2000 people through the gates. The current financial climate is what is causing these problems and until that begins to pick up then I don’t think we should be expecting a rise in the attendances at Broadhall Way, however many times we’re told to bring ‘friends’ along.
Lastly a few updates have been made to the site. The ‘About‘ page has been updated to include last season’s review on the Stevenage Borough history part of the page. The ‘Squad List‘ is currently in progress with the player profiles being updated, while some are still being done from scratch. There is going to be more information on the player profiles this season. Also I have decided to take off all the reserve player profiles from the ‘Reserves‘ page. I currently haven’t got a clue about who is contracted to the club as a youth player so at the moment there isn’t much there, but once I know and get a bit more information then I’ll sort the ‘Reserves’ page out.
Posted in General | Tagged: cambridge, kettering, rushden, setanta, stevenage | Leave a Comment »
Posted by sgmboro on 03/07/2009
Stevenage’s 16th consecutive season in the Blue Square Premier will kick off at home against newly promoted Tamworth on the 8th August. The opening week of the new season couldn’t of been nicer for Graham Westley’s side with a home fixture against a newly promoted club to start off with and then two away fixtures against two teams liklier to be at the bottom end of the table come April. I guarantee there will not be any repeats of the 5-0 hammering Boro got on day 1 last season when they made the trip to Wrexham.
The first 3 fixtures give Westley’s side a great chance to hit the ground running and if the team can pick up maximum points from the first week, I think the momentum will carry Boro through. I don’t think there will be a slow start this season and it’s possible that by the time we visit Oxford on the 22nd August, we could be top!
The annual festive double header sees Boro play local rivals Cambridge United. The games against Cambridge are always the first fixtures to look out for and Graham Westley’s side will be looking for revenge on Boxing Day when they travel to the Abbey Stadium. The return fixture at Broadhall Way is on New Years Day. In between the two Cambridge games is the visit of AFC Wimbledon. It looks like BHW is going to be pretty busy over the festive period with big away followings expected from both sides.
The run in to the end of the season also looks quite nice for Stevenage. The last two seasons have given Boro a lot to do in the final few weeks of the season, but this time around the end of the season looks more straight forward. In 2007/2008, Peter Taylor’s side had been in the play-off positions all season, but a tough run in as well as a poor squad led to Boro being forced out with 2 games to go and in the end finish 6th. The opposite happened last season. Westley’s side started poorly, but turned it all around mid-season to shoot up the table and finish in the play-off positions, although there was another tough run in. This time around the last month of the season sees home games against Luton, Forest Green and York with trips to AFC Wimbledon and Kidderminster. It’s not easy, but I think it’s easier than the previous 2 campaigns.
Other fixtures of note are;
Tuesday 29th September Luton (A)
Saturday 31st October Kettering (A)
Saturday 13th February Rushden (A)
Saturday 20th February Oxford (H)
Saturday 3rd April Luton (H)
I think the fixtures will help Boro in the quest to win promotion this season. The start is always important and I think Boro can make a good one this season which will hopefully help the team gain some momentum and confidence to push for the title. In my opinion, I think the league won’t be as strong next season. Teams like Kidderminster and Histon are going to find it more difficult after losing big players in the summer and not having the finances in place to replace them. I don’t think Chester will be much of a threat either. However, Luton look like they’re going to be strong and Mansfield look like they could be an outside threat. The obvious favourites I think are Oxford who have spent big, but wisely and look to have a squad now good enough to get them back in the football league.
Roll on August 8th!
Posted in General | Tagged: blue square premier, fixtures, stevenage, tamworth | Leave a Comment »
Posted by sgmboro on 01/07/2009
Last Sunday saw the Boro players begin their preparations for the season ahead just 6 weeks after winning the FA Trophy Final at Wembley. They couldn’t of planned their return to training at a worse time with it being the hottest week of the year so far. Hardly the best conditions to get your fitness back in?
It’s just a couple of weeks before the first team are back in action when they travel to Chelmsford City in the first game of their pre-season schedule. It’s a tough schedule which contains league sides such as Southend, Brighton and Peterborough as Boro look to hit the ground running come August.
The Comet have done a gallery of the players’ first week back in training at Shephalbury and this can be seen here.
There have also been some interviews with the squad as they report back. Lee Boylan has been talking about filling Steve Morison’s boots which doesn’t seem to add any weight to the ex Cambridge striker’s shoulders. I thought that Boylan last season, when fit, was an asset to the side. He was definately the best strike partner for Steve Morison and although I don’t think the deeper role is his favourite position he did a good job for the side, chipping in with some vital goals at the back end of last season. I think Boylan’s best position is right up top. He is a ‘fox in the box’ type of striker and if he gets the ball in the area, he will score. Westley’s signings will certainly give Boylan a chance to play that role more next season. With the pace of Cole and Odubade on the wings, I expect Boylan to find the net a lot more next season.
Away from the first team and the FA Youth Cup Qualifying rounds have been drawn today. Stevenage have got an away draw to AFC Hornchurch and the winners of that tie will face Royston Town, again away from home. It’s difficult to gage how well Boro will do in this season’s competition considering the club released all their juniors a month ago. I assume a team will come together in the next month or so and trials are ongoing. Youngsters are also being released from professional clubs at the minute, so it’s possible the club could pick up some young talent that way, similarly to how George Boyd joined Stevenage when he was let go by Charlton.
Posted in General | Tagged: lee boylan, stevenage, training, youth | Leave a Comment »
Posted by sgmboro on 28/06/2009
Phil Wallace has come back from the USA to meet with the board regarding a 20 point plan. It’s the plan he hopes will be sufficient enough to get the club through this season after the loss of apparently £100,000 due to the Irish Broadcaster’s collapse. £100k is a lot of money for a club of our size, in the division we’re in and whereas Premier League clubs would see that sort of money as change or a weeks wages for one of its players, it’s a totally different ball game in the lower leagues. £100k can mean life or death for some clubs.
This is something I think the FA and FIFA need to address sooner rather than later.
The Football League has already had one scare regarding TV deals. In 2002, ITV Digital collapsed leaving the 92 league clubs fighting for financial survival. It is still having an effect now with clubs like Luton finding it too hard to keep financially secure and seeing themselves plunge into non-league football. The same has happened for Cambridge, Wrexham and Oxford. The word ‘administration’ was hardly ever used in footballing terms until 2002, but it crops up nearly every year now with a different club going into the red and getting point deductions. I doubt the financial termoil that has hit the football league in the last 7 years would of occured had ITV Digital not collapsed.
I don’t think the governing bodies do enough to secure clubs finances when it comes to TV deals. Fair enough the Sky deal has changed top flight football forever and been a major success. The prize of getting into the Premier League is so great now, due to the TV money that they get from it. It’s arguably the biggest prize.
However these deals are not paid up front once the broadcaster wins the rights meaning that if they fall into financial difficulties like ITV Digital and Setanta, then the football deals suffer. Football clubs obviously budget for every season taking into account all the income they know they’re going to receive and these days the TV money is a large percentage of that income. That’s where the problem now lies for the Blue Square Premier. BSP clubs are finding themselves facing big losses with the expected windfall for this season now gone. Budgets are going to have to be adjusted and savings are going to have to be made elsewhere to make up for the Setanta money.
I think these deals should have some sort of guarantee with them. Either pay the money up front to the clubs for them to deal with accordingly or give it all up front to the FA or Conference for them to distribute all at once or an even amount each season. At the moment there is too much reliability on the broadcaster and in the current climate I don’t think that is a safe option. With the way TV deals are currently structured, one broadcaster collapsing could kill of 10-15 professional football clubs.
We’re lucky at Stevenage that our club seems to be run well. We have no debts and are financially secure, which is a rare thing to find at this level.
“The final message to our fans and everyone involved at the club on this subject is this. The running of your club is in good hands. We won’t bury our head in the sand or keep our fingers crossed that something will turn up. We will tackle this issue head on and resolve it before a ball is kicked. Provided that we all work together to achieve the savings I will highlight, then we’ll be back to a neutral position. However in a business like ours the support of the fans – that means getting as many people to as many games as possible – is crucial and we in turn take on board the responsibility to provide entertainment, value for money and, hopefully, success on the pitch to those supporters and to continue our community activities in the town” Wallace talking about 20 point plan
PW will be using the Setanta story as a perfect excuse to try and get more fans through the turnstiles. If he uses this story well then he may get more people through the gates and for more money. That will mean less money he and the board will have to pump into the club come the end of the season. I’m pretty confident that the club will absorb the loss of the Setanta money and come out of the other end a lot stronger than other clubs in this division. I’d expect to see a lot of other clubs in this division suffer though. Some clubs would of been relying a lot on that money, Ebbsfleet come to mind, so hopefully with us in a good financial position we may be able to take advantage where other clubs can’t due to financial constraints.
Posted in General | Tagged: fa, fifa, itv digital, setanta, stevenage | Leave a Comment »
Posted by sgmboro on 25/06/2009
With pre-season officially just days away the excitement is building in preparation for the new season. The Blue Square Premier fixtures will be released at the back end of next week and by then Graham Westley’s squad will have already been through a couple of tough days of fitness training.
Westley mentioned that pre-season training will start for Boro on Sunday, but that a lot of the players had been keeping themselves fit over the summer to give them a head start going into the busy pre-season schedule. An example was Andy Drury, who apparently has been in the gym and training four times a week since the end of last season. It’s great that even when the players have time off, they’re pushing themselves to keep fit so they can ‘hit the ground running’ for when August comes around.
A bit of news from the club that has been released this week is that 8 league games next season will be listed as premium fixtures and therefore will cost supporters a £1 extra to get in. I assume that this is the club’s response to losing the Setanta money after the Irish broadcaster went into administration earlier in the week. In some ways I’m not surprised that Boro have upped the admission prices for these games as the expected £75,000 a year loss is bound to hurt the club’s finances for next season. Also, it seems that they are now following suit with the rest of the Blue Square Premier and charging more for higher profile fixtures. I remember turning up in the pooring rain last September at Rockingham Road to notice that I would have to pay an extra £1 because Stevenage was listed as a premium fixture. Here is the list of the fixtures next season that you’ll have to pay a £1 more to see next season;
AFC Wimbledon, Oxford, Cambridge, Rushden, Wrexham, Luton, Mansfield and Kidderminster.
I don’t really understand why the Kidderminster game has been selected to be honest. I thought Kettering would of been more likely to bring more support to Broadhall Way and therefore more money than Harriers, who I think will struggle a bit next season. The others are fairly logical based on what away support they’ll bring to Hertfordshire.
The same article also confirmed that the club will wear a new home kit next season. It’s been rumoured for a while that the club were going to replace the predominantly white strip, which the team wore at Wembley in their FA Trophy triumph, but it’s now been confirmed and the first pictures of it will be released some time in July, ready for supporters to purchase it by the time of the opening day of the season. It’s still unknown whether the kit will be going back to stripes or be similar to the design of last years kit, which to be fair grew on me as the season went on.
Posted in General | Tagged: kettering, kidderminster, pre-season, setanta, stevenage | Leave a Comment »
Posted by sgmboro on 23/06/2009
The Stevenage Borough Supporters Association annual meeting took place tonight at the Broadhall Suite for the 2008/2009 campaign. Again, it has been another tough year for the SA, with subscriptions reaching their lowest level since the first season in 1994. However, another profit has been recorded, although a lot of that was down to the club reaching the FA Trophy Final last season. The SA continues to provide an important link between the club and its supporters and after nearly 15 years, still seems to be going strong.
Another aspect to the AGM tonight was the Q&A session with Graham Westley and Michael Bostwick. Westley came in and answered any question from the floor for just over an hour. Below are some of the main points Graham came up with at the meeting.
- No more transfer activity expected, certainly with regards to signing players. Anaclet only real player who could yet leave this summer.
- Pre-Season training starts on Sunday 28th June.
- No double bid for Branston and Seddon. Westley asked Mark Cooper if Seddon was available, but hasn’t been in again for Branston since November, when he signed Mark Roberts.
- Steve Morison was selected as captain last season because no one else wanted it. Ronnie Henry passed the armband over because of a “split dressing room”.
- Westley did mention that he felt the dressing room will be better without Morison.
- Roberts has been selected as the captain this season because, according to GW, he’s a natural leader and can lead by example from the back.
- Roberts and Bostwick were the two options for the armband.
- Peter Vincenti has not signed a 2 year contract. It’s a one year deal with the club having an option for a further year if they wish to take it.
- Westley says that he doesn’t fear any other team in the BSP and believes that a lot of clubs are thinking about Stevenage more than we’re thinking about them.
- Anaclet’s attitude last season was a disgrace and he only made an appearance in the Trophy Final for ‘tactical’ reasons.
- John Martin in Westley’s words wasn’t his cup of tea. However, he did mention his professionalism and energy, but apparently he didn’t do enough going forward to be considered a regular in the Boro team.
- Willock didn’t push himself for the first team enough last season, hence his release.
- Westley is very excited about the signing of Yemi Odubade. Was surprised to see him get released by Oxford and said that a lot of Constable’s goals came from the good work of the pacy attacker.
- Dino Maamria isn’t going to play next season and is only here for coaching purposes.
- GW doesn’t believe there is a lack of discipline within the club. He put the Cambridge sending off’s down to poor refereeing, while the Cole sending off at Mansfield was an isolated incident of stupidity.
Posted in General | Tagged: graham westley, michael bostwick, stevenage, supporters association | Leave a Comment »
Posted by sgmboro on 20/06/2009
The club have confirmed that the fixtures for next season will be released on July 3rd. Not long now until we can really start talking about Boro again and start planning them long trips to Gateshead and Chester City that await us in the coming months. Unlike the fixtures in the football league and Premier League, the fixture list in the BSP gets decided by hand, so holiday fixtures can be evenly distributed and the fixtures meet local policing standards. I don’t really know why it can’t be done on computer like all the others, but it explains the week or two delay.
Highlights from the football league fixtures include BSP Champions Burton Albion being given a trip to Shrewsbury Town in their first game as a football league outfit. Play-Off winners Torquay have a home game against Chesterfield before they go to the capital to fact Crystal Palace in the Carling Cup and then Dagenham in the league.
Another story that affects Boro is the on-going saga with Irish broadcaster Setanta Sports. After weeks of speculation over its future, they finally lost the Premier League rights for next season after failing to pay the latest payment of £30m it currently owes to the league. Talks had been going on with an American investor, but once they had broke down, the Premier League decided to pull the plug on the struggling firm. It makes the attraction of buying out the company far less likely now that their prized asset has gone. I very much doubt the company will continue to run without it’s major income stream and expect an announcement on its future very soon. Let’s hope, like Westley said last week, that the club can absorb any loss they make with regards to the TV rights.
Ed Upson, who spent a while on loan at Stevenage last season has been given a new one year deal at Ipswich Town. New manager Roy Keane has seen enough of the 19 year old midfielder to believe he can play some role at Portman Road.
“Sometimes you have to be a bit patient with players. I saw him briefly in a reserve-team match and saw enough in the boy to give him a chance. It is now up to him and it will be a big year for him.” Keane on Ed Upson
UPDATE: A few ex Boro players are on tonight’s London Masters on Sky Sports 3. Barry Hayles is representing Fulham, while Tony Thorpe is playing for QPR.
Posted in General | Tagged: burton, ed upson, setanta, stevenage, torquay | Leave a Comment »
Posted by sgmboro on 16/06/2009
Graham Westley has told former Oxford right back Eddie Odhiambo formerly known as Anaclet, that he is free to leave Broadhall Way if an offer comes in. Odhiambo joined Boro on a free transfer last year from Blue Square rivals Oxford United, but struggled to hold down a regular place in the first team. It became apparent last week that he was struggling for most of the season with a persistent knee injury and didn’t get back into the ryhthm of first team football, with the team playing exceptionally well in the second half of the season. However, Westley has now shed light on the reason why he wants to get Odhiambo off his wage bill.
According to the Boro boss, Odhiambo failed to show the right attitude when he got back to full fitness. He went on to say that Odhiambo felt sorry for himself and needed to knuckle down if he is to stay at Broadhall Way for next season. I think it’s a good decision by Westley to make Odhiambo available for this reason. Stevenage can’t lose in this situation. Westley will either gain a determined, techically sound player with something to prove or lose a player who can’t be bothered, but would of been taking a lot of the wage budget home every week.
To be honest I hope it’s the latter option.
I was quite pleased when Boro signed Odhiambo last season and thought he would be a very good addition to the squad. He is good going forward and can do an able job defensively and always impressed me when he played for Oxford against Stevenage.
However, he started the season uncertainly and although his position in the team was never secure, he never looked comfortable wherever he played. I think in some ways he’s been quite unfortunate. Injuries have obviously played their part and the re-surgence of form from Ronnie Henry at right back has meant getting a place in his favoured position now looks unlikely. It may be best for both club and player if Eddie moved on. Eddie can get back on track with his career and Stevenage can save some money on what would be no more than a bit part player.
Lastly the sad news that non league ’statto’ Tony Kempster has died. A tribute from the BBC London website is here, while Tony’s site can still be accessed here. A big loss to the non-league scene.
Posted in General | Tagged: eddie odhiambo, oxford, stevenage, tony kempster | Leave a Comment »
