Martin Shaw wrote:posted this evening by Steve Hymas on facebook:Steven Hymas
heres the truth ..
There has to be a long term plan for the club.over 4 years ago the chairman asked me to get back involved with the club and help expand the youth set up with fellow director Mark Hawkins.This system is now the talk of the midlands and self sustainable .
John Dempster was just finishing his playing career and was pivotal in its success.
We knew it would take 5years to produce our own players.
In the interim we built The RH academy which is now self sustainable.
John Dempster was gaining experience as the years went on and was earmarked for the managers role .He had offers but stuck with us and showed loyalty to the club.
The final phase is to bring young players into the first team to make the club more sustainable and hopefully some would progress up the pyramid .
Who better to do that than John Dempster .
With DF s failure last term the opportunity was taken to promote him to the helm .
We thought the fans would warm to him being one of our own and hopefully young players would be future .
Other clubs like Crewe and Colchester use this model and played at a higher level .
That is still the plan if folk will let it happen and not hound the man out .
I don't think Crewe or Colchester got promoted to a higher league with a rookie manager. If JD is so good at developing youth players into first team players (which there is zero evidence of thus far) then why not leave him to do that?
The idea is commendable but the youth players we have seen are not ready for first team football.
Also, is this the board admitting that promotion was not the target this season, despite what Mr Radford told us all at the start of the season?