Ok, management.

Obviously I totally dropped Genghis in it half way through the season, and I hope that everybody realises what a good job he did of picking it up and running with it, given that he only had a couple of days notice before you guys knew about it - so it was as much of a surprise to him as to anyone. He kept the admin and organisational side spot on (probably improved) so there was not one single fuck up in terms of who goes where, what time, who against, etc.

He was then hit by some devastating bad luck, losing Smurf to a broken leg and then losing Danny to the same thing, then getting a good goalkeeper who turned out to be unreliable before finally getting Ashley who is a good goalkeeper and reliable. But all that took time, and in that time results took a few whacks, dotted in between by some bloody good results against Partick, Kennet and Chav Friend to name a few.

It has been an inconsistent season, but it had been an inconsistent start even before Genghis took over. When I left we were in 3rd place in the league (but I couldn't really work out how) so in just over half a season, we dropped one or two places, having lost our keeper and taken some time to replace him - all in all, not a bad effort from everyone. I don't think it would have taken a few changes of luck and a little bit more effort for us to be right up there challenging for the top spot, but then we've just come off the back of two hard-fought seasons and I don't think we should punish ourselves for taking our foot off the gas for a bit, especially considering when we did that, we still fared okay in the league.

But, all said and done, the agreement when I left was that in the close-season we would vote for the manager for next season. Typically that's been the way it's always been done, and I should know because I've been in a partnership bid which lost that vote once, but then was lucky enough to see the guy who won walk away in a strop just before Christmas (without me engineering it either), leaving the role vacant - after that it's been mostly you guys and Mikey agreeing that there hasn't been a need to vote, which has been very complimentary so thank you.

I'm not going to skew this or put any spin on this at all, because the important thing is that it's a proper democratic decision. That way if you don't agree with the outcome, you can at least respect the fact that there were more people who voted for the situation than voted against it. All of know the other options available to us at any time - but it's always a shame to see players leave for any reason. But I do want to say one thing, and let's not beat about the bush, obviously it's clear that some players haven't been 100% happy with Genghis as boss - I think partly because it was thrust upon people (my fault) and partly because humans tend to dislike change, so changes in training, in match preparation, in squad selection, etc, will always cause friction. Even if you choose not to vote for him this summer, please understand that he has (as always) given 110%. If you think about the fact that he's got a young family and a pack of wolves to deal with, I think managing a team for over half a season without seeing it plummet is quite an achievement.

So at some point we will have a vote to determine next season's manager. Genghis is obviously one of the options open to us, and at the moment I know that a couple of people have been considering putting their name forward, plus I've heard rumours of external entries too. (Browny was talking about shoving Crabbeman in a few weeks ago, though I could have been mistaken as to what he was talking about. Something about "it's a bit of a stretch but once he's in he gives it all he's got" and that the end result was that he "was full of spunk.")

So there you have it, a voting sheet of one. Anyone who wants to put their name forward can contact me, anyone who wants to have a chat about what it actually involves to be manager, can contact me or Genghis - I'm sure he won't mind talking to people about it because even if he gets in again it's nice to know that we have people in the squad who might be future managers...

Spread the word.