BallochSonsFan

I have. And that's still the position we're in. If you ask our chairman about club finances then he'll give you a 1 word answer - grim. That doesnt mean that we don't need change. If it's Farrell until the end of the season then it's Farrell, but I'd expect his performance to be subject to a discussion and his future to be in doubt. If we've got any money left from the Rangers game then dismissing him becomes a consideration. If we don't then that doesnt allow the board to sit in their bubble and refuse to engage with fans. Finances in the grubber? What are they doing to try to improve things? So something has to change. We need to improve on the park. If Farrell can't achieve that then the club needs to find a way to pay for a change in manager or they need to come clean to fans, set out the club's position and be clear on what they're doing to try to change things. What we can't have is Farrell limping on as Dumbarton manager, the club saying and doing very little and fans becoming increasingly angry with the situation. All that achieves is driving fans away when people eventually reach the point where they've had enough.

It's a tough ask right now. The football on the park isnt good enough and it's near impossible to describe an afternoon at a Dumbarton game as an enjoyable experience. I think that better leadership and communication from the club would help. Not because it would make the football any more enjoyable - clearly the only thing that will help in that regard is for us to start winning games and playing better. But more to give fans a bit of insight into whats happening behind the scenes. Or, more pointedly, that something is actually happening behind the scenes. There is an air of negativity around the club. We've got owners who are pursuing their own plans for their property development. We've got a club that's struggling on the park. We've got a club board engaging in radio silence as far as meaningful communication with supporters is concerned. Would proper engagement and communication from the club board solve all our problems? Far from it. But at least there would be some kind of indication that the board understood what was happening around the club and was actively trying to improve things. So fans see the owners pursuing their property development, the club struggling on the park and the board steadfastly refusing to have a meaningful dialogue with fans and the negativity not only sets in, but flourishes. Because lets be honest here, what is there at Dumbarton FC right now to be positive about? I fear that our disappointing midweek crowd against Spartans will not be the last poorly attended Dumbarton game this season. I doubt if any Sons fans are confident of securing a result on Saturday, much less of witnessing a decent performance. It makes the lack of fan engagement even more concerning because all fans can see is a team struggling on the park and a club that looks incapable of driving any kind of improvement. Something has to change, both on the park and off it, or we're going to see more poor attendances between now and May and an even bigger struggle to shift season tickets over the summer.

Easy enough to sort out. He should write to the club offering a full apology. Show a bit of contrition and that he regrets his comments. That would draw a line under the abuse and help focus things on deserved and justified criticism. Removes the club's ability to shoot the messenger and ignore the underlying message.

Can I suggest this for the next pre-match playlist?

Nobody really knows for sure because the board has never made a statement about the aims for the club.

Its disappointing if things are becoming personal. For 2 reasons. 1. Stevie Farrell is a decent man. Regardless of how he's managing us and how the team are performing, Stevie Farrell strikes me as a fundamentally decent person. He doesnt deserve personal abuse or abuse directed at his family. 2. Making it personal gives the club a very easy out. it's easy to write off personal abuse. Easy to ignore it. It takes away from any genuine criticisms that can be made of Farrell's management of the team and the board's management of the club. Don't give them that easy out. Don't give then an option of attacking the messenger instead of focusing on the message. Hopefully it's a minority of daft youngsters. As a support we need to be very careful.

2 wins in 11 games. Continued uncertainty around our ownership and their plans for the club. Problems attracting sponsors. Problems attracting fans. We are a club in crisis. Performances and results on the pitch are in free fall. The performance of the club board is equally unacceptable. There appears to be absolutely no leadership from the boardroom. A chairman who only becomes visible and animated when he perceives personal criticism in a newspaper article. A chairman who will never engage with the wider fanbase. Never put himself out there to address the very real concerns of the Dumbarton support. A chairman with a fantasy vision for the club that is divorced from the reality of Dumbarton FC right now. Crisis club is a very well earned label for Dumbarton right now. A shambles on the pitch and absolutely no indication of leadership off it. This can''t continue.

We've played 10 league games since the start of December. Today is the 11th. We've won twice. 2 wins in 10 games. 4 draws. 4 losses. Any other club and the manager would be hauled into the boardroom and either given the dreaded vote of confidence or told to empty his office. I'm not convinced that the Dumbarton board will do either, and that's worse. At least if they gave Farrell a public vote of confidence then you'd have expected that they did consider punting him. That they were concerned by results and had demanded that things improved. Set some kind of target for improvement. 2 wins in 10 games. Realistic chance that becomes 2 in 11 since the start of December. Stranraer next week could make it 2 wins in 3 months if things don't go our way today or next Saturday. Stevie Farrell is an absolute gent. I will never criticise Farrell the person. When you see how he treats people then it's clear why folk are happy to work with him and why he convinces people that he's capable. He has incredible belief in himself, but he still remains a fundamentally decent and personable guy. It's absolutely not personal. But Dumbarton are a club in crisis on the park. Lead by a board who have shown absolutely no indication that they are capable of making the difficult decisions, or even that they're holding the manager to any kind of standard. If it wasn't for our early season form, we'd be properly involved in a relegation play-off battle. We'd be fighting for the club's League Two future.

We've got one such player warming the bench today. Because Farrell is doing Farrell things.

Spartans came to frustrate us, and they were certain;y successful in their endeavours. The game lacked any kind of consistent flow and was frequently interrupted by soft fouls and shameful time wasting, We did manage to force an acrobatic save from the visiting keeper and had the best of the chances, but a lack of ruthlessness was again on display. Ruth chased down lost causes but found service to be limited and support to be slow to join him. We never really looked like winning tonight and that's just not good enough. Absolutely no disrespect to Spartans, but we need to win our home games. We never really looked like doing so. Poor game. The big concern is that we're now won just 1 league game from 7 in 2024. There's still time to try and put together a run of form before the end of the season, but winning and losing are both difficult habits to break. We need to try and build some kind of momentum between now and the end of the season.

Not really the point. Parking itself isnt really the issue. The issue is why the club originally said that there would be no parking and what the reason for that no parking was. For a long time now we've been looking for answers to some pretty serious matters from the club. Radio silence. We know that the owners are still dead set on developing the land around the ground. The first time the club breaks it's silence is to challenge assertions made in the local press. We then have fans unable to park at the club - except that now we're able to again. If this change is going to happen as a way of progressing a property development that's deeply unpopular with the fans then the club needs to be far more open and transparent and far more willing to engage with the support. If we're going to be prevented from parking at the club because the owners need to do some ground work for their development? The club might not want to explicitly state that, but they do owe the fans that much. Which should form part of a far wider state of the nation address by our club board. Communication with fans on important club matters has been absolutely non-existent for far too long.

Previous applications were dependent partly on satisfactory soil samples and ground investigative work being carried out.

I've seen it suggested that it's because there will be some ground work being carried out in relation to soil samples/bore holes relating to the proposed property development. If thats the case then the club needs to come out and say that.

Its not really a simple error Moonster. A simple error is a typo charging fans £30 to park instead of £3. If we were always going to be able to park at the ground tonight then why is there a version of the matchday info that stated that we can't?

Another example of the shambolic nature of DFC right now. Matchday info post goes live on the website about 45 minutes ago advising that there will be limited disabled parking only on the stadium footprint and warning fans that cars causing an obstruction to the residents would be removed. 30 minutes later and they've changed it to parking available on site for £3. This is probably a minor complaint if things were otherwise running well, but it points to a complete lack of professionalism from the club, It's not a typo. It's not parking £30 instead of £3. It's not the club twitter praising a player for taking a hard shit from outside the box that the keeper lets slip through his hands. When the info was posted initially? There was no on site parking for fans. Now? £3 as it was on Saturday. So what changed? Why did we go from parking on Saturday to no parking tonight? And then back to parking tonight? It's not a typo. So what is it?

They have. They've edited the statement. Absolute shambles of a club. They can't even get something simple like a matdhday info post right.

Lets see how much liaising our new SLO wants to do with the supporters. Get your questions in folks.

"Only disabled parking will available on the stadium footprint." So no parking at the ground tonight like we usually have? Why?

Where else would you want to be tonight?

Probably 4 or 5. The trust agreed to have regular meetings with the club board whilst the position of trust director on the club board remained vacant.

Given a vacuum of leadership from the club board and the ongoing efforts of our owners, a strong supporters trust is as important now as it's ever been. We need a strong and united support as a means of challenging both the running of the club and the owner's plans for development of the land surrounding the stadium. The Holyrood debate over an independent regulator for football is welcome and such a body may well help the next potential crisis club, but it also highlights the failures of our football authorities to protect member clubs from people who do not put the interests of football clubs or supporters to the forefront.

Club teasing today's signing. Could it be Nathan Austin?

I don't think backing is the right word. I think he has free reign to do whatever he wants because the chairman doesnt have the knowledge or the bottle to say no. It's not that they're backing him - I don't think the club is capable of pushing back on him.

One one hand there's an argument that sticking by injured players is the right thing to do. Their injury issues will be impacting their non-football jobs as well. Agreeing another contract gives them a bit of certainty about their footballing future and the chance to plan for another season. But being the nice guy and doing the right thing can bite you on the arse. We could be extending the contract of guys who will either never play for us again, or who will have been massively compromised by their injury. Its not a risk I think we should be taking. Stick with them for as long as we have them and do the right thing whilst they're injured, but I don't think we should be taking massive gambles by offering extensions when we don't know how the players will be when they recover.

I'd encourage all trust members to vote. I won't make any comment about either candidate as it would be inappropriate to do so. The membership has to vote for the person they think can best represent the trust at board level. What I will say is that whether we had 2 or 20 candidates, it takes a hell of a lot to be willing to take on a role like this and both candidates deserve a lot of respect for being willing to step up and represent the trust on the club's board.