What A Mess: Brighton down

THE Board is split over whether the manager should stay or go.

The team capitulated in the last game of the season because half of them don't know whether they're staying or going.

The manager doesn't know what his budget is for next season - or whether he'll be there to spend it!

What a mess!

Humiliated Albion caved in to an ordinary Stoke side shorn of their two best players (heaven knows what the score might have been if Bangoura and Gallagher had played).

It might have been "irrelevant" to Mark McGhee but the club still took the fans' money and the loyal support deserved better.

We'll all now go away for three months and recharge our batteries in preparation for life back in the third tier of English football.

One only has to look at the plight of Walsall, Swindon, Hartlepool and Rotherham to realise it's going to be no picnic attempting to bounce straight back into the Championship.

Albion went down with a weaker squad than the one which just managed to cling on last season, and the only encouragement has come from the emergence of some more youngsters through the youth system.

Tough decisions need to made about the ageing stalwarts in the squad, but that's football. That's life.

There are bound to be bids made for some of our emerging players and it is not rocket science to see the likelihood of more departures to fund the running of the club.

The writing must be on the wall for McGhee if certain boardroom factions no longer want him around, but his record of getting teams out of that division can't be disputed.
As he's got another year on his contract, it would seem to make sense to give him a chance to see what he can do. Reassess the situation at Christmas.

I would think there is every chance he can assemble a team capable of challenging in the top half of League One; the younger players will need a few wise heads around them, and it's bound to be a scrap, but let's think positive - for now.