Russell's return a reality check

Tomorrow sees the return of former manager Russell Slade to Huish Park when he brings his struggling Brighton side to Somerset. There's been a lot of talk on the green room about what sort of welcome he'll get from the fans. For what it's worth I hope he gets a decent reception. He was here for nearly three years, kept us in League One against the odds and against even greater odds took us to the play-offs and Wembley, including what in my opinion was this club's best ever match, that long-ago FA Cup win over Sunderland notwithstanding - the 5-2 play-off semi-final win at the City Ground against Nottingham Forest, live on Sky tv. For that alone, he deserves a respectful reception at the very least and I hope he gets one.

That's if he comes at all! The news from Brighton yesterday was that Slade was ill at home with a virus and had stayed away from training so as not to pass on the illness to his squad. There's no word at the time of writing as to whether he'll be be recovered enough to attend tomorrow. As for the match itself it seems vaguely absurd to call any game in October a six-pointer so I'll resist that temptation, nevertheless a win tomorrow for Terry Skiverton's men would be especially welcome against a team currently below us in the table.

Skivo's team selection tomorrow has of course been complicated by the absence of every single one of our loan players on international duty (the self-inflicted wound of Craig Davies aside), thanks to the FA's insistence that youth loans don't count as real loans. The real strength in depth of our squad is about to be tested like never before this season. The opportunity is there however for fringe players to push their claims for a regular first team place forward, let's hope they take it. The selection is further complicated by the absence of central defender Stefan Stam with a knee injury. This leaves just Terrell Forbes as the only available centre-half, so unless Skivo is going to take a chance on slotting someone like Craig Alcock into an unfamiliar postion then he's going to have to come out of semi-retirement himself to take on the role. The Glovers played a behind-closed-doors friendly against Dorchester on Monday - it would have been fascinating to find out who played in the central defensive positions in that match as doubtless it would have given us some clues about Skivo's thinking ahead of tomorrow's game.

My team would be as follows, in a 4-2-3-1 formation:

Alex McCarthy (if available, Richard Martin otherwise),
Craig Alcock, Terry Skiverton, Terrell Forbes, Nathan Smith
JP Kalala, Kieran Murtagh,
Scott Murray, Gavin Tomlin, Andy Welsh
Sam Williams

No doubt I'll be wide of the mark as usual! The bookies have the Glovers down as 8/5 favourites for the game, the draw is priced at 23/10 and a Brighton win at 13/8. My fiver's going on the home win, though to be honest with our absentees I'd take the draw if you offered it me now. Running total: +£7.50p

Away from tomorrow's game there's been much talk on the green room this week about the shortcomings of the relationship between the club's board and the fanbase generally, with the lack of clear communication from the board and owner cited as the main obstacle to a better relationship. Sadly we had yet another example of that lack of communication in action again this week, with the announcement that the much discussed membership scheme has been abandoned. Well, I say there was an announcement, two or three lines buried in a more general article in the Western Gazette seems to be the extent of the announcement, with nothing on the club's official site or any other outlet.

It seems that the club have decided that the Green & White Supporters Club will act as a kind of de-facto membership scheme, with GWSC members receiving priority behind season-ticket holders in terms of access to tickets to in-demand cup matches (remember them?!) and the like. Now as a season-ticket holder myself this decision doesn't affect me at all and in many ways I can understand the logic behind the club's decision, especially as the GWSC is being run in a democratic manner these days and and not as a kind of personal fiefdom as in times past. Leaving aside the rights and wrongs of the decision itself however, the merits or otherwise of the proposed membership scheme were discussed at length by the Achieve By Unity Fans Partnership (and before that the Customer Charter Meeting's) as well as being the subject of an extensive consultative process. A lot of supporters put a lot of time and effort into the proposed scheme and deserve more in the way of explanation from the club about it's abandonment than a few lines in an article in the local paper. But communication, as the club proves time after time, is not its strong point.

And that's a shame, as without such communication supporters are then left with the impression that their time has been wasted and their input not valued. And another barrier between the club and it's fans slams into place, all through a lack of proper communication. What a waste.