Silence from the boardroom is deafening

A few weeks ago the board announced plans to form a new company - Yeovil Town Holdings Ltd - to coexist alongside the existing company, Yeovil Football and Athletic Club Ltd. The reason for this as far as one could glean from the titbits of information doled out by the club was to separate the club's property assets from it's football operation. The property assets - in other words Huish Park Stadium and the surrounding land - would be owned by the new company with the football operation run by the existing company.

Since then we've heard nothing, at least nothing from the club. We found out this week that South Somerset District Council have earmarked approximately half of the Huish Park site as one of 7 possibilities on which the proposed Yeovil Sportzone - a multi-million pound development including a 50m swimming pool, gym, indoor tennis centre and climbing centre - might be built. One might have thought that such a potentially important development on the Huish Park site would have been worth a comment from the board, even if it was just to confirm that fans would still have somewhere to park their cars should the proposed development go ahead, but as usual the silence from the boadroom is deafening.

It might be that the Sportzone proposals have nothing to do with formation of the new Holding Company at the club, and indeed it would seem highly unlikely that any such large-scale development would be given the go-ahead at Huish Park when there would appear to be at the very least several more advantageous sites around the Yeovil area; nevertheless is it a coincidence that these proposals have come to light just after the board's separation of the stadium and grounds from the club's football operation?

The history of clubs going down the road of splitting property assets from their football operations is a short and unhappy one. AFC Bournemouth, Southend Utd, Rotherham and Crystal Palace are all recent examples and warnings. In this case silence is not golden, the board owe supporters a full explanation of what they are doing and why they are doing it. Chairman John Fry is very fond of claiming that the club is run transparently and openly. It's time for him to prove it.

Back to the football: There's still no real movement to report in terms of Skivo adding to his squad, though the gaffer has said this week that he has a verbal agreement in place to sign a keeper on loan. ITK's suggest that David Button of Tottenham or Elliot Parish of Aston Villa are possibilities, and either would be very acceptable; but I'm still hoping that Alex McCarthy might yet fancy another season in deepest Somerset. Time will tell.

As far as the rest of the squad is concerned there's been no additions or subtractions that we've been told about this week and Skivo has said he's only looking for a couple more players to complete the squad. Which would give us a senior squad of around 16 players by my maths, not even enough for a full bench without the addition of a few academy lads. Again, time will tell and with another fortnight before the start of the season proper Skivo still has room for manoeuvre.

Tomorrow sees the visit of Manchester United's reserve side for Darren Way's testimonial game. I know a lot of people don't agree with the very idea of testimonial's in this day and age and to be honest I do have some sympathy with that point of view, but if ever there deserves to be an exception to that general rule then surely this is it. Good luck to Weasel for tomorrow.

Just Read: We Joined The Navy by John Winton: Actually this must be about the 30th time I've read this book and it still makes me laugh even now. Written in 1959, it's a wonderfully warm and witty look at life as a cadet in the Royal Navy and even though it's very dated it's still well worth reading, both for the humour and as a chronicle of more innocent times. Wonderful.