Wednesday, February 01, 2006

They need all the help they can get

Boston United's website is lamenting that the team is 72nd (and last) in the Coca-Cola "Win A Player" league table at the moment. It's not entirely surprising - we have fewer fans than any other league team. In fact, the town of Boston has a significantly smaller population (I'm talking about a factor of ten or more in most cases) than any other with a team in the league. Except for the tiny little village of Rushden, but they're going to get relegated anyway so they don't count. So really, it's quite impressive that we're doing so well at the moment (on what the manager optimistically describes as the fringes of the playoff places).

What really pleases me at the moment is the transfer window activity. Or lack of it - the most important thing is that the board had the foresight to turn down a very generous offer from Milwall for Julian Joachim. Getting Joachim to sign for his home town's club on a free transfer was one heck of a coup - his Premiership days are behind him, but he's still way too good for Boston United - and it shows intelligence to refrain from cashing him in to make a bit of quick money, in favour of hanging on to him and letting him bring in the extra money that comes from the team winning a game every now and then.

We still have a stupidly small squad, especially with Noel Whelan and Nathan Abbey being released from their contracts (Whelan to go and get help for his alcohol problems and Abbey because we somehow ended up with three goalies and he was never much good anyway), but that's probably a good thing for team spirit, and always means the youth squad get more chance of a first-team game than at any other club in the country.

My great claim to fame is that my mum taught Julian Joachim at school, you know.

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