Week of turmoil ends on high

So Chelsea fans will be appreciating the same lack of transfer action that Southend fans have suffered for the last 2 years. The last day of the transfer window should be one of intrigue and excitement, but following the blues has always meant this day has been approached with a due sense of trepidation. It seems that this fear was again warranted as within the final hour of deadline day the blues website was updated twice to inform us that our already depleted squad would be 2 players lighter. The most difficult thing to accept with this news is the almost pantomime’esq PR spin applied to the news. Geoffrey King (our chief executive) was the one to announce the release of the crowd favourite Alex Revell. His comments seemed cold and harsh, especially as the player in question gave his all and was plagued with injury.

A second announcement informed us that Kevin Betsy would also be leaving us. This news was delivered in a more traditional matter-of-fact dates and stats kind of way. After the deadline, the final site update came with the news that we had turned down an offer for our midfield lynchpin Alan McCormack. This so-called ‘good news’ was delivered by none other than our chairman Mr Ron Martin.

Now I can appreciate that if the club is in financial trouble, and that freeing up two squad players to free up some money to bring in fresh blood makes good business sense. But this message is never conveyed by the people that run the club. Maybe the reason behind this is to prevent mass hysteria but to be quite frank it’s fairly obvious that all is not well.

I can never appreciate the full complexities of running a football club, so I’m sure the chairman and directors have a very tricky job. However, all the fans ever really want is clarity of the situation. Too often fans are left in the dark when they have a right to know the truth.

Fans had promised a demonstration at last night’s Leyton Orient game. This as far as I could make out from the East bank consisted of one banner asking politely for Geoffrey King to hand in his resignation. Maybe the fan’s anger was eased by the impressive performance of the team. A 3-0 victory against the old enemy was what everyone at the club needed. I think however that later on in the season when we get some injuries/suspensions to our 16-man squad, and the results aren’t going our way this ill feeling will return.

Just to finish off I’d like to thank Steve Tilson and Paul Brush. Both have acted dignified throughout the whole affair and are doing an incredible job. I just hope that their heads don’t ever start to rule over their hearts and that they decide to move on.

Up the blues!