Thanks: David Holdsworth

Yeah, you read it right. Thank you. Thank you for David Holdsworth.

Now you’ve picked yourself up off the floor, it is time to acknowledge what Holdsworth did for this club, rather than what he didn’t do. No, he didn’t get us promoted and yes, had he stayed put we may have been relegated further, but that didn’t stop him working miracles on perhaps the lowest budget the club has ever had.

Steve Tilson ruined Lincoln City, we didn’t see it at the time but he left us red-raw and open to collapse. Look at Stockport County and York City now, you know why that isn’t us? David Holdsworth.

His little black book brought us Richard Pacquette, Jefferson Louis, Tyrone Thompson and Tom Miller, all players who managed to keep us out of the bottom four that first season. We were never going to win the division with them, but we were sure as hell going down without them.

In the end, eight points kept us up. Wins against Hayes and Yeading, Ebbsfleet and Darlington kept us in the National League and Holdsworth recruits scored seven of the ten goals in those games.

More to the point, the following season the cup run brought valuable income to the club that allowed us to kick on under Gary Simpson. Maybe ‘Reg’ wasn’t the man to lead us out the abyss, but he sure as hell helped steady the ship with little more than pins in his war chest.