When Schofield was sacked back on October 15^th, the very first thing I said was that I wanted Peter Jackson as manager. Several months later and I am convinced that Peter Jackson has more than proved he is the right man for the job. I've been fortunate enough to have several conversations with him and his personal enthusiasm would be enough to change even the most negative person.

Jackson's impact on his club can't be understated, he has started to rebuild this club after Deehan and Schofield seemingly ruined all the hard work of the previous few years. For a start, he realised that certain players that were seemingly guaranteed starting places under D&S were a bit crap to say the least, not mentioning any names *cough*Hand*cough*. That's not to say that all of the signings that the J&S brought in this season were rubbish, Hamza Bencharif was one of the few players to impress that were brought in before they left.

Performances certainly started to improve under Jackson. There was still the occasional crapathon, such as the games against Grimsby, Chesterfield and Rotherham, but generally the performances were much better. The fact we achieved a double over a Rochdale side who ended up in the Playoffs shows that we did improve. Not to also forget that we put in some excellent performances at home, including the thumping of Brentford just over 2 weeks ago.

The former members of the youth team cementing themselves in the first team is arguably the biggest change at the club this season. It seems almost strange that virtually none of them got a chance under John Schofield, especially when you consider he was in charge of the youth team that had half these youngsters in it.

In my opinion Danny Hone has easily been the most impressive youngster to come through the ranks this season. You wouldn't believe he hadn't played a first team game before November 2^nd, he's slotted in almost perfectly. LJL and Gary King have also impressed me quite a bit in their appearances for the first team.

Other than the aforementioned players, there haven't been that many who have impressed me this season. The only other players really were Jamie Forrester, Paul Green and Scott Kerr. I also rate players such as Freck, but Freck's season was no-where near as good as it could have been, although his loyalty was proved when he told Peterborough to shove their offer where the sun doesn't shine.

However, whilst there were several positives, that were many negatives and where can you start except for the fact we conceded 90 goals this season. It's near enough impossible to put into words just how diabolical that is. Whether it be Ben Smith letting in every shot on target against him, an own goal or the occasional good goal, we've conceded far too many goals this season.

The one thing that has seriously annoyed me this season is that we've dominated a lot of games and yet lost to the opponent's only shot on target. Dagenham were the first team to do it after we had battered them for 80 odd minutes. Not to forget the home games against Morecambe, Chester and Stockport, to name just three. To seriously challenge for promotion next season then first and foremost we need a new defence.

Going forward we've not been too bad. Scoring 61 goals is a fairly good achievement considering we were down in the bottom reaches of the division for the majority. In past seasons, when we had a decent defence, would have probably been enough goals to see us qualify for the Playoffs. Then again, qualifying or the Playoffs would effectively just be extending our misery for another two weeks.

We've kept just 5 clean sheets this season. We've conceded goals against some very good teams such as Peterborough and MK Dons, but we've also conceded a few goals against some really rubbish teams, such as Dagenham and Macclesfield. With no disrespect to them, but how we can seriously take this defence seriously when a team like Barnet put 5 past us?

To concede four goals should only be happening once, maybe twice, but to concede four goals on 8 occasions and 5 on two occasions is simply a joke. If there is one area that needs to be improved in the summer then it is in the defence. One of the few positives about our defence this season was the management realising that Nat Brown is a pile of toss.

Unfortunately this club has become full of players that touch the ball on a regular basis but nothing actually seems to happen. Ben Wright and Louis Dodds have scored over 20 goals between them, but other than that they are very rarely involved in the game and you'd be forgiven for not noticing they were playing.

Going back to John Schofield, it says it all about Schofield's eye for a player when he thinks that Jamie Hand was a good enough player for us. Schofield near enough ruined this football club and I don't care what so called football "experts" say when they claim he wasn't given a decent chance this season. If John Schofield was still in charge of our football club then we would be preparing for trips to Woking, Ebbsfleet and Rushden next season.

Schofield's tactics book can probably be converted onto a post-it note. I went into every game expecting us to lose. The negativity that John filled this club with was unbelievable. The players might as well have run out onto the pitch to a theme you'd normally hear at a funeral. The performances were flat, passionless and quite frankly, a load of toss.

Then again, you look at the day we played Dagenham and Redbridge. We went into that game 4^th in the table and we subsequently dominated. We could have easily scored 3 or 4 but failed to score, only then to lose to one of Dagenham's only shots on target. We didn't win a game after that until November and it would certainly be interesting to see how differently our season would have been if we'd have won that game.

Schofield, for lack of better words, didn't have a clue. He would bring in players both permanently and on loan and then refuse to play them. He and Deehan basically had an orgasm over Ben Wright signing, and yet the striker only played once under the Johns. I remember when the John's were hired that they said that whoever were training hardest and whoever was in the best form would always play....what a crock of shit.

However, Jackson isn't immune to playing players who are either generally rubbish, or make no positive contributions to the match. Owain Warlow is one example of a player who has never had a good game for us, and yet Jackson seemed determined to play him over and over again at first. Don't get me wrong, it's not just Owain, there's also Shane Clarke, Nat Brown, Jamie Hand, Mark Stallard and many others who were constantly getting played regardless of them being in awful form.

Now, my final gripe will be the attitude that just because MK Dons and Peterborough have gone up, that this club is guaranteed to challenge for promotion next season. Take those two out of the division and we still wouldn't have been in the top half this season. The teams we have to worry about next season are Chesterfield, Rotherham and many other teams of a similar nature.

However, in general I do believe that we can win promotion next season, but there are far too many things that need to be improved upon. However, I still have faith that Jackson will see us challenging for promotion again next season. It will take a lot of hard work and saying goodbye to a lot of the rubbish at this club, but in general next season is near enough guaranteed to be better than this year.

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