By Nathan Jackson
May 31 2007

In recent weeks a lot of fans have called for the club to not only spend, but spend big. In this report we analyze whether we nessacerily have to spend big to finally achieve automatic promotion. With one of the best squads in the division, City definitely have the quality to go up and just one or two more signings could be enough for next season.

I'm not going to do what a lot of City fans are doing at the minute and just assuming that this club has money to throw all over the place, and even if it were I still wouldn't exactly been on risking all the hard work of the last 5 years on the off chance that we MIGHT go up with a new squad of alledgely better quality players.

As one of the 2,700odd fans that used to turn up every week when we finished 18th and 22nd in consecutive seasons, I can remember what potentially not having a club felt like, a feeling that the "new generation" of so called "hardcore fans" have little understanding of.

A few years back a certain team down the road threw money out to players from higher divisions, only to have that money secure them a midtable position, and now look at what's happened to them. The same applies at Macclesfield. They got new owners at the end of the 2003/4 season and threw loads of money at the playing squad, failed to win promotion and almost went out of business.

The key with our finances is to work it sensibly. It's all well and good for the fans to say "spend spend spend" but to spend a lot of money of a short term success that might not happen is too much of a risk in the long term. Don't get me wrong, I would love to see some money spent to try and get some decent players from the higher levels, but I am not prepared to put this club at risk to do so.

The reason we haven't been promoted in recent years is that we've always had at least one player in the squad that shouldn't be playing league football. Junior Mendes and Francis Green are two of those players and if the management even considers signing either of these two below-average players on a permanent basis, then I will seriously start to question the ambition of the management.

You can get quality players on free transfers at the minute. Some examples of that being Hereford's Tamika Mkandawire, who's contract expires in a few weeks, experienced Efe Sodje and Gary Alexander to name just 3. If we get rid of Morgan then that would free up a bit of wages and you could get 1 or 2 new quality players.

I don't care what the management or players say, it was the defence's fault that lost in the playoffs. The attackers did their job and scored 4 over the two legs, but not one single playoff team should concede 7, especially when at least 5 of them would have been avoided with decent defending. I even got text messages from Swindon, Huddersfield and Bournemouth fans saying how awful our defending was in the second leg and that if it wasn't for that they we'd have easily won.

It's just par for the course these days, the mangement failing to see what is blatently obvious to an entire watching nation. Hopefully they will spend whatever the budget is wisely this season and bring in players that they have an intention of playing every once in a while. This would be a change from last season when we brought in players such as Richard Kell, give them a contract and they never even get off the bench.

The squad we have at the minute is capable of promotion, all is needs is one or two really decent centre-backs *coughs*Mkandwire and Sodje*coughs* and we will definitely have a side that should finish Top 3 next season. Man for man, we have one of the best squads in the division and looking around, only MK Dons and Peterborough have a squad similar to ours in terms of quality.

People seem to forget that this team was comfortably heading for automatic promotion up until March, after that tactics and starting line ups changed as much as a David Beckham hair style. If (suspensions barring) we'd have kept the same starting line up throughout the final months of the season then we'd be looking forward to League One football next season.

The quality is certainly there, all we need now is a bit of luck and we'll finally achieve automatic promotion. We only need 1 or 2 decent new players to achieve promotion, and we don't need to spend an small fortune to achieve it.

A lot of fans have also questions the Goal2010 scheme. Now let's face it, would it be a complete disaster if we weren't in the Championship (which isn't even the point of Goal2010) in 2010? No, it wouldn't. Some fans have certainly lost their objectives and not realising that this club is run a hell of a lot better than it was back in the days of John Reames. I couldn't care less if we aren't in the Championship in 2010, yes, it would be nice but it wouldn't be the end of the world.

If this club continues to develope both on and off the pitch then we will get promotion to League One soon enough and then who knows what might happen after that, it'd be interesting to see if those of you slagging off the club now are still slagging them off if we win promotion in 12 months time, no, I didn't think so either. Sometimes you've just got to have a little faith and stop being fickle.