...and so we face, the final curtain (Alty 0 - 2 U's)

As another season approaches it's zenith, spare a thought for poor old Alan Green.

It must be a difficult life for 5Live commentator Green, whose job involves travelling to Football's biggest matches and watching the individual genius of players like Messi, Ronaldo, and Rooney at first hand. But apparently we don't know just how hard it is.

"This is dire" he lamented during today's Birmingham derby. "It sums up what a terrible Premiership season it has been." And he's got to endure the World Cup next month, bless his heart. If Alan is so unhappy with his lot perhaps he should do the listening public - and himself - a favour and apply his talents to another sport. Like gymnastics. Or fencing.

Mr Green is of course entitled to his opinion, but I don't think you can really appreciate dire until you've seen Andy Parkinson scurry around ineffectively for 90 minutes. And I hate to think what his comments would have been had he sat through the Chester game at the Abbey, or the Eastbourne game, or at least half a dozen other matches United have participated in during 2009/10, a season which at long last limped to a conclusion yesterday with a 2-0 win at Altrincham.

Despite our travails in the middle third of the season, like most fans I go into the summer break with a good deal of hope for next term, not least because of the emergence of Adam Marriott. Super Maz leapt from the bench again yesterday to net two goals to leave Lingy purring; "I think he'll be a product, I really believe it. Goals speak words and the kid can finish."

Goals speak words eh, profound stuff. But I do think the boss deserves credit for the way he has handled Marriott's introduction to the first team. By restricting his on-pitch time he has minimised the pressure on the striker's young shoulders, as well as hopefully keeping his feet on the ground. We've all seen young players who think they've made it before they have - Luke Guttridge being an obvious recent example - and while there will inevitably be big expectations of Marriott ahead of next year, it won't do anyone any good if he starts to believe his own hype.

The other notable aspect of Lingy's post match utterances was the possibility of him bringing in another coach. He's been speaking in glowing terms about Cardy recently, and it will be interesting to see how the dynamic between the two is affected if one of the gaffer's old muckers - Dean Smith or Kevin Nugent for example - arrive over the summer. There's no doubt having another person to sit on the bench with the boss would be an advantage, but on the other hand it could lead to a three's a crowd situation, with Carden being the odd one out...

*Send me your 20-word match reports on the Altrincham game. Email cufcblog@googlemail.com, visit the U's Blog twitter page, or leave a comment under this post.

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Lingy's contract conundrum

Uncertainty hangs over the heads of many Cambridge United players at the moment like a giant cloud of volcanic ash.

The smog is likely to remain until Monday week, when Lingy will announce which of our amber heroes have been offered contracts for next season. In the mean time, because speculation is always fun and I can't think of anything enlightening to say about our meaningless 0-0 draw with Oxford, here's what I would do were I in the manager's shoes. I'm not counting Beesley, Farrell, or Courtney (sob), as Ling has already made it clear they won't be coming back.

Goalkeepers
Simon Brown - CONTRACT: Brown or Potter would both make excellent number one's for next year. But I'd plump for the former because a) he's the man in possession of the shirt, and has done very little wrong since he arrived, b) he's a Ling player, and thus represents a break from the previous regimes, and c) he brings a bit of extra experience to what will probably be a fairly young squad next year. Sadly this means that...

Danny Potter - RELEASE: I love Pottsy as much as the next person, but it's probably time for a change to freshen things up for all concerned. He remains a top keeper at this level, and should have no problem finding new employers.

Laurie Walker - CONTRACT: Or should that be non-contract? Either way, it would be good to keep him on as cheap back up to Browny.

Defenders
Already Contracted: Dave Partridge - Hard as nails centre back. Not a left back.
Blaine Hudson - Giant hot prospect

Dan Gleeson - CONTRACT: A no-brainer really, the only possible snag could be interest from league clubs.

Aiden Palmer - CONTRACT: Definitely has the talent, but for me there are question marks over his physical strength and his concentration - he seems to drift out of position from time-to-time. Worth persevering with though I think, and will benefit from a pre-season not spent at her majesty's convenience.

Josh Coulson - CONTRACT: I'd have said no until recently, but Josh has upped his game over the last couple of months.

Brian Saah - CONTRACT: Again a no-brainer assuming he doesn't get a better offer. Please stay Big Bri'.

Daryl Coakley - CONTRACT: Never let the side down when called upon. Decent back-up.

Kevin Roberts - RELEASE: Possibly a bit harsh, as I've only seen Robbo play twice, but with Gleeson and McAuley in the squad do we need another senior right back?

Midfield
Already Contracted: Paul Carden - Captain/Assistant Manager/Scouser
Robbie Willmott - Occasionally awesome, permanently petulant winger.
Luke Berry - CRC blonde bombshell.

Antonio Murray - RELEASE: Done a few good things (including that great goal against Salisbury) but not enough to justify a longer stay.

Rory McAuley - CONTRACT: Probably our young player of the season.

Jai Reason - CONTRACT: Seems to have taken Courtney's role as the player who most divides opinions among fans, but there's a good player in there if you ask me.

Simon Russell - CONTRACT: Very impressive since arriving from York, his versatility could be crucial next year.

Scott Neilson - CONTRACT (if poss): I guess it's unlikely he'll be hanging around, but would be nice if we could arrange a season-long loan or something similar. Quality player at this level.

Sam Ives - RELEASE: Good coming off the bench, but hasn't been able to influence games on his starting appearances.

Jordan Patrick - CONTRACT: Talented player from the little I've seen. Hopefully he'll get some game time in the next two fixtures.

Strikers
Danny Crow - CONTRACT: Need I say more. The only problem I forsee is that if he has a good world cup it could alert Real Madrid.

Phillips and Willock - RELEASE: Shame we can't combine these two, not least because the composite player could have the amusing name Callee Phillock. A total of two goals between them isn't good enough, we can do better.

Adam Marriott - CONTRACT: Jez George says he's the most talented young player he's worked with, and who am I to argue with the man who unearthed Robbie Simpson et al.

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Wicked wicked, the Forest Green match is massive

Old school joke for a Friday afternoon.

Q: Why did the monkey get lost?
A: Coz de jungle is massive

Indeed the jungle may, in the words of M Beat (feat General Levy), be massive, but our game against Forest Green tomorrow is, er, massiver, according to Lingy.

"Whether the Chester points go or not, this is no hiding from the fact that this is a massive game against a team in the bottom four," our leader told the official site, after describing it as "the biggest game of the season" so far. All well and good, but in the same interview he goes to great lengths to stress the importance of taking the pressure off the players during the run in, and I'm not really sure how these two things marry up. Surely describing a game as the biggest of the season is just putting more pressure on? Especially as we're not exactly at crisis point yet. Oh well, I'm sure he knows what he's doing, probably just wants to keep those lazy git players on their toes.

In unrelated news, Wrexham manager Dean Saunders has taken time out from his busy schedule of signing over the hill foreigners and Premier League loan players to appeal for more help in getting promoted.

He said: "As full-time clubs in the Conference we are the teams that everyone else wants to beat yet we sometimes even find ourselves at a disadvantage against part-time clubs.

"I tried to sign a player from one such club a couple of months ago who was earning £350 a week from his football, but was not interested in coming full-time with us because he was also earning £700 from his day job and I could not match that.

"It must surely be in the interests of the Football League that such clubs, hopefully back on an even keel and being run on sensible lines, are given every opportunity to strengthen and improve the quality of the competition in League Two and eventually even higher up in the pyramid."

It's an interesting point he makes, and one that, as a supporter of one of the bigger Conference clubs, I'm sure we can all feel some empathy with. After all, do Macclesfield, Accrington, et al bring more to the football league that Cambridge, Oxford, or Wrexham would? I'd say almost certainly not. But at the same time I don't know exactly what he expects anyone to do about it. Obviously it works both ways, and United or Wrexham are probably more likely to get the signature of a full-time player who might not want to go part-time due to the stigma attached.

And as much as it pains me to say it, the traditional football league clubs currently doing time in the Conference are there on merit, Luton being the only possible exception. And if the big teams are getting outshone by the small ones, they have a look at themselves rather than sit and bleat about what others can do about the situation.

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Orient re-union continues as Aiden Palmer signs

For someone who supposedly set up a scouting network for Hibs while he was between jobs, Lingy's little black book seems suspiciously full of players with Leyton Orient on their CV.

Nothing wrong with that of course, just so long as we're not going to restrict ourselves entirely to ex-O's men when it comes to boosting our squad - I'd hate to think that we might end up doing something heinous like re-employing Luke Guttridge.

The arrival of left-back Aiden Palmer, formerly of Orient, Bishops Stortford, and, er, Edmonton Shankstarz, will no doubt cause much grumbling from those who believe we shouldn't be signing someone who was jailed last year for his involvement in a "bloody street battle". But personally I don't think you can deny anyone a second, or third, or 500th chance at turning their life around. What kind of society would we be if we just wrote people off when they did something wrong? Not a very nice one, that's what.

What concerns me most is whether Palmer will be able to step into the sizeable shoes of Tonks on the left side of our defence. After a quick glance at the Orient messageboard, it would seem that the answer is an emphatic maybe:

"He was awful"

"Watched him twice over the Christmas, New Year holidays when Braintree played Bishops Stortford and he was a class above everybody else.
"He'll do OK at Cambridge, there's a decent little full back in there somewhere."

"Palmer will do alright there. Did have a decent run a few years back but seemed to lose it."

"Never rated him."

So there we go. While it's not the kind of ringing endorsement they gave Saah, on the other hand he doesn't sound like a complete Trevor Robinson. It's also unlikely the Orient fans appreciate the complete rubbishness of Conference football, which allows even the most average of players to make a name for themselves. And if our new man applies himself properly, it sounds like he has the talent to do the bizzle, fo shizzle.

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Hol-ding on to super Chris

I've had an enjoyable week so far chuckling at other peoples misfortunes.

Targets of my mirth have included the scummers, mired as they are deep in the relegation zone; Liverpool, for putting themselves in a position where their only striking options not named Torres are David Ngog or Andrei Voronin; Newcastle, for coming up with a worse name for their ground than the Trade Recruitment Stadium; and Histon for, er, well, where do you start. I fear that some kind of footballing karma is going to come and bite me in the ass this weekend when United make a pigs ear of dispatching Ilkeston.

And even if we do get past the Blue Square Norf'ers, bad times are surely just around the corner, as the clock is ticking down to the opening of the transfer window when Chrissy Holroyd will surely be hot footing it towards pastures new.

"I’ve got no concerns about it. We’re still two months away from the window opening, so at this moment in time it hasn’t really entered my head," the cool, calm, and collected sounding Linguist said of his top scorer, who has today been linked with a move to Bournemouth or Norwich. Admittedly this link has been made up unearthed by that bastion of investigative journalism The Daily Star, but you would assume there must be a fair bit of interest in our 14-goal hitman.

Personally I can't see him being a United player come February 1. Our over-budgetness is well publicised, and while it would be nice to think that if we're still in with a shout of the play-offs after Christmas we could keep hold of him until the end of the season, any decent offer will surely see the board cash in. I'm sure the player himself would welcome a move back to the north, given that he stated in his programme interview earlier this season that his favourite place in the world to be is "driving down the M6 on my way home."

In terms of cash, I guess we can expect £50k - £80k in total. I'd be happy with the latter, but suspect any fee will be nearer the former. What is for certain is that if he stays till the summer and any move goes to a tribunal, we are unlikely be looked upon favourably. It's all very well for Ling to talk about the "protection" afforded to us by Chrissy being under-24, but seeing as we essentially brought him as fully grown player I'm sure we'd be looking at a rerun of the Robbie Simpson situation.

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Ling in, but working on a shoe-string?

What a happy day to be a Cambridge United fan. We have three points on the board following our 3-1 win at Ebbsfleet, and Martin Ling is back at the helm.

Going by the statement on the official site, it sounds like the directors have thought things through and put a plan in place to move forward sensibly. Whether they stick to it or not remains to be seen, but at least we're beginning with good intentions. An over-reliance on youth players is not a particularly desirable thing in my opinion - ideally you wouldn't want to bring in more than two or three a season - but in our position we probably don't have much choice but to bulk out the squad with the CRC players, and from what we've seen so far they certainly don't lack the ability to succeed in the Conference.

The return of Ling will hopefully herald a new era of board room discretion as well, it's not healthy to have directors shooting their mouths off in the media every five minutes. Talking of which, it's a shame to see fresh revelations from ex-Chairman George in the paper today, talking of a shock 900k shortfall in CUFC finances.

George obviously possesses plenty of axes following his resignation, but it's a pity that someone with such a lot of passion for the club feels the need to grind them all at once. The 900k figure makes for a nice headline, but when you look at it more than half of that amount (£535k) came from one-off, transfer, income. That's not something you would ever budget for anyway, so to call it a shortfall is a bit misleading. It seems money will be a lot tighter at the club than it has been in the last two years, but I would hope think that the situation is not quite as bad as that article makes it sound.

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Ling Quits

Apparently. And here. I actually don't know what to say about this complete shambles of a football club anymore. I don't know or care who is to blame, but the way the club is being run is an insult to all the supporters, especially those who put so much time and cash into saving it a few years back. I'm too cross to write anything legible so I'm going stop now, grrrrrrr.

Edit; Confirmed now, how can you have irreconcilable differences after nine days ffs? What's up with these people?

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Lol, Us rckd by txt gte

The big breaking story from the weekend was the revelation in the NLP that Alan Lewer could take legal action against United after being "offered" the United managers job.

It made a nice headline for the afforementioned publication, even if the story itself had more holes in it than a large lump of emmental. The most amusing part of the whole thing was the suggestion that Chairman George sent Lewer a text saying "sorry not u" by way of informing him he didn't have the job. Presumably Ling got one saying "Gt the jb, cngrts", or something similar. Still it could've been worse - George could've done a Phil Hughes/Darren Bent and announced his decision to the world at large using Twitter. Perhaps that's something to bare in mind next time we need a new boss.

Moving onto matters at hand, and United complete their pre-season schedule tonight when they host The Villagers in the Cambs Professional Cup final, a fixture second only to the Champions League final in terms of its importance in the domestic football calendar. Or at least that's the impression you'd get if you listened to Steve Y'Know.

"It's all right having pre-season friendlies, but you need the more competitive games to work on one or two things," Y'Know told the CEN, before bizarrely adding: "Hopefully, tonight will give us the chance to fine tune and get more geared up, especially in terms of the refereeing. You can get away with one or two things in friendlies and we know we won't get away with them tonight and have to treat it properly."

Competitive game? Must be why Ling is fielding a second string line up. I'm glad to see they're taking it so seriously though, perhaps this is all part of the plan to grow the Histon brand on a global scale. Expect a four-page pull out in the paper if they win tonight.

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This is my manor now

So the scaremongering stories from yesterday turned out to be just that, and Martin Ling is the new gaffer.

We as fans always take the piss out of the CEN for reading things on the messageboard and reporting them as fact, so maybe they were doing some clever reverse-prankery by picking Jerry Gill at random and throwing his name into the hat to get us all over excited. Or maybe I'm giving them too much credit. Who knows.

Back to the man at hand. Ling was obviously the stand-out candidate, and with a squad built for passing football we're probably in better hands with him than a long-ball merchant like Liam Daish, even if he (Ling) does sound sound like a character from Lock Stock or Snatch. I hope his "contacts at the London clubs" are of the footballing nature, and not some kind of heavy mob who are going to come and demand protection money from Histon and City.

And it's a brave move from the board to put him on a three-year contract. I've been a United fan for coming up 18 years, and in that time we've had 12 managers (not including care-takers), only one of the whom has lasted for three years or more. That individual, Roy Mac, is also the only one of the dozen to have achieved a promotion, which probably says a lot about the merits of having stability at a football club. Hopefully tonight's match against the Liverpool XI will be the start of happy new era at CUFC.

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Tick tock doc

Anyone seen the terrible Al Pacino movie 88 minutes?

If you haven't, then I wouldn't bother, because it's terrible, but the basic premise of the film is that Al's forensic doctor character keeps getting phone calls from a serial killer telling him he has 88 minutes to live. Said killer always ends his calls with the phrase "tick tock doc".

This line came to mind after seeing the headlines in this mornings evening news about the managers position at United. Not because any of our directors only have 88 minutes left to live, but because time is ticking on before the start of the season and an appointment doesn't seem to be imminent, with a press conference scheduled for this afternoon now cancelled.

"We’ve got Paul Carden in temporary charge and if he has to take the team on August 8, so be it," said Chairman George, the same man who last Saturday told our favourite family newspaper: "We're hoping to be able to unveil the new manager on Monday, which is what we've wanted to do all along."

A spanner in the managerial works then? It's a bit worrying that this delay has coincided with the name of Jerry Gill being banded about, suggesting that perhaps the board are having second thoughts on the merits of Martin Ling, or - more likely - vice versa. Gill may well be a promising young manager ala the Brabinator, but now is not the time for a novice. In my opinion we need an older head who is going to be used to coming in and working with a ready-made squad.

Employing a young manager is a gamble at the best of times, but dropping one into a situation where there is no room for manoeuvre in the transfer market is even more dangerous. Perhaps the most worrying aspect of this story is that, at the age of 38, he reportedly wants to carry on playing, thus his arrival would also provide defensive cover. The whole thing screams cheap option. Loudly.

Anyway, yeah, we'll have to wait and see. But let's hope a decision is made soon, we need a manager before the season starts, whatever the chairman says. Tick tock docs.

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