JOHN McGINLAY: I hear the explanations but a debt is still a debt

It requires a lot of trust and faith in the powers that be to stop the nerves from jangling when you see numbers like that.

If we were in the Premier League, that would be one thing. You know for certain there is going to be a huge amount of money pouring in next season because of the television rights, but in the Championship that obviously isn’t the case.

The big concern is if we don’t get promotion, where does that leave us? You can only think those numbers are going to get a lot, lot worse.

The people at the top tell us it isn’t really a debt, and that it is owed to a fan in Eddie Davies.

The fact he has taken away a clause that could have seen him get all his money back in a year is a good thing, I suppose. But it is still money owed, it is still a debt to someone.

And at some point, however far into the future, it is going to have to be paid back, you would assume.

The rumour mill has been working overtime, suggesting the club could be sold, or that all this development could be used as bait to attract an investor.

I think we all recognise that money through turnstiles and sponsors isn’t enough to keep us going any more, as it was in the old days. We need to find other ways to make money and this might well be the way forward.

There are a lot of questions that seem to be hanging around but I can accept how business works and that we might not necessarily be able to get the answers right now.

There have been plenty of rumours spreading round, and it’s all James Bond stuff at the moment.

As fans we all want information now. It’s our club. But I think some things might be better off being done behind closed doors.

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THANK God we didn’t have Twitter back in my playing days – I’m not sure Bruce Rioch would have ever got a team on the pitch.
The whole social media scene is enough to drive a manager to distraction because it leaves your players open to some pretty spiteful and hurtful stuff.
I’m glad it wasn’t around when I was playing, not least because we would never have seen Tony Kelly – but young lads like Alan Thompson and Jason McAteer coming through would have needed reining in. It is so, so dangerous.
So it doesn’t surprise me one bit to see Dougie Freedman take a good hard look at what his players are allowed and what they are not allowed to do online. It makes perfect sense, in fact.
I’m on Twitter and have found it quite beneficial but I screen who follows me and I suppose that gets me off the hook a little bit. But these lads have thousands and thousands of anonymous people who can read and comment on everything. And once you rise to one comment, and take the bait, they are on at you forever.
If you say something wrong or it is misinterpreted, then it gets retweeted and snowballs round the world before you’ve drawn breath.
I know it’s fashionable among young people and so for that reason I don’t think the club would ban Twitter altogether, but perhaps they might think about enforcing something that would see players leave it 24 or 48 hours before a game, to make sure their head was right.
Big Kevin Davies spoke a lot of sense the other day when he admitted he was having sleepless nights because of the grief he was getting.
When it gets to that stage, surely it’s enough.

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LOOK past Barnsley and we might as well give up.
Dougie Freedman has made a great start since he came in but I still don't think we’re good enough to expect to wipe the floor with any team in this division, even one that is struggling like Barnsley.
We need to be at 100 per cent before we even consider steamrolling someone, and I think it will take until he can make a few signings in January before Dougie can get things that way.
Keith Hill is a local lad and a fine young manager and he’ll have his team fired up, no doubt about it.
He did a great job with David Flitcroft at Rochdale and then took on a whole new set of problems at Barnsley, where he’ll have done an excellent job just by keeping them in the division.
We are not playing fluently enough to just walk on the pitch and expect it to happen. So this game is all about attitude. This is a very serious test of where we are.

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WILFRIED Zaha may have been a transfer target at one point, but it’s safe to say we’re not going to get him now!
Whether or not we really stood a chance of getting him back in January, I’m not sure. It always seemed to me to be a cheeky bid, just to see what happened.
But it’s too easy to say he would have made a difference or stopped us from getting relegated.
By all accounts he’s a London boy who enjoys the life there, just like Marvin Sordell. And like Marvin he might well have struggled to settle. You never know.
He doesn’t look short on confidence. In fact, he apparently claimed there are only a few better players in the world in a piece I read recently. It’s a strange thing to say, and you’d think there would be a few defenders in the Championship ready to give him a kick and test that out.

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I’M back at the Reebok tonight and hoping to see a few old faces at the Bolton Wanderers Supporters Club.
Stephen Warnock and Matt Mills are due to be up there on the main stage, taking questions from the floor, and I’ll chip in with a few stories as well, so it should be a fun night.
The meeting starts at 7.30pm in the Lion of Vienna Suite, so I hope to see you all there.