Quiescent Pravda today told us that the players were back for their first day of training. A mate of mine went down to Sparrows Lane to get a closer look and revealed that Kinsella was doing the majority of the drills, but there was no sign of Phil Parkinson. He reckoned there were only 18 or 19 players on view.

As for the club's website I'm not even sure that the photo above and others used in the article were taken today, unfortunately I didn't ask my mate what the players were wearing. The article also re-used some old quotes from sports scientist Nick Davies.

Where this brings me to is how shockingly bad the club have handled communication this summer between themselves and the fans. Is Phil Parkinson going to be our manager for the coming season? Certainly he has been quoted recently in the press after a good 6-week moratorium, when last we heard from him he was saying he had no idea of his future.

Is it too much to ask of Messrs Murray and Chappell to tell us that Parkinson has another season in the job, or do they fear for an abrupt halt to season ticket sales? Clearly the chances of outside investment if patently not a full scale takeover still loom in the background and we suspect that Peter Varney is involved in brokering some of these arrangements. And maybe the closure of the Bexleyheath retail store may have come at the advice of these potential investors, but in the meantime there is a football club to run with valuable and expensive employees and dependable if wavering customers.`

This is no way to run a business, yet a football club and 7 weeks after the last game of the season it has been a piss-poor performance from the board in managing expectations and marketing of a team with a poor recent record in customer satisfaction.  ¶ 14:12