Seven wins out of seven in pre-season and the mood at the club seems high

The 2026-27 season begins, as the last 16 have, with Oliver Ash and Terry Casey in charge.

Whether they’ll still be here when it ends is less certain, but the owners seem happy enough to sail the ship, as long as it doesn’t take on water, and happier still that events along the A2 have vindicated their caution.

When the club was losing around £170,000 in a year they were eager to offload. Now it looks like they’ll be back in black there’s less urgency, and with it less risk of a bad deal. Season-ticket sales are healthy and winning seven pre-season games out of seven helps the mood.

There have been interested parties, but up until now they’ve either been too sensible, or not sensible enough. Various local businesses have expressed an interest in buying a stake and that might be one way forward, but there’s a huge gap between what fans want and what’s likely to happen.

What people want to hear is that a benefactor/investor/imbecile is going to come in and bankroll the club back into the Football League, but lessons have been learned from the Manchett non-takeover from 2023. Talking to those who were “close to the deal” it would have been interesting if it had gone through: Manchett would have done things very differently. We might have stayed in the National League and kicked on: or things could have gone south rapidly and we might already be looking for a new owner.

In any case, Manchett is still around and it was funny to watch his entourage at the Kent Senior Cup Final. They took absolutely no shit when Tonbridge started posturing at the end and it was just as funny to watch certain others perform the pivot from “he deserved to be nutted” to “he’s an Angel now”.

The Fleet situation has probably bought Ash and Casey some goodwill and a certain amount of time, but as long as the club remains unsold people are going to get angry and say “the club’s got no ambition.” I’m not sure that’s the burn people think it is. If the club is sold it’ll be interesting to see how long the new owners get before they’re told exactly the same thing. Using the Galinson Index, I’d give it about 12 months.