THE game everybody has been talking is finally here. Martin Gray returns to Blackwell Meadows with his York City side for a game where emotions are certain to run high. It feels like it was only yesterday we heard the news that arguably Darlo’s most successful manager was going to leave us to join a rival club.

In any other circumstance, such a decorated former Darlo manager would receive a generously warm welcome but unfortunately, events both before and after Gray’s departure mean his return will see fans vent their frustration towards the away dugout.

If you’d asked me how I expected 2017 to pan out for the club, I would have been well wide of the mark. While our form was sketchy, there was a great deal of optimism for our future. In Martin Gray we had a manager who, whenever he spoke publically, told us of his love for the club and how determined he was to get us back to where he felt we belonged. For the whole, we believed him.

Somewhere along the way, there was divergence between the ambitions of the club and those of the manager. At some point, Darlo became a means to an end for Gray rather than him being here because of his love for the club. The infamous fans’ forum didn’t help although the later admission that his money man was Raj Singh drove a wedge between a sizeable chunk of the fan base and their manager.

One thing that has become clear since Gray’s exit is the mythology surrounding his success has slowly eroded with every bump in the road that the club has subsequently faced. A shambolic summer of recruitment and retention has effectively tied the hands of new manager Tommy Wright. Players who had clearly passed their best by date were given lucrative new long contracts. Meanwhile, as we have subsequently learned, a lot of time is being spent by the club’s board managing the debt accrued last season thanks to over committing financially to satisfy the manager’s ambitions.

I suspect if the club wasn’t still very much hamstrung by Gray’s legacy, our feelings toward the former manager would be warmer. However, what probably sealed the deal was the manner in which he belittled our club once he was unveiled by York.

I don’t think many Darlo fans would deny that at this present time, York are a bigger club than us. They have more fans, they have more money and, as a full time outfit, their prospects are probably better than ours. For him to effectively hammer that home in his initial press engagements rubbed salt in to the considerable wounds he had opened. Yes, he was the manager who brought us up through the leagues but to sit there in front of the York City press and take all the credit for our success was over simplistic and a touch crass. I guess he forgot about how often the fans had to bail the club out to accommodate his lavish spending. He forgot about how the club’s benefactors, the fans, gave him the competitive budgets to achieve success. He forgot dignity.

I suspect if we hadn’t faced Gray until the wounds had healed, some of the ill-feeling towards him would have passed and his achievements with our club would have been more prominent in our memories. Unfortunately, he returns within months of leaving in charge of a rival club while our club is still trying to right the ship that he left listing. The club have tried to pour water on the fire but the reality is the fans have a right to vent their frustrations, as long as they don’t boil over in to something more serious.

I would prefer if fans use the energy generated from their frustrations and use it to back Tommy Wright and our team. Let’s be the 12th man and secure the three points.