Clare Williamson, NCISA Last Monday evening saw the first NCISA supporters' forum of 2008 and we were fortunate enough to have Glenn Roeder as our guest.The evening attracted an audience of approximately 150, the majority of those being NCISA members.

Clare Williamson, NCISA

Last Monday evening saw the first NCISA supporters' forum of 2008 and we were fortunate enough to have Glenn Roeder as our guest.

The evening attracted an audience of approximately 150, the majority of those being NCISA members. The evening saw several members of the audience join the association and we very much welcome all new members on board.

The evening was very informative and fascinating with Glenn answering questions at length and drawing on his experiences as a player and manager with several references back to his days at Newcastle. He was very open and honest, which made for interesting listening.

It was obvious from the answers he gave; he is a deep and positive thinker. Not for one moment does he think we will go down. He also has a wicked sense of humour.

One thing that came across to me was that Glenn Roeder has a steely determination to succeed and prove a few people wrong and hopefully that will work to our advantage and with Lee Clark and Paul Stephenson working alongside him we have three very strong and determined people.

It was very interesting to hear how he envisages rebuilding our team. It won't be something that will be sorted this summer, it will be done in stages.

It's unrealistic to think we will go out and get 12-15 players of our own. We will have to have a few loan players in again. He did mention that he does have some very useful contacts in the game that would be more than willing to help out if they can.

It would be nice to think that we could get a couple of this year's crop back again, for some continuity, especially in the shape of Ched Evans and Ryan Bertrand. The more I see Bertrand play the more he impresses me and he's certainly improved from playing week in week out.

On the subject of younger players, he commented on how difficult it was to recruit players into the Academy because of the ruling whereby clubs can only recruit players from within one hour's travelling distance of the City. If we find a good one we must make sure we don't let him go.

He talked about having the same problem at Newcastle, which seemed surprising but when you consider that if you go east for one hour, you won't see much else other than a lot of water, it made sense.

Let's hope by the time you're reading this we've picked up those three vital points against Colchester and have moved a bit higher up the table.

t If anyone would like to join NCISA then please log onto www.ncisa.co.uk for a membership form.