GRETNA caretaker manager Mick Wadsworth hopes that the club can become a breeding ground for young players if they survive a critical few weeks.
Wadsworth expects the team to see out their remaining five Clydesdale Bank Premier League games after watching them collect their first point since falling into administration.
A youthful outfit held on comfortably for a 0-0 draw with St Mirren in
front of a 751 crowd at Fir Park on Wednesday night, with Gretna keeper Greg Fleming contributing to the cause with his first clean sheet of the season.
With four of their five bottom-six fixtures away from home, Gretna have only one game left at Motherwell's ground – against Hearts on 17 May – but Wadsworth hopes that it is not the last in the history of the club as he desperately wants new owners to take them forward with a more realistic programme.
"It's easy to say 'where are our fans?' but we only ever had 1,500 to 2,000 at best," Wadsworth said.
"They obviously took a lot more to Hampden (for the Scottish Cup final against Hearts) a couple of years ago but Gretna is what it is and one day it will go back to being what it was – a good little football club that can attract maybe 2,000 people if they are doing really well in the First or Third Division or wherever they decide to put us.
"And that is realistic, having a programme that develops young players.
"It's a shame because I see people like (Abdul) Osman, (Nicky) Deverdics, Craig Barr, these are good young players. They are going to go somewhere else to play and I hope they do.
"My vision was always to have a young, dynamic team, that one day we could sell a player here and sell a player there, and try to get the thing to work that way. That was the only programme I had in my mind."
The full article contains 336 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
