St Albans City Football Club is currently in one of the three relegation places in Conference South. Just one home league match has been won in the past 11 months. No side has scored fewer goals at home than the Saints and three home games since the start of last week produced just one point and not a solitary goal.

There was plenty of effort from the players but the quality of the football has been well below the expected standard. Manager Steve Castle described one performance as ‘a shambles,’ it could so easily have been said in relation to all three matches.

Against fellow relegation strugglers Boreham Wood on Tuesday, Castle brought in two 17-year-old players from Peterborough United. It was asking a lot for two such young players to turn around the fortunes of a side they are not familiar with and at a level of football that is also foreign to them.

On the bench was a striker cast aside after playing just 55 minutes football for the club on the opening day of last season.

Such signings have an air of desperation about them, but with his playing budget, apparently, decreasing throughout the season, Castle’s options for strengthening the side are limited. And a look around the rest of the club maybe gives a hint as to why there are is no money for the manager to look at bringing more experienced players to Clarence Park.

Since winning promotion to the Conference National in 2006, St Albans City has endured pretty much five years of non-stop battling against relegation. Far from rebuilding after dropping out of the Conference National after just one season the club has continued to decline.

Quite understandably, gates, that were far from impressive during the promotion season, have tumbled with neither the club nor is Supporters Trust being seen to promote any initiatives aimed at attracting people back to Clarence Park. A ten per cent rise in the cost of admission at the start of the season was hardly the best piece of PR work the club did over the summer.

But the lack of support on the terraces is a mere reflection of the lack of interest in the club shown by the directors. Only one director, Nick Archer, attends every match. Two directors are believed to have attended just two games this season while chairman John Gibson and his vice-chairman Alasdair McMillin are intermittent onlookers.

A look around the stadium itself highlights either a lack of effort by the club to attract businesses to support the club, or maybe it demonstrates how the local business community has turned its back on St Albans City.

The gaps around the pitch perimeter fencing far outnumber the number of advertising boards. And many of those boards still on display have not paid to be there for several years; to remove them would only serve to make the stadium appear even more desolate.

The matchday programme, hideously overpriced at £2 given its content, also emphasises how no big businesses within the city is backing the club.

The lack of off the pitch support, be it from the boardroom, the terraces or commercially, has hit the club financially. Throughout December the cheques paid to the players bounced. Steve Castle has since been assured that his players will be fully paid for the remainder of the season.

And the manner in which the players have been paid has led to another headache for the club.

For 16 months the FA has been carrying out an investigation into how the club paid its players and the investigation has resulted in a charge of St Albans City making illegal payments to its players.

The club has been reticent in providing information but the investigation comes in the wake of the Football Conference, twice, imposing a player registration ban on the club during the 2009-10 season due to an unpaid tax bill. The unpaid tax was finally cleared in December.

St Albans City may, of course, be found not guilty of the charge when they appear before the FA at Wembley on Friday. If found guilty the club faces a fine and a points deduction. The severity of the points deduction could well confirm City’s departure from the Conference.

The supporters hold chairman John Gibson responsible for any impending action by the FA and a small number of them are planning to be at Wembley on Friday hoping to persuade FA officials to punish the chairman rather than the club for any wrongdoing.

There have been mumblings against the controversial reign of the chairman for a long time but any protests aimed at regime change, along the lines seen in Tunisia or Egypt recently, have yet to be witnessed at sleepy Clarence Park.