Jimmy Gray, the joint-manager of St Albans City, claims that the club is now the poor relation in local football.

Speaking to the St Albans & Harpenden Review after the Saints bowed out of the Herts Senior Cup, with a 2-0 defeat at the Meadow Park home of neighbours Boreham Wood on Tuesday, the City manager was clearly fearful of where the club may be heading.

“We are a million miles away from where Boreham Wood are right now, we’re like the poor relation at the minute.”

Unfortunately that’s the way that this club has gone and the way St Albans has gone. We can’t match teams like that, we haven’t got the resources that they’ve got.”

Gray spoke about the difficulty in attracting players to St Albans when they look at the facilities that other clubs have to offer.

Leaving the ground after giving his interview Gray will have noticed that there were at least two football matches still being played on the all-weather pitches that adjoin the main stadium at Boreham Wood.

This meant that while Boreham Wood were spending money on their First team on one side of the stand, it was raising money to fund it on the other side.

Hemel Hempstead is another local club that has outstripped St Albans in recent years and they have facilities that are similar to those at Boreham Wood, in that they too can raise income even while a match is in progress.

Both Boreham Wood and Hemel have been granted permission to improve their facilities down the years while St Albans have not only been refused permission to improve facilities at their Clarence Park home, but have also drawn a blank when looking for a possible new site within the city and district.

Gray went on to say, “Financially we’ve got a noose around our neck. We can’t even get parked in the car park (at Boreham Wood), because there’s 2,500 kids kicking a ball about on the 3G. And the income steams coming into this club (Wood) are massive.

You just look across at the stand over there (an impressive all-seater stand partly funded by Arsenal whose Ladies team play at Meadow Park), it’s a proper little ground now. Clarence Park is like a rickety old… what it is, whenever it was built and has not really changed over the years.

Until things actually change behind the scenes and we can attract players like the sort they’ve (Boreham Wood) have got then we are not going to be able to compete on the pitch.”

Clarence Park was presented to the city of St Albans in 1894 with the main stand (1922), dressing rooms (1929), terracing (firstly railway sleepers in 1921, then concrete steps in 1960), club house (1949) and floodlights (1963) being erected during the 20th century.

Gray hinted at major changes to his current squad during the summer and believes that the side needs a minimum of six points from the remaining seven Conference South fixtures to be safe from relegation.

“At the minute there is a little bit of doom and gloom but I’m not going to throw the towel in, I’m going to do the best I can. Keep the side in the league this season and I think there will be more of an identity issue next season because we need to be more of a battling group.”

But steering the side to safety this season is not, Gray believes, the cue for better days to come.

“We’ll sit down in the summer, I don’t know where we’re going to go, where the club’s going at the minute, it seems to change week to week. I only read what I read in the press but we need to consolidate.

I’ve got a lot of ideas of what I want to do off the pitch. I want to get more professional, I want things to change and we’ll see if that can happen.”