BURY Football Club is often accused of being "negative" and "lacking foresight". But for supporter John H. Taylor (Your Letters, July 17) to even suggest that Bury would be better off in a lower division is surely the ultimate in negative statements.

Let's be fair. Bury FC has been kicking around the lower division for the past 20 years. We finally make it into Division One, stay there, and yet all we see, week after week, on this page is letters from supporters criticising the club. For God's sake, let's get behind Neil Warnock and his players.

The chairman - who has done a terrific job juggling such limited resources - cannot stand up publicly and say: "The town of Bury has not supported us". Yet the truth is that our crowds remain pitifully low, rising by perhaps 2,000 in terms of home fans since our Division Three days. We would be the worst supported team in Division One if Crewe's ground had a bigger capacity than 6,000.

"Concerned and Passionate White" (Your Letters, July 17) managed to highlight various negative points (as well as stating that we only have 2,500 fans?) yet he doesn't make any positive suggestions how to run a First Division club on average gates of 6,000. Football is still a business: bills need paying, and players and staff need wages. Bury simply do not generate enough cash through gate money to survive without selling the Butlers and Johnsons of this world - and if £600,000 plus added bonuses is all that is available then, unfortunately, so be it. Throughout history the situation has always been the same.

Does anyone really think that the chairman enjoys selling his players at less than his valuation? The answer is undoubtedly no, but his hands are obviously tied. Just imagine the criticism he would have got if Butler had stayed and walked away on a free transfer next summer!

Please stop all the bickering. We are in Division One for another season and stand a much better chance of remaining there if everyone gets firmly behind the board, management and players.

Finally, when we played Millwall in May 1996 and clinched the championship there were 10,000 in the ground and a couple more thousand locked out. Where are the missing 5,000 now when the club needs them? The fans who pay their money each week excepted, the people of Bury are a disgrace to the town's football team.

MIKE STONE

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.