Where now, Gretna?

Just 2 games into the season, and Gretna are confirming most pundits' predictions that they are going to go straight back down come May. Having shipped 4 goals each against Falkirk and then Hibs, Gretna are sitting in bottom place in the SPL table.

Despite the heavy losses, it's not a completely hopeless situation. Gretna were at one stage 2-0 up against Hibs before sliding to defeat, and they created chances if not end product against Falkirk. In neither game were they totally outplayed, and can perhaps count themselves unlucky not to have at least a point on the board by now. Furthermore, both Hibs and Falkirk play a similar brand of football, and were able to unstitch Gretna's defence through slick passing and movement. It could be that the new boys will fair better against more typically direct, physical sides.

But they will need to get some results soon, because there simply isn't the time for the team to learn how to play in this division. While St Mirren and Inverness are also still waiting on their first points of the season, these two clubs have much more experience of the division and know what it takes to survive. If Gretna get cut adrift at the bottom by the end of the first two months, there will probably be no way back... as Dunfermline proved last season.

The truth is, though, that Gretna look short of quality. They are certainly looking to bring in some more players before the end of August, but whether it will be enough is highly debatable. At exactly the time when the team needs some investment the most, owner Brooks Mileson seems to have turned off the taps.

It's been a bizarre 2007 so far, after several years in which everything seemed to land butter side up for the club. Gretna breezed through the lower two leagues (no surprise really, with a squad budget the envy of several SPL clubs), and cantered into a 12-point lead in Division One, too. The club had enjoyed huge publicity from its run to the Scottish Cup final in 2006, and had not been shy in milking the attention. But then Mileson became sick and - whether related or not - cuts started to be made to the playing staff, cuts that have continued this summer. Then in March this year Rowan Alexander, the manager throughout the rampage through the Scottish leagues, went on sick leave, rumoured to be suffering from a stress-related condition. The team then stumbled, and almost blew promotion altogether, before finally winning the Division One title on the last day of last season.

Suddenly, "plucky" little Gretna don't seem such a good news story anymore. Mileson is now keeping a low media profile, which is a shame because it would be nice for him to explain the continuing shambles surrounding Alexander, who seems to think he is still the gaffer, despite being replaced by Davey Irons. There are legitimate grumbles surrounding Gretna's plans for stadium redevelopment - a mandatory requirement for the SPL, but still to get started. And Gretna's fairytale story is not what it seems - the club has done so well solely because of the cash pumped in by a wealthy owner, not some sort of David v. Goliath heroics. They are a tiny club that bought their way to the top.

Good luck to the long-standing Gretna fans, who will follow their team across Scotland this season and enjoy an experience that seemed impossible 5 years ago. But the rest of us are entitled to wonder just what has been proved by plucking an obscure non-League club and dropping them in the SPL, and where they go from here.