LET’S start with the positives before moaning about a negative, and what a week it has been to be a Newport County AFC supporter.

It feels like 2015 has been almost universally miserable for the Exiles on the field, the honeymoon period of being Football League new boys and relishing every game certainly no longer the case.

It’s been a hard slog for County fans this season and this year, with the bad news far outweighing the good over the course of 11 tough months.

The Exiles blew a shot at automatic promotion and didn’t make the play-offs, the loss of manager Justin Edinburgh proving too much to bear.

The Exiles saw their finances slashed when owner and chairman Les Scadding lost interest, meaning a quality League Two squad was cast aside because they were too expensive.

In came Terry Butcher, Russell Osman and Steve Marsella, none of whom remain with the club. We can only speculate what the squad might look like had Jimmy Dack never left, or had John Sheridan been given a similar budget to Butcher. Or if Butcher had simply put faith in a talent-spotter who knew League Two inside out. If, if, if.

However, after a horrible slog, dare we dream that there is light at the end of the tunnel? Dare we dream of a brighter future, starting right here, right now, or more pertinently, starting at Adams Park a week ago today?

The Exiles have won impressively twice in a week, they’ve moved out of the relegation zone in League Two and they’ve dazzled fans with an away display full of attacking intent, as well as defensive nous.

He might be a little bland with the media, but Sheridan has been a breath of fresh air, the antithesis of Butcher in almost every regard, including the way he sets his team up. Sheridan hasn’t altered his formation or personnel for three straight games. Butcher didn’t keep his personnel and formation consistent for three minutes.

The players have clearly responded – is it too trite to say that Sheridan speaks football, whereas Butcher spoke in sophisticated English – and that Sheridan is perceived by the players as being far more relatable? I’d say it’s a fair assessment.

After so many bleak months, things are genuinely looking up for the Exiles, even if Sheridan is right to reiterate that County are far from clear of relegation danger, nor will they be for several months at a minimum.

But things are genuinely looking up, excitement levels are increasing and that bodes well for a far more pleasurable 2016 for Newport County AFC fans.

However, I do feel it’s appropriate to punctuate the optimism and mention the handling the sacking of Butcher, which hasn’t been acceptable in this columnists’ opinion.

On October 1, Newport County AFC possibly sacked Butcher.

On October 2, Newport County AFC confirmed the appointment of the possibly-sacked Butcher’s successor, John Sheridan.

Two huge announcements, all within 24-hours of you raising the money that meant Newport County AFC became a supporter-run club, a club whose majority stakeholder is the Supporters’ Trust (and whose ascension to power was probably all of our highlights of 2015, concerning County).

On October 2, after the current Trust board – comprised, currently, of unelected fans, just like you, people whose credentials for running a football club is quite simply ‘support it’ – made clear that the details of Butcher’s departure would be made public as soon as possible.

That, of course, was received well with supporters, BBC Wales’ Rob Phillips asked about the details of the departure during Sheridan’s introductory press conference and the answer was clear, “That’s not a question we can answer today.”

That, to this reporter, seemed daft given that County are now essentially being run by 1800 of us, whose money it is safe to assume has been used, in part, to pay Butcher and his staff out of their contracts. Butcher’s deal run for two years, I understand there was no break clause whatsoever, so I made clear on October 2 that this matter needed to be addressed sooner rather than later by the Trust. To my relief, they agreed.

Fast forward three weeks, approaching a month later, and we still have no details whatsoever on Butcher’s departure. I have maintained regular contact with the Trust on the matter, asking at least once a week for an update or a comment.

Crazily, we don’t even know officially if Butcher was officially sacked or placed on gardening leave. That to me, as a Trust member, just seems completely unnecessary and quite frankly, a little insulting bearing in mind how magnificently County’s fan groups and ordinary supporters came together to take control of their football club in the first place.

I want to be as clear as possible here in making it known that I am not advocating that every decision made by the Trust from here in, needs to be done on the basis of 1800 people being consulted and getting a vote.

Going forward, the board will be elected by the members, the board will be scrutinised by their members and the board will be changed by its members depending on how effectively roles are undertaken. It’s a great system.

But it’s a system we don’t have in place yet.

What we have, essentially, is a group of fans, controlling a Football Club not because they paid for it, but because they represented a larger body of supporters who paid for it. We signed up to an ideology and raised over £225,000. Not (just) these five or six individuals being given carte blanche to run the club as they see fit.

Within 24-hours of taking control of the club, those fans then took it upon themselves to sack a manager less than a quarter-of-the-way through his contract, in order to “give County the best chance of staying in the Football League.”

Which is all well and good and I dare say, an issue whereby the majority of supporters and Trust members would have been in agreement with guys like Tony Pring, Gavin Foxall and Simon Sadler, the top brass of the Supporters’ Trust who are now defacto club directors while the 90-day plan goes into operation.

The club are probably more likely to survive with John Sheridan as manager; the club probably are more likely to survive with Warren Feeney and Mike Flynn doing the coaching. We are talking probable scenarios, it’s all hypothetical, but it is not the decision process that I’m attacking.

It’s the audacity of potentially using communal money to pay for a decision made by a handful of people. It’s the audacity of making a massive decision on day one of coming to power and still not being able to tell the people who paid for it, how much it cost, on day 27.

Are there still funds available for new players? Did we have a transfer kitty from the surplus money (nearly £40,000) raised? Was that money always earmarked as money to pay off the management team? Have the management team been paid off? Will this be an ongoing financial issue, adding to the monthly payments the club are already committed to paying back to the likes of Les Scadding and Howard Greenhaf?

Mr Scadding and Mr Greenhaf are divisive figures at the moment with a section of Newport supporters, but it is abundantly clear and not disputed by Supporters’ Direct or the Trust that Mr Scadding sank £1.5 million into the club he won’t see back and Mr Greenhaf was writing personal cheques all summer than kept the club from serious, serious trouble with no other revenue sources and also loaned the club funds countless times when they needed it.

These guys weren’t afforded any days off without scrutiny when in control of the club, yet it is expected that we’ll all sit patiently now and just forget about the compensation payable to Butcher and Russell Osman, and Steve Marsella?

The Trust may well turn around and blame bureaucracy, the process as a whole, as perhaps the matter is being scrutinised by the League Managers’ Association.

Yet why not come out and say so? Why be so clandestine?

The bottom line is this. If the Trust on day one decided to sack their manager and his staff, mere hours after taking over, it was on the Trust to put their membership in the picture as quickly as possible.

They had a duty to explain the reasons why they sacked Butcher and his staff and most importantly, the financial nuts and bolts of what it meant going forward.

A failure to do so is a shame, because this was an opportunity to put down a marker for transparency and being inclusive from day one.

It’s an opportunity missed.