ROVERS: IT WAS ONLY A MATTER OF TIME

AS Tranmere slump into Non-League for the first time in 94 years, it is tempting to trace their fate back to Ronnie Moore’s unsavoury sacking last April.

Hauled before the FA on a minor gambling charge, Moore was first suspended and then dismissed for gross misconduct – saving the club £130,000 versus the cost of laying him off.

Rovers subsequently plummeted out of League One last season and last weekend tumbled straight into the Conference. Moore, meanwhile, took charge at Hartlepool and brought them steaming past Tranmere to safety.

The schadenfreude is irresistible, but the brutal truth is that Tranmere’s problems run way deeper than one misguided decision.

Six years of battling historic debts. Six years of budget cuts. Six years of loanees, has-beens and never-weres. For all their rich history, for all the Cup finals, play-offs and John Aldridge goals, Rovers have been dirt poor for a long time.

Since 2009, investment and ambition has been absent, the focus on simply keeping the club alive. Without the backing of former chairman Peter Johnson, Tranmere would already have gone to the wall.

Even when Moore took them to the summit of League One in 201213, he did so with one of the scantest budgets. Promotion would have been a flat-out miracle.

Moore may have kept swimming against the tide. But in all probability, he would have been dragged under eventually. The only saving grace is that Tranmere now have an owner in Mark Palios with the financial nous to turn things round, albeit a season too late.

Whenever a famous name slips out of the League, we remember the halcyon days and ask, ‘How did they fall so far?’ In Tranmere’s case, the surprise is they lasted so long.