A fair bit of this seems to be driven by the fans and it's not a huge change from last season. I may be wrong but it seems we've also had most the teams who will bring big numbers already with Pompey, Derby, Bolton, Bristol Rovers, Reading, Wycombe etc all played. 5 home games left and 3 are against Fleetwood, Lincoln and Stevenage will drop that average a bit.
The season where we had a top 6 budget and nearly went down? I should hope so.
After every window we'll think we've made some really good signings, it's the nature of football fans. I'm not sure any of our new signings would be comfortable in the Championship, a couple might get by. Also for every Leigh and Rodrigues there's a McEachran or Thorniley, plus we spent money on Woltman who is by all accounts way off what we need. We've not done badly in the market but I don't think it's the roaring success we mostly all thought it was earlier in the season (myself included).
Planning has gone in several months late and a couple of months ago Tim softly mentioned in an Athletic article that we were looking into ground sharing if it's not done in time. Plenty of knowledgeable people on here suggest it won't be. Also we have no idea what it will cost, who will pay for it and how and how much we'll have to pay to play in it. I'm hard pressed to give them too much credit for this.
I know you are one to look on the positive side and fair play to you for that, if you're happy then that's the main thing at the end of the day as football should be a release and something to take pleasure from but there is a danger when you find yourself fighting to find positives at all times that you ignore what's happening in front of your face. You mention the poor communication and lack of support for Buckingham which I've banged on about for some time but we've also not mentioned the good staff who are deserting (Williams at the weekend, physio announced today) and generally the contempt the fan base is held in. He's clearly not a football man, the fiasco with the Beauchamp shirts is absolute proof that he doesn't get what drives a fan at this level, profiting off a legend like that was absolutely scandalous and I'm surprised not more has been made of it. I can't think we made much on that anyway, a normal price and a message of "we're donating £11 from every purchase to the Joey Beauchamp foundation" would have bought some goodwill among the fan base. Unfortunately you can't put that on a spreadsheet so it will mean nothing to him.