SW19's ARMY

Well, I thought that my week was simply going to be covering Torquay v Cheltenham on Thursday, then back up to sunny London to see Luton and York suffer the bowel-churning agony that we endured this time last year.

And then this morning we found out that Sam Hatton had been released.

To be honest, those we’ve let go before today haven’t been particularly shocking. This one, on the other hand, is. While there was (and continues to be) speculation about Jack Midson, doubts about whether Sammy Moore will actually stay if somebody calls, and even a question mark over Seb Brown, this one is the genuine jaw dropper.

See, if there was one player guaranteed to be here, it was the man that SW19 often prefixed with “much-maligned”. He was here from the Ryman Prem days up until our first turbulent season in League Two. In a close season that had already seen thirteen players released, he was the one still standing.

His status had got to the point that if AFCW ever got into the Premier League, Sam Hatton would have been there. If we plummeted back to the Ryman Premier, Hatton would have been captain. Had there been a nuclear attack, the only two guaranteed survivors would have been the cockroaches and Sam Hatton. Only death, or TB quitting was ever going to see him depart, and even the former wasn’t a guarantee.

Until this morning, that is.

It seems like the photos of TB, the Franchise shirt and the chorizo have finally faded out and are no longer suitable for blackmail. None the less, it will still be strange not to see him in an AFCW shirt next season though, as it only leaves the management team itself with a direct link to those horrid days of the Ryman Premier. However, him being kept on beyond the initial cull was a surprise in itself.

Why? Think about who else we released in defence – although it would be quicker to name who remains. Only C-Mac (because of injury) and MMK are the defenders still at the club, and if the likes of JS, Gwillim and Brett Johnson got let go, it’s not unreasonable to assume that Hatton would have been cut too.

Only the most deluded of sycophant would have believed our back line was anything other than shite. Hatton was no exception, in fact the now-disappeared Barnet “highlights” showed him getting skinned like a, well, non-league player. Which will be the last memory of him in an AFCW shirt, unfortunately for him.

Was he really L2 quality, as some are now saying? The proof of that will come when he signs for his next club – if he goes to an Aldershot or a Barnet or a Dagenham, then perhaps so. Although how long he’ll stay there remains to be seen. If however he finds himself in the Conference, chances are that he won’t see League football again.

And there’s no guarantee we’ll be facing against him next season – we now have to get a RB to add to the other positions at the back (ie, all of them). One has to see what deals will be done – and that’s before the infamous PFA Released Player List gets published when all the contracts expire. Last time, there were 600+ players on it…

If we’re looking at that list, then other teams looking for a RB will be, too. And you can bet those who turned up to our games to scout our players will have somebody better in mind in that position than the guy we released today. Even this time last season, this guy took to Twitter to deny he’d spoken to us, so I don’t believe replacing Hatton will be a problem.

I can see him ending up at somewhere like Cambridge, or at an ambitious-and-maybe-big-spending side like Woking, or Dartford, or even FGR. He was at his best in the Conference, and that’s most likely his level. I doubt he’ll be without a club for long, more so than some of our released players anyway, and perhaps not a lowly one at that.

But will we miss him? Not really, we can do better and probably will. Of course, some will lament the fact they can’t abuse him any longer, and he always seemed to be a scapegoat regardless of what he did. Maybe some fans didn’t like him because as an individual he was pretty quiet and didn’t really mix socially afterwards? Which wouldn’t say a lot for the attitude of some of our supporters if true.

It is a shame to see our longest serving player go though, even if it’s for the best. His departure does at least show how far the club has come since we signed him (and his long hair/aliceband) as a young looking soul. Remember that he came from Stevenage along with Jason Goodliffe, and in that relatively short space of time, a lot has happened for all parties.

The question now is, who will become our new bete noir? Maybe one of the new signings to come in? Perhaps one of them may have accidentally got off at MK Central, which will be enough ammo for some. Perhaps an existing player like Luke Moore? Or maybe even Haydon the Womble? After all, if we’re culling those who are slow, leaden footed and unable to communicate…

It’s the end of the season, and therefore it must be the traditional End Of Season Cull.

Unlike last season, it’s been done a lot earlier and with less romance attached to it. A year ago, we looked at losing the likes of Jon Main, Yaks, Mark Nwokeji and Kennedy Adjei with a little bit of a heavy heart but many thanks.

This time around? To be honest, I’m not sad to see any of them go. There are a couple that one will think that maybe we didn’t give them a chance, but you’re not going to notice them when they disappear.

And that kind of sums up the season just gone – without exception, all of them didn’t make the step up you thought/hoped they would. The list includes those who were gone anyway – Ryan Jackson, Lee Minshull, James Mulley and Max Porter – but we’ve got the first list of those who will now be phoning their agents.

As is to be expected, SW19 goes through all of them and lists why they’re gone:

Chris Bush: Not too surprised at this, although there might have been a touch of the keep-him-on-as-a-squad-member. Always seemed played out of position (not his fault) and never appeared fully fit. It was telling that when he was at Brentford last year, Uwe Rosler put him on loan to Thurrock…

Fraser Franks: Hardly played, and somebody who in a more ideal world I would have liked to have kept on as a utility player. More a victim of our lack of proper reserve team than anything.

Gareth Gwillim: Given that he appeared to have had an ultimatum about sticking with his day job at LUL or become a full time pro with us, this seems the least shocking of all. It’s a shame really, as he was the best left back at the club since Chris Hussey, but he missed the last few games of the season and you had to wonder what was up…

Brett Johnson: When rumours that he was joining Simon Bassey in the cab drivers union surfaced, he was always on his way out. His CV now reads he’s failed to make it at AFCW, Northampton and Brentford. Will be a good addition to a Conference defence, but his handball against Bristol Rovers set the scene for his season. And not in a good way.

Jamie Stuart: On his way down. Rebuilt a lot of his reputation in the latter stages of his AFCW career, which had been dented by being slow, cumbersome and coming across as a bit of a bullying cunt in the process. But helped stabilise our Conference season at the back, so deserves a cautious handshake for that alone.

Reece Jones: The rumour mill suggested that he missed the Barnet game because he went to Thorpe Park on the morning of the game, went on the roller coaster, became violently ill in his mate’s car and as a result wasn’t fit to play. The term “village idiot” gets used about him a lot…

Ricky Wellard: May have raised a couple of eyebrows, but another player who didn’t play as much as you think. Always appeared like he was one tackle away from being literally broken in two, which made his “Bones” nickname ever more unfortunate.

Kieran Djilali: Injury prone, and when he gave it the big one to Marcus Gayle in full sight of everyone at the LSC, his card was always marked. Talented and promising, but then so are many others at this level and below.

Jack Turner: On the one hand, I’m a bit surprised at this. He would have been somebody who we could have put on a season long loan and developed. On the flip side though, his two League games weren’t all that, and his Twatter account made him come across as a serial whinger. Indeed, it seems he can’t wait to open his big mouth when he finally signs off, as this (now deleted) tweet this morning testifies:

@Jackturner20: Thank you to most of the fans really have enjoyed my self but…. AS Afc wimbledon still pay my wages I will not say what I really feel YET

I really wonder what goes on in the minds of kids like Turner (and to cut them a bit of slack, they are only kids). Or just as likely, what sort of advice they get – be they gobby parents, dipshit best mates or whoever. In his case, he does seem like he spouts off before realising what he’s said and then backtracks.

You can see him saying the wrong thing at the wrong time to the wrong manager, and then he’ll be wondering why he’s never made it as a goalkeeper.

We might not have heard the last of this either, if the “ongoing” comment on the OS is anything to go by. Plenty might have speculated that Sam Hatton would have been finally released, but as he still has those photos of TB on “holiday” in the Philippines…

So, what? That’s nine players released today, and tellingly most are in defence. I hope nobody asks why that is so. There could be a couple more being released, and there are speculatory stories about Sammy Moore being courted. Couple that with the possibility of Jack Midson moving on, and this is one seriously, seriously big rebuilding job to be done.

The problem this is that most if not all of the players released are non-league level. Turner has already been asking his mate at Bedfont Sports for a trial, which is hardly the sort of place a L2 player will be heading for.

The squad members who are genuine League quality, like Jack Midson or Sammy Moore, won’t be released but sold instead if the money is right. If the culled players had some value, they would have either been kept on or we would have got a transfer fee for them.

So we have to replace nine players at least, all of whom have to be better than those we’ve just got rid of. At least half of those we get in have to be of League Two quality, so we can build a spine of a side around them. That was the mistake we made last season, and when the post-Eastlands bounce wore off we were exposed.

Can we do that? Even with the £3.25 we’ve got to spend on players? Well, we are already seeing stories like these coming out from elsewhere, and they won’t be the last. I would hope that at the very least we’ve had those sort of players mentioned to us.

I do have to admit that my heart sinks whenever I hear stories about TB and co being at Slutton v Welling, or Paul Priddy being at Oxford City (not Oxford United). Maybe the odd one or two uncut diamonds, but if last season taught us anything, you need more to be in the Football League. Much more.

We saw what getting in Pim/Knott/Moncur did to us, and arguably all those three helped keep us up last season. The average wage of a L2 footballer doesn’t seem to be too budget-busting,  and we should be able to at least build a spine of players who have done it at this level. If we don’t, we’ll get exposed big time again, and we’ll be looking for a new manager before Xmas.

You do wonder who we will now bring in. A little hunch tells me that Jason Euell will be wearing an AFCW shirt next season, probably in a player-coach role. Will we get a vastly experienced (ie old) defender who will be the much needed defensive coach, but can still play? I will struggle to contain my cynicism if we can’t even afford those sort of players.

I don’t think we can do the let-us-wait-until-July-and-see-who-is-available approach this time around, because all that will do is lead to panic buying and another big cull come January. It’s a very non-league attitude to take re: transfers, and TB still hasn’t proven himself as a Football League level manager. Mind you, we scouted Harrison and Max Porter for ages, and look how they turned out.

But at least we now know who we need, even if it’s taken us until May to do it. By the first League game of next season, we may have a smaller squad, but of better quality, with the likes of Brendan Kiernan, Louis Theo and Huw Johnson continuing to develop. Not to mention a couple of Knott-esque loan signings.

And who knows, maybe the odd decent tactic…

And that, as they say, is that.

It’s nice to end on a high like Petruchio 3 Katherina 1, even if it was the deadest of dead rubbers. OK, the opposition weren’t exactly going at full pelt, about half of those in an AFCW shirt today won’t be with us next season, and it was the kind of end-of-season game your mother warned you about.

First half was pretty dull though. So tedious was it, that the highlight was making a rather pointed observation to an SW19 reader that Chris Bush and the Shrewsbury #2 looked like two hippos fucking each other when they were both challenging for the ball. An image I’m not quite sure he wanted. That said, half the time I was checking the scores elsewhere.

Second half though…

To be honest, I was secretly hoping for one of those freak games that happen once in a while. You know, a 5-4 or 6-5 type game where chaos reigns and you walk out of the ground wondering what the hell you’ve just witnessed. That didn’t happen, but what did occur was the rather, ahem, alternative approach to goalkeeping from the man called Neal (and by god was he reminded about it, poor sod), giving Byron Harrison the perfect opportunity to score. Yes, our record signing is lethal from 6 inches out, as his partner would probably say.

No doubt their keeper will join us next year.

Whether it’s because joy like this has been few and far between this season just gone, but we looked well, decent. Hell, we even went 2-0 up. Mind you, they hit back soon afterwards. Although so did we…

There’s not really much more to say about something that ultimately means less than a PSF. At least with those they’re designed to boost fitness and match sharpness, this was a contractual obligation of a contest.

Was it a swansong for a lot of players out there? Jamie Stuart was shaking as many hands as possible afterwards, which makes a change from him shaking throats. Even if he had played well throughout the whole season and not for the last month he would have been gone. As much as I think somebody like FF should have been given more in terms of gametime, I don’t think we’ll see him in our jersey next season. Might be proved wrong though. As for Reece Jones…

Chris Bush? Dunno. I expect that he might escape because there’s a danger that we cull too many players. Ditto the likes of Toks and Luke Moore. They might go, but don’t be surprised to see them retained.

And Sam Hatton still has those pictures of TB, the donkey, the 12 year old and the Franchise shirt.

I do wonder if we’ve also seen the last of Jack Midson and Sammy Moore. Those two would be a massive boost to our bank balance, although the metaphoric cost of replacing them will be just as expensive. Midson certainly made it his business to applaud the TE on his own before the usual lap of honour, and so did SM. And while there are many lessons to be learnt in the months ahead, those two going could be even more critical than DK and Gregory.

But for today at least, we can reflect back on what has been an interesting season.

I’m not going to deny that I would prefer a different management team in the summer, and what I think should be done for 2012/13 will more than likely be started by 2013/14. I expect that part of the reason for that is budgetary, as in it would probably cost too much to move that stage further coaching wise at this time. Clearly, the club is hoping that there will once again be enough teams worse than us through the season to get away with a lowly position in L2 by the next time we have a final game of the season.

It won’t get any easier though. We don’t have Macclesfield and Hereford to kick around (er…) next season. You would assume that the likes of Plymouth and Bradford are going to be on the up again, and will rebuild sufficiently in the summer. Ditto Northampton, with Aidy Boothroyd and Brizzle Rovers.

We won’t have Crawley, but we will have Fleetwood coming up with their cheque book. And looking at it, Luton could be dangerous should they get over what we did to them last year and go up under TB’s prodige.

There’s a question mark over what to expect from Wycombe, Rochdale, Chesterfield and Exeter, although this rather interesting article appeared in the local press in the case of the last one. Suggestion they might be financially strapped? t’Stanley may be, as well.

One would assume that Daggers and Barnet will once again struggle, and there’s always the team that shocks everyone with their outright shiteness. So presumably the club is relying on teams like that to prop us up during a turbulent period.

One thing is certain, we won’t be bailed out by the post-Eastlands bounce next time round.

Make no mistake, TB is now under a lot more pressure to produce. He cannot have the same attitude to our back line that he had up until Pim came along, an attitude that would have got him sacked elsewhere with good reason. He will not get away next season with tactics that no other club in the division plays, mainly because they don’t work in League Two.

He has to ensure a lot more consistency, not to mention getting whoever is playing to play for 90 minutes. Not 45. Not 70. And he needs to be more tactically flexible, more aware, more realistic. If he doesn’t, he won’t see the next transfer window. And this pretty astute analysis on WDSA doesn’t suggest he’s guaranteed to learn that…

In short, he needs to be the manager he was in the buildup to Eastlands, and not the manager he’s been this season just gone.

Will he do that? We’ll see come August and beyond, but for the last time this campaign…

Plus points: We won. Second half. Huw Johnson getting a run-out. Some good passsing. Luke Moore. Sammy Moore.

Minus points: The goal. Dull first half. The realisation it doesn’t really matter.

The referee’s a…: End of season for him too, so he’s excused anything. Didn’t really notice him though, although it was that sort of day. The lino seemed to have already gone on holiday for a couple of their offsides…

Them: To be honest, I expect they only turned up because they had to. Rumours they were on the lash all week seemed to be quite plausible, their goalie certainly was for our first goal. Even so, you got the suspicion if they had needed something for this game they would have got it.

587 of them wasn’t too bad, I assume that it was all we could have given them. As said earlier, their #2 was a fair old unit. To be fair to Chris Neal their goalie (yes, he has a first name you heartless lot) he took it in as good a humour as he was able to. Although I’m sure he used a certain finger when he was asked the score at 1-0…

Point to ponder: Can I just say how pathetic, woeful, inadequate, amateurish, brittle, fuckwitted, brain dead, slow, disinterested, cumbersome, inbred, idiotic, mongish, airheaded, limp-wristed, incompetent, chickenshit, neanderthal, impotent, abysmal, deformed, attrocious, dire, depressing, grotesque, horrifying, gutless, rancid, loathsome, rank, odious, poisonous, lamentable, wretched, pitiful, cringworthy, small dicked, Conference South level and all round Franchise loving our shit sandwich of a defence was this campaign?

No? Oh…

Truth is stranger than fiction: (1) Strange to think the season is no more. That opening day against Brizzle Rovers seems only a short while ago. October to March didn’t half drag though. (2) Come to think of it, wasn’t it strange not to see the KRE there too? The new stand will make it look better, but even though KM and that stand has little emotional attachment, something did seem out of place today. (3) Those cheerleaders – hmm, yes, well. And they looked about 13. (4) It’s May, it’s the end of the season. It should be shirt sleeve weather. I was wearing the same stuff as I did in November.

Anything else? So, what have we learnt this season? The short answer is, a helluva lot more than we have done since 2002.

More accurately, we’ve learnt how much professional the Football League is. We found that out on the field too many times, but off it as well. Reportedly, the amount of paperwork you need to fill in the 91 Club is a lot more than ever before. The club is struggling with office space, as anyone who walks into the office on a non-matchday will know.

But it’s had its naievity truly exposed. For the first time, it’s not fully in control of its own destiny. A good example of this is the KM refurb – the club thought that it could get away with doing the KRE and put back the JS. But it’s been caught short, and now has a much bigger bill than it planned as a result. That was apparently down to the Football Licensing Authority (FLA) acting after plenty of complaints by opposition fans.

What that shows is that the club is under a lot more scrutiny, and it’s not going to be treated as sympathetically. Give a shit view in the Conference? Fine, nobody really gives a flying one, and the Conference Board is too dumb to do anything about it. Do it in the FL and you do as you’re told – the FLA couldn’t give a fuck that we’re AFC Wimbledon and we started life on Wimbledon Common. They’re more bothered about the “experience” that KM gives you, or lack of it.

Earlier this week, we saw the initial set of proposals about funding, which if nothing else suggests the elephant in the room is finally getting noticed. Even if the opening paragraphs have a somewhat patronising tone. It’s clear the days of wondering where your iced buns have gone are dwindling, and the loud roaring sound isn’t coming from your Aunt Mabel.

Even if the club just gets the Vice Presidents setup, that will mean a pretty notable shift in the culture of the club – OK, one could say that under Mike R/Paul Strank/Iain McNay we are half-way there already, but for the first time something like that will be formal. The fact it’s been floated suggests that there are enough loaded fans of ours who have at least been sounded out.

Which let’s face it, we’re going to need. Not only for the JS and KRE, and transfer budgets, but longer term too. Moving back to SW19 won’t be cheap, although it’s something that is fundamental to the future and – just as importantly – culture of the club (if you know your history, and all that) and has to be tackled and not run away from.

But even without the finance, we’ve learnt you can’t take anything for granted in this division. Not in scouting, or in transfers, or in tactics. Or in planning, or in administration, or in anything else. Looking back now, we knew that we were clueless about this division and what it entailed. Only now are we finding out how much we were woefully underprepared.

It’s more than you think. Or want to believe.

As a side, and as a club, we are in stage one of the big rebuilding programme of AFCW. We will make plenty more mistakes in our planning, and some of these mistakes will be costly in both senses of the word. They will be ones we have to learn from, and to be fair to the club it tends not to repeat the most painful financial errors that easily.

We will no longer be the new boys of the Football League next season. And that may be the most important lesson to learn of all.

So, was it worth it? Season? Yes. Game? Hmm…

In a nutshell: Roll on 2012/13.

Hard to think that tomorrow is the last away game of the season.

As usual, it seems almost yesterday when we were the wide eyed new boys walking out against Bristol Rovers, who had no clue whatsoever what to expect about any of it. How will we perform? Is this the Holy Grail or the road to hell? Can we really make the step up between non-league and the Big Boys League? Do we know what’s going on?

No change there, then.

Anyway, your editor is at Crawley v Hereford, which could be an “interesting” experience. I won’t be taking any personal blame there from a load of irate farmers if we do put out a weaker (sic) side, although if we won…

Not that it is any business of anyone else if we put Jack Turner in goal and see what Reece Jones is capable of. Though in the latter’s case, if he’s spent so long on loan in the Conference South then you have to wonder what’s really going to happen with him. Maybe it’s just a trial game for him, and if he does well, then he can stay until he’s loaned out to Woking next season.

I expect from our point of view, tomorrow will be end-of-term. Barnet will be up for it, they have to be, and for all the guff about wanting to relegate Martin “Frenzy” Allen we’ve all seen these kind of games before. Not to mention how lousy our record has been against the teams below us in the table.

Not that it’s going to put off people, this might end up being the highest turnout to an away game this season. Hopefully we can get it into four figures. And Barnet was always one of “those” fixtures you always wanted to have. A bit like Woking and Slutton and Ks were in the distant days of the footballing backwaters, before we overtook all of them and shoved them into permanent irrelevance.

Given that next season is going to be League Two North, we need every Southern based side in this division we can. Which is why I expect even though your editor personally hopes they stay down a couple more years, many will be wanting Luton to come up through the playoffs. And for Wycombe and Leyton Orient to have stinkers.

And which is why if we do lose or draw tomorrow and Macc and Hereford lose, people won’t be too upset.

Still, it’s nice that we can go up the Northern Line not needing points, and we can start counting down the days until this season is over. Imagine our nerves tomorrow if we had needed something. Maybe because it’s near the season’s end, but I can’t help noticing a bit of, well, honesty coming out within this last week.

After Torquay, TB said – and I quote.

“We would much rather have achieved our target in January or February. Torquay have similar resources to us and they are a side that we should look to emulate if we can”.

Hmm. Was that an admission of failure? That’s certainly going to piss off those who cling onto the fourth-lowest-budget blanket. Mind you, yesterday Toks went one stage further:

“We should definitely look to the play-offs as this year we underachieved massively”

Talk is cheap of course, and for too many times this campaign there has been a sizeable disconnect between what is said in interviews and what is done on the field. This will become a common phrase in the period to come, but we won’t get away with that next season.

Apparently, in one of today’s papers we were described as the biggest disappointment of League Two, which looking at it objectively we were. We ended up with probably the worst of all worlds this season : a great deal of our squad weren’t good enough for this division, but we didn’t use what we did have properly and as a result we lost the confidence that got us into League Two to begin with.

Mind you, it would have been easier for the club to pay the poverty card here, and hide behind the fourth-lowest-budget comfort blanket, and how new we were to all of this, and how we started ten years ago on Wimbledon Common etc. Not that it would have stood up to any kind of proper scrutiny, but at least its rhetoric is starting to go on the right track.

Meanwhile, mention of the disconnect between what we say and what we do brings us onto Jack Midson. And to be honest, it’s a bit discomforting to find out that there hasn’t been a proper written contract offered to him – despite us verbally saying we’ll give him one. One may be tempted to say that we’ve made our minds up to sell him…

If these rumours of £250k to Swindon are true, the club obviously feels the need to cash in. And it’s kind of got itself caught up on offering 1+1 deals – to get any sort of money in, we simply have to sell after just one year because otherwise it’s Bosman time. If the likes of Sammy Moore attract serious interest this summer, and they’re on similar deals, we’ll find it hard to turn it down.

That won’t do our nerves any good in the close season, and it will undoubtedly put yet more pressure on us getting it right in the summer.  While this from the Hounslow Chronicle this morning isn’t anything you didn’t know, it might start focusing minds both in the stands and within the club itself.

After all, getting it wrong isn’t an option. Just ask tomorrow’s opponents…

Blimey, a win. And a clean sheet. And by the sound of it, we even managed to play for more than a half at a time. It’s only taken us 44 games as well.

No, I wasn’t there – I was covering next season’s JPT opponents (Pompey, not Franchise) – but Jampot was…

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Under pressure!

And for once it wasn’t us. It was them that suffered the paralysis of pressure.

In fact for the first time since probably the first game of the season this team had the opportunity to play with relative free abandon, knowing the result really did not matter to us one iota. Only – in the first game of the season when no-one really knows how a team will perform in competition do you get a similar situation. And boy did it work for us yesterday.

I really did not expect Shard 2 Fawlty Towers 0. And by the very quiet subdued crowd coming into KM nor did a lot of others. Most like me expected Torquay to come at us; to put us up against it in their fight for the last automatic promotion slot with Crawley. But it never materialised.

Perhaps that was partly down to the fact that TB’s honesty mode meant we fielded essentially a full first team; no youngsters therein but on the bench. Jolley and Midson up front, with Midson celebrating 50 starts for the Dons

Instead we reverted to the famous diamond formation (or at least that is what people are saying though I must admit I didn’t really see it or twig it); we played with a pretty solid defence (although they had their customary one or two ‘lapses’; and we kept a good tempo of pressuring the opposition across the whole pitch throughout the game.

And though for a while this game had ‘Southend again’ all written over it, that is loads of pressure and not much in the way of goal scoring opportunities, this time we continued on past the hour and played, perhaps for the first time this season the full 90 minutes. I certainly can’t remember a sustained period where we were off the boil for some time (I stand to be corrected)

And, as others have pointed out when it came to man of the match there were quite a few contenders for the award. For the record it was given to Matt Mitchell-King which was not an unreasonable choice!

Plus points: A clean sheet; playing with free abandon; midfielders scoring; the growing maturity and confidence of George Moncur.

Minus points: Seb Brown’s lack of command of his area; poor communication; a tendency to over complicate when the simple will do; tunnel vision (step forward C Jolley and B Harrison!); Jack Turner injuring himself in the warm up.

The referee’s a…: Much though he was annoying at times generally he did relatively ok. Missed a few, gave a few but obviously had a thing for naked footballers – seemed to want to let the Torquay players take out guys’ shirts off at every opportunity (noted he took G Moncur name after he took his shirt off after scoring… see me later young man!).

Redeemed himself in my eyes with the booking of their No 9 for needlessly shoulder-charging Kiernan into the Main Stand boards and booking another Torquay player when the same player squeezed through and was pulled out. My tame referee behind me said he seemed hesitant in what to blow up for and what not too. Fair enough…

Them: Very disappointing for potential promotion candidates. Though they seemed able to pass quite well it was a very passionless performance by them. As the headline alludes to I think the pressure really got to them yesterday. I cannot think of more than two chances they had.

The first was a JS/SB fuckup, probably more the former than the latter where he left a ball either thinking SB would come for it or thought he heard a call. Seb saved at point blank a shot right at him. Then second half, when 1-0 up a free header over the bar. Apart from that I am struggling. And so were they, build up to the last third and then no killer blow. Most disappointing for the 610 that came… a long way back last night.

Point to ponder: Has TB finally sussed out this division? Maybe. For yesterday the team seemed as complete as it has been. And not surprisingly it played the percentages. Only played tippy tappy at the back when no one was pressing otherwise it was a safe size 11 through the ball and makes them worry about it. That occurred to me when, during the first half a ball down the JS side of the pitch, chased by Luke Moore put enough pressure on their player to slice the clearance, Just like we have watched with our players all season.

Perhaps finally we are beginning to accept or realise that the success you get in this division is as much down to the mistakes of the opposition as any good play you do. You have to force the mistake to get the possession to score the goal, and just think of the number of times we have made a mistake or surrender position cheaply to then go and see the opposition score. Football really is a simple game.

Finally, as this will probably be my final submission this term [SW19 note: don't bet on it...], what of the players for next season? Well, on yesterday’s performance TB has a hard job. No one shown out as poor. But football lasts a season and a number of those playing yesterday have not performed well enough OVER THE SEASON to be certainties next year.

That to me is simply Brown, Moore S, Midson. That few are guaranteed. Of course we will have the likes of TB’s love child Sam still here, and I’d also keep Gwillim who I think has done just enough when he has played and then there are the ones for the future. But outside of that anything goes. But it seems the one thing not going is TB (unless he is pushed or he decides to step upstairs) and I don’t think he will be pushed.

But it is certain that if we do not improve he will go and how he improves and it is measured must be clear from the beginning. For example for me he has to hit the same target of points next year as he did this after 10 games. If not we have gone backwards and, given our poor second half of the season form we cannot allow that to happen since we have no certainty in ensuring we play better next year at this time than we have now. So planning is going to be key to the club and next season.

But I suspect this close season will be possibly even more exciting and surprising than last year’s was, which considering it was our first League season to come, will be quite something!

Three’s a crowd: Well it was over the magic 4K again which, given the fun and games with the shut/open scenarios for the KRE, meant 4171 was quite respectable for, at least as regards us, a dead game. One or two nice chants going on… “You’re going to the playoffs” made me smile and though they brought a drum and drummer I cannot say I really noticed it. Mind you given the KM acoustics perhaps that’s not surprising given it was in the JS and I am in the main stand.

Anything else? Whilst we have been wrapped up in our little world of survival in this division, the likes of Southend, Crawley, Torquay and soon to visit up Shrewsbury have been plying their trade at the top of the table. And so far I have been not too impressed with any of them. OK, didn’t go to Crawley and only going on hearsay but they weren’t the potent force they were when they came to KM earlier in the season. And after our Volunteers away day at Roots Hall I said I couldn’t see Southend going up. Likewise Torquay. Which leaves the question who?

Well, Swindon are now promoted and I cannot see Shrewsbury not getting the one point they need. Crawley look likely too and must now be favourites for the 3rd promotion slot. Which leaves us with the likes of Crewe, Cheltenham and Oxford as the other potential contenders?

Of them, the in form team must be Crewe and given their performance here, I can see them perhaps sneaking in all the way. Though Cheltenham look like they are getting their act back together just in time. Oxford just keeps stuttering. As momentum is the main criteria I think for play off success my guess will be Crewe make it through. We will have to wait and see…

In a nutshell: Que sera sera, what might have been….

---

I don’t think there’s really too much more to say – in what has been an, ahem, “trying” season these kind of games have been very few and far between, so you can’t blame anyone basking in it this morning.

Makes you wonder why we couldn’t have done it earlier in the campaign? I’m sure our collective nerves would have been better if we’d done it at times in December and February. If we had, we wouldn’t even have been needing to have the kind of discussions about personnel and management we have done.

But we haven’t, and that’s what makes football such a confusing game – as soon as you think you’ve got the answers, the Footballing Gods go and changes the questions.

I suspect that many who played yesterday won’t be here next season, and are simply playing out in much the same way as you always put in effort at school when you knew the summer holidays were around the corner. I couldn’t help but notice last night how gushing some have been about Jamie Stuart for example – you know, the same Jamie Stuart who earlier in the season was the lumbering bully who seemed to get picked just because.

Is this a good end-of-season feeling? Absolutely. Will it change the increased professionalism we really need to undertake in the summer? Absolutely not. This is but one rare game of glee, and a contest you could add to the others of this ilk this season. You may even be able to use your other hand in counting them.

So why did it go right yesterday? Lack of pressure on us? Immense pressure on Torquay? Those there can answer that themselves, but it does seem we play better when there’s no pressure on us (in a way, there wasn’t that much on us at Eastlands), and we always seem to make life difficult for ourselves when we don’t need to.

Remember, had we done what we ought to have done and secured safety around the Hereford-Plymouth-Daggers Axis Of Shitness period, we would have done better against Oxford and Brizzle Rovers. And we wouldn’t be reflecting on yesterday and wondering why we didn’t do it more often.

Playing like this is all very well in an end-of-season jolly, but we will need to do it against the Northamptons and Accringtons if we’re to ensure 50 points are reached by February and not April in future seasons. Again, dare I suggest that if anything, yesterday simply highlights how much more we need to do?

Still, that’s for the summer and beyond, which thankfully isn’t too far away. At least it shows that on occasions the squad can do it. Perhaps we ought to play Torquay every week…

It’s taken at least a month and about ten games longer than it should have done, but after looking at the League table it may well have finally happened.

We are safe.

OK, there’s always a “but” here – no doubt some team in this division will suddenly find their biscuit tin is empty and go into liquidation. And you could bet Jason Prior’s BUPA bill that it will be somebody who only we in the bottom eight beat home and away. Either that or else we find out that we signed Kieran Djilali without ticking the right box…

Assuming none of that happens, we can finally relax and become demob happy. While most of us would have been happy with 17th this season, we’ve definitely had our eyes opened this campaign. And not just through having something large and blunt shoved 45 degrees anally up us.

Let’s face it – we got found out big time this season. Squad wise, tactic wise and club wise too. Which puts a nail in the lie that the top eight clubs of the Conference could replace the bottom eight in L2 – they can’t. We proved it. Perhaps top three in a good year, but the deadwood of L2 has been flushed to the fifth tier of English football.

Before your editor lost the will to live, SW19 tried working out how we would have been if the post-Eastlands/being-in-the-Football-League bounce hadn’t happened. I only bothered to compare it with Barnet, Macc and Hereford, and I’ve doubtless got a sum or two wrong, but if you took away the results up until October 15th (when we beat Morecambe to go third), this is how these teams would look at the moment:

Hereford – 30 points
Barnet – 28 points
AFCW – 25 points
Macclesfield – 19 points

Sure somebody with more patience can work out the stats for the likes of Daggers and Plymouth, but if these are the worst four post Oct-15th then it proves how much we slumped.

We were very, very lucky this season. We stayed up but that’s all we did. We won’t be so fortunate next time round without some serious rethinking, and even with the reason (excuse?) of a tighter budget there is no justification for half of what we saw this season being repeated.

In other words, it’s time for AFC Wimbledon to grow up.

Still, that’s for the summer. It’s somewhat poignant that the point we got to guarantee Carling Cup football next season was at Crawley. Am I right in assuming this is the first time we’ve come away from there without a loss? Ever? Hell, we even lost in a PSF there after being 3-0 up…

[UPDATE: I forgot about the FAC game in our first Conference season where it went to a replay at KM, where there remains some "debate" to this day over the crowd...]

It was the first game since their attention seeking ex-manager waddled off to Yorkshire, and by the sounds of it we made plenty of reminders about it. The highlights on the BBC made it look quite even, though according to those there (hello Mr Bassey) we were on the back foot for much if not most of the time.

Sammy Moore’s strike was good, but needless to say there was nobody within 15 miles of their goalscorer. While I could do with the break anyway, I’ll be glad when the season ends so I don’t have to write the same shit about our defence for three months.

The big talking point was Prior’s injury, and one suspects he may end up being a Ross Montague type figure – we’ll never know what he can be capable of because he spent too much time on the injury table to get into the swing of things. His recovery is key here, but if it really is a double leg break then it could be a bit nasty for him.

Those there (hello Mr Bassey, again) suggested there was a fair bit of intent. Having seen it on the highlights, it seemed like a tackle from a brainless cock more than anything – his reaction suggested that he didn’t really comprehend what he did. That’s small comfort for Prior, of course, and it makes the shopping list in the summer a bit longer.

Seems like the hosts were their usual selves, with their PA guy being petty at our expense. Then again, didn’t we do a “suitable” playlist at the reverse fixture? While Crawley’s heart beats non-league, and they’ll always be Woking with money, we have our moments of immaturity too.

It looked a decent turnout our end, although it would have been even more had people not had an aversion to going there – quite a few “I’m not putting money in their pocket” type comments beforehand, although it does illustrate that even with our run of form, and with lack of motivation for going to Sussex, we still have a turnout that many teams in this division would love.

The novelty will wear off in time, but this was the first real test of if we’d turn up to an unpopular if familiar venue. We passed it.

Anyway, we could scupper their promotion push if Torquay and Shrewsbury do us over, so we just approach those games in the same way as the others. It does seem that the general distaste for Crawley is still there post-Evans, and they’d be happy to put up with them at least twice more next season if Project Promotion gets scuppered.

One wonders how long Steve Coppell will be there, or if he is how much of that squad he can change. At least if we do make a bid for any of their players in the summer we won’t get turned down out of spite now.

And now we’re safe, we can also start looking at next season’s opponents. It’s a welcome (?) return to Fleetwood, so that’s a fair few B&Bs in Blackpool booked. Hopefully they’ve got the trams running there this time. One wonders how they’ll do, but as they’re probably going to splash the cash they can get away with it.

If nothing else though, at least we can remind them of the playoff semis.

Speaking of the Conference playoffs, if there’s any justice Wrexham will be celebrating at Wembley like we did at Eastlands. I really don’t envy any team in them. As we know ourselves, to go up takes having the right squad at the right time with the right form. I don’t miss those days, and I never EVER want to be in that division again.

Providing the ticket prices aren’t last year’s uber-rip off, your editor may be tempted to patronise (in both senses of the word) the Conference playoff final. Even if it’s only to see whether the Blue Square adverts are still as tawdry as ever. It would certainly be nice to walk away from Wembley knowing that for me, the result doesn’t really matter beyond planning away travel.

People may argue that there’s a call for a third promotion/relegation spot. I happen to think they’ve got it right as it is – as said earlier, there is a much bigger gap between the Conf and L2 than people in non-league think. The teams that would normally have kept even this AFCW side in comfortable mid-table in previous seasons are in the BSP these days (and makes TB’s pre-season “deadwood” comment even more clueless).

The likes of Kiddy, Southport and even York would probably struggle if they go up, at least without serious rebuilding. Come to think of it, Wrexham and Mansfield need to as well. And as for Luton…. With that in mind, letting a third Conf team up isn’t really going to improve L2 these days. The teams down there can go through anguish for a few more seasons yet.

Mind you, your editor thinks that they should bring back one-up-one-down. That is, if we can’t have re-election again.

As for L1, some intriguing teams there. Though I’d like to somehow see Chesterfield get out of it and Orient/Wycombe to go down. Nothing against those two sides at all, but there’s a possibility they’d be evening games for us, which will please your editor immensely.

Rochdale? A nice trip to the North West, and no doubt there’ll be plenty of metaphorical (and literal) 69ing between the DT and the Exeter City trust next season. What it does highlight though that if the gap between the Conf and L2 is a big one, it’s a small step compared to the one between L2 and L1. Both Wycombe and Chesterfield went up automatically last season, and you wonder what will happen to Stevenage once the Westley effect finally subsides.

While we’ve yet to become a bona fide Football League club in the AFCW era, it does show what you really have to do to push ever upwards, and we’ll get a few more reminders of that in 2012/13.

But at least we have League football next season…

Wall planners, eh? What would we do without them? Apart from use a diary, of course. Got to say that gazing at the one here at SW19 Towers, it’s quite eyebrow raising to think that after tomorrow, we will just have three games of the season left.

And quite simply, your editor will be glad to see the back of this campaign.

I get the impression I’m not the only one, either. Last Monday, when Southend went ahead, we seemed to just stare at our watches and waited for the full time whistle to go. Thankfully, we got the extra few points that barring a miracle should keep us up now. Although I’m not sure whether that shows how fortunate we’ve been or how truly shit the teams still below us are…

It’s funny how we were all so full of life just before Bristol Rovers at home. This season was supposed to be an adventure, wasn’t it? Well, it certainly has provided its moments, but it was supposed to be a relaxing one, not tearing up too many trees but still comfortable enough to survive in before the real rebuilding work started in the summer.

This season wasn’t supposed to be as difficult, or as soul grinding as it’s proven to be.

That’s not a bad thing of course, providing the club properly learns from it and starts to remedy that properly in the summer. And apologies for using “properly” twice in that sentence, but it’s a term that will need to be in the back of the minds of the boardroom when it starts planning for the next campaign.

And the need to get it right has become even more apparent with last week’s bombshell (?) that the ex-JS is going to need redoing this time next year. Not before time though, I know it’s not “our” ground but it’s still embarrassing to put away fans in something that wasn’t even suitable for the Conference South. How the hell did they build a (relatively) new ground with such lousy banking?

The budget is likely to be tighter as a result, and we need even more pragmatism than before – there’s no room for sentiment next season, but there’s just as little room for idealism.

Even if TB does stick around, it is mandatory that we will need at least two full time assistants. And not the bailiff and the cab driver either, but instead two assistants who know a lot more about what the Football League is really about than most of AFCW put together. That would be around the cost of 2 players, but it would be a step in the right direction.

While we’ve almost secured survival, it’s pretty clear our squad has gone backwards – even with Billy Knott and Pim’s cameo. Your editor watched Fleetwood v Wrexham this week (and no, I didn’t pay for Prem Sports), and our current side probably wouldn’t have got in the Conference playoffs this season. Which considering much of the current squad was indeed there for that glorious run last season is pretty sobering.

It proved that it was a squad that got promoted from being a unit, and with an immense self belief that conquered better opponents in Luton. Now? We look painfully short on confidence, and it shows. For many, it’s been a step too far and a Learning Curve™ too steep.

The stats don’t lie.

Still, as we await the post-season backslapping fallout we have the little matter of Crawley tomorrow. Your editor won’t be there tomorrow (cue Simon Bassey) as I’m at Millwall, but it has suddenly become less of a bait-fest for some reason. Can’t think why.

Have to admit though, it was a bit of a shock to hear that Steve Evans had waddled up to Rotherham almost within a blink of an eye. Rumours of boardroom shenanigans there, and he reportedly applied for the Northampton job when it came up. Not to mention this video which is apparently genuine.

Personally, I could never quite get into the whole Steve Evans circus, because that’s exactly what it was. He was very good at attention seeking, and he usually got it. Especially from our lot. And to be blunt here, he usually got one over on us. In reality, he was extremely tedious and his histronics hid the fact that without the cash he wasn’t that good as a manager.

Yes, we will probably get to face him next season, but with due respect to Crawley and Boston, Rotherham are a bigger club who won’t tolerate narcissism. Like Westley at PNE (and quite possibly TB with us this season), it might be a step too far for him. Not that anyone is going to cry if he does fall flat…

Tomorrow, we come up against the far classier, far more measured Steve “don’t call me Charles” Coppell. Somebody who might actually take Crawley up, and maybe win them a few friends in the process. People might think that we now stand a better chance of getting a result, it’s quite possible it’s become harder – even with their suspensions.

It would be indicative of how this season has become when one considers we’ve lost our big major motivational factor tomorrow. I know that TB has said (or has had written for him) the usual bon mots about winning tomorrow for the fans on the OS. We’ve all heard that before. But had Evans been there tomorrow, both squad and especially supporters would have been a helluva lot more fired up for it than they are now.

One cannot deny that getting a good result and/or performance tomorrow will be a nice little break. It will certainly not alter the fundamental issues we face in the summer, but if this season is dragging on another month we might as well get a twinge of excitement. Christ, we don’t even get the faux-moral outrage from seeing one of our players sent off these days, which means we can’t even use that excuse for another crap result.

But imagine us getting riled up tomorrow and somebody like Sam Hatton finally breaking away from his introverted self and decided to chin the opposition #7. It would be something to joke about during the summer, anyway. Perhaps it may yet happen?

And perhaps that’s what we’ve really been missing this campaign. Some fight, and literally too. We’ve learnt many things about the Football League, but it’s suddenly dawned on me – we’re too nice. We (collectively) want to be the Noble Gentlemen, the old fashioned stiff-upper-lip. It’s almost as though we’d rather go down as long as we’re considered honourable decent people and not a bunch of ruffians.

Fuck that. I want to be a Football League club forever and want us to be a bit more cuntish next season.

Not neanderthal cuntish, but more subtle than that. Clever cuntishness, not the naive-but-honest approach that other sides have exploited too often this season. Other sides don’t care about the halo above our heads, and how “noble” we are. We might think we’re being righteous, they just think we’re three easy points.

Go into, say, tomorrow with a bit of subtle snideness and we would stand a better chance of getting something that we do at the moment. When places like this mention about doing things “properly” (that word again), it’s not just things like tactics that suit the division, or full time coaches, but little bits of gamesmanship and knowing how to play the ref. Something we haven’t shown this season and to be honest I don’t think we’ll see much of next campaign too.

Is it wrong to think that? Probably. But what you wouldn’t have given for one of our players to have been the snide cunt who “sorted out” Ryan Hall last Monday…

Oh dear, I feel obliged to write something about losing 2-0 to Southend. This is really going to be a pretty short and lackluster report – after all, that will mirror the team…

- No shots on target says it all, really.

- To be fair, we didn’t do that badly in the first half. And actually managed to carry it on for a little while in the second half. Of course, they scored and our heads just dropped.

It was as though we came with a gameplan for it to be 0-0, it failed and we were struggling around for fresh ideas and inspiration after that. I’m reliably informed that Swindon away was very similar to today. Mind you, after the game at the County Ground, things on the transfer front kicked into life a bit…

- Got speaking to a friendly Southend fan after the game (a mate of Kevin Borras, former OS report scribe and more importantly the guy who got your editor to and from Eastlands), and what he said may well sum up our problems:

We can only play for seventy minutes.

He’s absolutely right, of course, and it does suggest that if you want to find out how you really are, ask somebody who isn’t attached to AFCW. Question is, why can we only play for a limited time? While we think of answers, one can go down the list of cup games involving lower division sides throughout the year, where the higher placed side always comes through in the end because the lower placed side can’t sustain it.

Mind you, we should be able to be above that. How often were we told in the Conf that staying in L2 would be a piece of piss for any semi-decent Conf side?

- There was no Jack Midson. At least, not starting. Maybe the rumours about him going to Swindon (or Colchester) for £250k are true after all. He came on for Prior and we managed to look even less effective as a result.

So, should we play him if his mind is clearly elsewhere? Or if he and our manager really aren’t quite seeing eye-to-eye now? We could still do with his goals, but if he’s on his way out we could do without him being injured. It would undeniably be a shame for his time with us to go out in such a way, but it’s nothing you weren’t used to in the WFC era.

Still, it was Prior and Harrison up front. Prior still looks short of match sharpness, and looks like he needs a decent pre-season under him. Harrison? He ran about a bit more than usual, but even my dead nan could. Is this going to be our new partnership next season? Don’t worry, there’s still time to cancel your season ticket.

- I have to say, I thought that Southend could have been there for the taking a bit, Bradford beat them 2-0 not so long ago. Plenty of anti Ryan Hall chants. Bet he doesn’t even know why (hint: it was three years ago today, you little cunt). And it seems the locals didn’t like us suggesting they were West Ham fans.

Fair play to their rather, ahem, portly physio who looked like he enjoyed the local produce a bit too much. And took it in good humour.

- Unsure about that novelty condom as a mascot. Oh, it was a shrimp. Not to mention Elvis The Eel – presumably named because the guy inside it was found on a toilet in a comatose state.

By the way, what is it with clubs and cheerleaders? Sorry, dance ensembles. We have some at KM, although true to form they are trying to sell something Southend had some (presumably legal) dancers too, suitably dressed up as your typical Essex bird as well. Lest we forget the Swift Chicks from back in the day at Heybridge.

Oh, and if these routines are to give a couple of boardroom members of these clubs a bit of half time perving, methinks the nonce squad should be heading towards Accrington’s ground next game…

- Speaking of Essex, remember when we used to play there almost every other week? Passing roadsigns for Chelmsford felt like a step back in time, and one I don’t want to repeat in a hurry. Even if the weather was similar to such “joyous” occasions.

Once again, as these sort of reminders illustrate – we’ve come a hell of a long way since those days. Let’s keep them a distant memory.

- Finally, 811 of us wasn’t too bad, although you have to wonder if we could (or would) have taken even more had the weather and trains (and team) been more favourable.

It did seem one big cock-up though. Signs outside telling people to sit in their designated seats, then stewards telling people they could sit anywhere. Then the rather strange sight of the empty block next to us being opened up and it getting filled in under 5 minutes. Did they really expect less than 400?

Perhaps it’s just as well we took less than 900, as I’m not sure if they would have coped. Oh, and those barcode scanners on tickets – no doubt some bright spark decided that it would make Roots Hall look like the Emirates. Just think that the money used on something as pointless as Kieran Djilali could have been spent elsewhere. Like bleach in the toilets. Christ, they made KM’s bogs look habitable…

I don’t know whether it had as much to do with half-an-eye on the end of the season, but Mickey Murphy 1 Windy Miller 2 does give the impression we can’t wait until after the Shrewsbury game.

You should know the drill by now. We go behind, come back, actually look good for about 20-25 minutes then we get kneed in the gonads. I’m sure I saw this sort of thing as far back as, ooh, Bristol Rovers at home…

This was the first game since Pim’s time with us was up (OK, I know he could have played if he hadn’t broken his toe) and our back line looked worse as a result. I think we can safely say we won’t see Brett Johnson next season, although apparently he went off injured. Whether it was a genuine one or a “convenient” one is unclear. I doubt if Djilali went off injured though, except maybe for a badly bruised ego.

To be fair, there was a period when we scored when we went a bit more at them, put the crosses in a bit more and unsettled them a bit. And yes, for that spell we could have won it. But yet again, it’s only for a 20 minute spell, and I guess today we showed why we’re looking nearer the bottom teams than the top.

You don’t deserve to win games if you constantly only play for less than a half at a time.

I’m not saying you can’t get away with it a couple of times a season, it’s got us unlikely points at Crewe and Gillingham. But it’s an approach that will lose you more games than win, and we’ve now had 20 losses in this division this season. That’s not coincidence or just bad luck.

We’ve got away with it this season, although needless to say we won’t next campaign. Today had a bit of end-of-season feel, but it also felt a little bit like the end of the road in many instances. Come the middle of summer, it might be a good idea to take out the list of who was playing today, and how many of them will be looking for other clubs for 2012/13.

How deep that will go remains to be seen, and whether it’s just playing squad too (and you should know SW19′s thoughts on that). But today was just a reminder that things do need to be done in the summer. And perhaps a lot more than we first think.

I mention this rather than the game as I don’t know if there’s much point in analysing what we do (or don’t do). It hasn’t altered that much this season, which rather tells its own story, and there’s only so many times you can say how poor we were in the first half and we were better in the second for a time.

It’s not like we’ll see any radical changes now – hell, in his post match interview TB has said that he’s bringing back Jamie Stuart on Monday – and we really are in limp-over-the-finishing-line now. I’m not sure if Operation Survival is properly completed, mathematically we certainly aren’t safe but results elsewhere are bailing us out.

So instead…

Plus points: We scored. Decent enough 20 minute spell in second half.

Minus points: We lost. First half. Same old same old. Looking nowhere near as good without Pim.

The referee’s a…: *sucks teeth and sighs*

Them: Like Accrington, another team who aren’t quite the best in the division but know what to do and how to win these sort of games. Got immensely lucky with their first goal, but you’d have to be churlish to say that they weren’t the better team at that stage. Even if they could have been better up front.

It’s hard to believe that they were some of our last opponents in the WFC era, in the Championship. Hell, I remember this game as though it was yesterday. Still, decent turnout from them today, and I expect we’ll see them again next season.

Point to ponder: Whither Jack Turner? To be fair to him, he recovered well from that awful howler and put in a couple of good blocks later on. He certainly didn’t look any more suspect than Seb Brown has been recently, and despite him coming across as a bit of a whiner on Twatter he clearly has some strength of character in him.

Which maybe suggests something that may be considered a bit taboo during the summer – if we get a decent offer for him, perhaps we ought to let Seb go in the summer to a side like Brighton? And get an experienced keeper in who knows how to marshall the defence better? There are enough keepers sitting week in, week out on sub benches in L1 and even the Championship who would come to us…

As somebody said to me today, Seb is more likely to develop getting a couple of years in the second string of a Championship club than by playing regularly with us. Currently, he has to learn on the job, and when he makes mistakes that a more experienced keeper wouldn’t make we certainly know about it.

Yes, it would be a shame for him to leave, but would we be worse off? Indeed, would he? As for Turner, whatever happens he will be an understudy here for a good couple more seasons. He played well enough today, and you’d still put him in JPT games, but we could afford to have him on the bench. And besides, who knows what he could learn from a more experienced pro…

Truth is stranger than fiction: (1) The Wombelles doing that Zomba (?) fitness thingy at half time. Including one knackered Tintin inside the mascot uniform. To be fair, they all moved better than the team did in the first 45 minutes. (2) Phillo announcing 4 minutes of injury time, before quickly changing it to 3. Presumably it was aimed at the ref… (3) Very quiet at the game at times, almost to the point where you could hear a pin drop. Perhaps people really do want this season out of the way now? The post-game vibe was a weary one, certainly.

Anything else? Looking at the League table makes me glad we somehow managed to get an additional five points when we did. Looks like us beating Burton, drawing at Crewe and getting a result at Shrewsbury has probably kept us up. Or at least made these results like today a bit more tolerable.

But it’s shocked me at how difficult getting this magical 50 point watermark has proven to be. We could (and should) have secured it as far back as early March, and yet it’s now Easter and we’ve not even crawled just past it. Indeed, it may be possible that we even fall short of it.

Was it too high a target set? Or have we been so inept at times that it just seems like it? If you “only” win a third of your games per season and draw another third, you still get 60 odd points comfortably. That would put you in the same category as Aldershot and today’s opponents, and makes your end-of-season quite sedate and comfortable.

As said earlier, we’ve now lost 20 games in the League, and it’s possible that we could get three more which will mean we would have lost exactly half our games this season. You can get away with that stat this time around, but you won’t next campaign.

And in a season that has taught us more in eight months than perhaps the previous nine years, that may be the most pointed lesson of them all. To be even mid-table mediocrity requires a bit – OK, a lot – more than we offered this season. There was a lot of naievity shown this campaign in various aspects of our approach, but if they get repeated next season then it’s down to negligence and incompetence.

I won’t go on about the management team, but Ricky Wellard being simply “okay” for large parts of the game isn’t good enough these days. Neither is Sam Hatton being “all right” providing he doesn’t keep standing off players, or Chris Bush doing “okay” until one predictable mistake.

For all the talk about certain individuals being “given time”, in this standard of football you don’t get that much time. Especially if by getting it wrong puts you where Hereford or Macclesfield are right now.

If anyone was in any doubt about it before today, we need to do a LOT of thinking between now and the close season, and the day after Shrewsbury the serious hard work starts. The club is making a pointed step by redeveloping the KRE, and this time next year it will be forced to do something to the ex-JS. It shouldn’t be the last of the big changes…

So, was it worth it? *snorts*

In a nutshell: Guess Jesus had the right idea today…

And so the hope of silverware flies off into the distance for another season…

To be honest, there was nothing last night in the LSC that you wouldn’t have predicted from the last few years of watching these sort of games. A mixture of first team fringers and promising youngsters, together with a couple who you haven’t seen before and probably won’t see again.

And of course, a loss at the end of it.

OK, we’ve managed to avoid (?) the possibility of playing Ks at their place in the final, although that would have been a nice end-of-season treat for us. But yet again, one walks away from these Senior Cup games wondering what our approach to them actually is.

Last night saw the usual mix of Jack Turner in goal, Brendan Kiernan, Brett Johnson, Jason Prior and Kieran Djilali, plus the likes of Theophanous. They are – or should be – good enough to get through to the final, but it just seemed like a collection of individuals who only got introduced to each other before kickoff.

Which to be fair is probably what happened.

True, things might have been different had Brendan K scored rather than hit the post, but as the game goes on you wonder what the point really is. The likes of Turner, Brendan K and Theo don’t really get a chance to show what they can do, while the first teamers never go anywhere remotely like full pelt

BJ seems to be going through the motions and see this season out now (rumours abound that he’s currently doing the knowledge, so maybe he could jobshare coaching duties with Bassey next season?). Prior? I dunno, coming back from injury like he has isn’t going to make him conquer all upon his return. You do start wondering about his future already if he keeps getting injured and not getting a sufficient run of games…

Speaking of predicting the future – Kieran Djilali. It comes to something when all you remember from him last night was having a “discussion” with Marcus Gayle after getting subbed. Not sure how true it was about him allegedly trying to headbutt MG, but TB was seen speaking to him on the pitch afterwards.

Let’s face it, we won’t miss Djilali. The kid has talent, but the stuff between the ears and his big mouth will push him towards the non-league graveyard in a season or two. When your manager “throws down the gauntlet” to you, and all you offer is your version of David Haye vs Dereck Chisora, be prepared to do your future interviews with the NLP…

The wider question is what we now do with regard to Senior Cups. We are obliged to be in them, we would get fined if we don’t, but in theory they should be a useful tournament for us. That they never seem to be says more about the gap between the first team and the squads below it, and how we’ve never seemed to bridge that gap.

Actually, I suppose I lie – they are useful because it says a lot about the chasm between the first XI and the others. Most if not all of the non-recognisable names from last night aren’t going to be anywhere near League football, although if one watches reserve football from higher up that’s often the case anyway. If one is feeling snarky, one could say a couple of players you’ve heard of could come into that category as well.

At various times, we collectively talk about what needs to be done in the summer, to ensure we don’t repeat the mistakes of this campaign. Usually it’s about the first team, but it’s worth keeping half-an-eye out for what happens underneath it. What occurs won’t get the column inches on the OS, but will be an important next step.

Only this week, the club were advertising for u14s for our new Centre of Excellence, which is great. But what do we do when they start reaching 17 or 18? Our second string is currently in the Suburban League Premier Division A, and I really can’t see that’s going to help us if we’re in it next season. Whatever is on offer to us that puts us at a much higher standard should be taken with both hands. It wouldn’t matter so much if we then got tonked 5-0 every week, because it would then show what calibre of youngsters we need to start cultivating…

I guess we’ll see what happens in the summer, which sounds like a standard phrase right now. One thing is certain, we won’t be signing Pim, which looks like the rumours he was on a lot of money with us were true after all. We’re also trying to get in Billy Knott and George Moncur next season, although in the case of the former you have to presume a Championship side may come calling first.

And then there’s Rotherham on Good Friday. That’s Friday, and not Saturday as a fair few of our fans are saying Mind you, at least it gives our defence a chance of turning up on the right day for once…