Or not, as the case may be.
So, for the second Saturday in a row, the weather has beaten us. To be honest, I thought that it was going to be a tall order getting the Bradford game on because of the -4c predicted tonight. While the snow around SW19 Towers is disappearing quicker than [insert Peter Wankelmann joke here], the old scourge of ice beat us.
Not that your editor minds, as he was due to be at Palace v Doncaster instead (I’m now due at Crawley v Shots, so watch that get called off at 2pm). Even so, it’s still an annoyance – especially when you are still smarting over losing our last game.
Thankfully, it looks like Northampton on Tuesday will go ahead, so at least we can have Jason Euell for one more game. Though there’s something ironic in him being the big morale booster signing and yet not playing more than a half. Charlton may let us have him for another month, they may not, although one suspects we’d rather find out Billy Knott and George Moncur like it here…
It also might give TB a bit more thinking time over our defence – have to say, this was a pretty startling admission by him this week. Nothing we didn’t already know, but there does seem a bit of a penny dropping moment.
It’s all very well to say that the back line needs a kick up the arse, but who was it who failed to do much about it during the transfer window just gone? Hoyte’s on loan and C-Mac was effectively “our” player since September anyway, so there does seem to be a degree of neglect/afterthought about it.
Let’s face it, had Cheltenham and Bradford gone ahead, we would have failed to keep a clean sheet. In fact, you could probably wager that we would have gone behind in at least one of them. You pretty much expect it to happen Tuesday, so yet again pressure will go on our goalscorers to dig ourselves out of trouble – pressure we shouldn’t need to put on ourselves.
You can argue whether it’s down to squad members not making the step up, tactical ineptitude or something else entirely. At least if we stay up, we should have saved enough money with Seb Brown’s clean sheet bonuses to buy an entirely new back four come the summer.
Still, the enforced break should have given us a bit more energy, and we should be raring to go again at Sixfields. Looking at it, we’re going to be quite busy over the next few weeks, so don’t waste your spending money on beer just yet. Four games in a 12-day period is a challenging time, but a good run of form could almost see us reach that 50 point mark by the time we leave Gresty Road on the 25th.
The flip side of course is what happens if you hit a losing streak. We’re still not sure about whether Knott and Moncur will stay, and we’ll probably regress if they don’t. Let us hope these two postponed games don’t become pivotal. It still seems odd talking about what to do in the summer while there’s snow on the ground, but we really could make a big step towards that by the time we stop getting weather warnings for ice.
Finally, tomorrow was due to be the launch date of a new (printed) fanzine, Wise Men Say. You can download a PDF of the first edition for one of your English pounds though.
Early impressions? It looks nice, although I would like to have seen it in physical format. To be honest, I don’t really like saying much about first issues of new publications, as it takes a while to find a “voice” and consistency. And just as importantly, find its target readership.
Which is why I like it but I couldn’t quite get into it. If that makes any sense whatsoever. Tactics bore me, hence why I didn’t even bother to read the big interview with Mark Robinson and Nigel Higgs, and I don’t particularly find the machinations/politics of the DT interesting. Although I suspect I’m not really its intended audience on that. And the trophy cabinet feature really did wave a big flag with “filler” on it.
But I like the fact it shows promise, and once it starts getting into its literary groove it may well be something worth buying in future. We’re coming into “interesting” times at the club, and it’s periods like this when publications flourish.
Whether the days of fanzines generally are numbered thanks to the instantaneous nature of Twitter and the blogisphere is a debate for another day. Me, I think we should bring back Yidaho…