Ah, planet Earth. Meet AFC Wimbledon.
First things first – this will be the last update until about the 5th November, as I’m going stateside for the umpteenth time. Admittedly, you probably won’t notice much difference…
Second things second, that does give me time to do some sort of update on Wycombe. Here’s Tudor with the length of match report I wish I could do every time:
A League 2 lesson:
How to go from worst to first?
Con the ref, cheat, dive.
It does seem that the proverbial man in the middle won’t be receiving Christmas cards from any of our lot this year. Maybe one or two with a freshly laid turd in it, or some anthrax given one or two comments afterwards.
But there was something a bit predictable about this defeat. Whether it was acting a bit cocky after beating Bury, or whether it was just the proverbial shit day at the office, I’m glad we’ve got Plymouth tomorrow to get back on track.
Apparently, we made a lot of noise, and they didn’t. Obviously Coventry London Wasps attendees are now camping out to watch the “wendyball” (sic) now they’re top.
Mind you, the official turnout from us was still under a thousand, even if not by too many, and I’ve always been puzzled by why we can never take the full four figures there.
Maybe the rest get there, discover the John Lewis near the park-and-ride and fail to come out for four hours?
I saw the goals on SSN yesterday, and not for the first time our defence was doing its impression of Moses having a paddle in the Red Sea. NA pretty much admitted that afterwards, and at least most teams won’t be able to take advantage of that as much as Wycombe did.
Actually, we’re thankful that most teams aren’t good enough to nobble AA and Tubbs like the league leaders did (and did so a helluva lot better than Bury). Speaking of Wycombe, how come they’ve got so good again all of a sudden? They were one of the worst teams I’ve seen for the past couple of years, and they shed a lot of players in the summer too.
GA.com was always a favourite in the WFC era, even if he spent most of it injured, and your editor will never forget his goals at Newcastle. Mind you, I’ll also never forget the snotty attitude of their local coppers…
Still, we move on. And Plymouth tomorrow and Tranmere on your editor’s birthday are good teams to start winning again. Especially the latter, which will prove if we really are going to improve this season.
See, it’s all very well beating the teams at the top, but you can’t rely on that. We’ve struggled in recent seasons partly because of that very weird trait of falling flat against every struggler, and chances are we’ll be nearer the bottom than the top – yet a-fucking-gain – if we don’t start gubbing the likes of Tranmere.
If anything, the excuses for struggling against the strugglers have finally run out. We can beat Burton, Morecambe and Bury, so there is absolutely no reason not to get at least three points this next week. At least, not if your attitude is correct.
Sometimes, and I think this was the case on Saturday, we go into games half-expecting we’ve won them already. We did against Hartlepool, to an extent Newport and the expectancy last Friday was always going to bite us on the arse.
If it’s only a setback, then fine. We can all cope with that. But we could easily find ourselves three defeats on the spin quicker than you know it by this time next week, and the post-Franchise vibe would have really fizzled out.
Hopefully it won’t come to that. We’ll have Danny Bulman back for a start tomorrow, and by all accounts we missed him. KSL and Pell returned to front line duty at Adams Park though, and didn’t stand out. Although perhaps the wrong game for both of them.
You have to wonder if some of the fringe players will be playing for their futures in the next couple of months. Given that we have Harrison and Beere knocking on the door, and given our manager would rather put youngsters in if he could, we’re obviously not struggling for replacements in some areas of the field.
The likes of KSL and Pell will get their opportunities, even if only as subs in some games, but they now need to properly show they’ll be more than impact subs. Chris Arthur is at Woking because he didn’t make that step up, and if we’re looking to trim the wage bill for January, there are some obvious candidates…
Speaking of the Cards, Worner is still at Kingfield. This Saturday could give us the first hint of his future with us, because Woking are hosting Boreham Wood in the FAC and it depends whether we want him cup-tied.
OK, goalies are a bit different, insofar as all the while Shea is doing OK Worner won’t get much of a look-in. So it makes sense for him to get regular playing time.
You have to wonder what NA really thinks of last season’s #1. After all, he bought Shea in too, when he could have just brought in McDonnell. And lest we forget the reasons behind getting two keepers in during pre-season.
Maybe Worner’s issues with the A3 for the Coventry game marked his card with our manager as early as last November? It would be ironic if that Friday evening decided the fate of not only one keeper, but two.
Anyway, this time next week we’ll get to find out whether we get Franchise home or away in The World’s Greatest Cup Competition™. It’s all going to be a bit flash, with studio audiences and “going around the country”, which means it will be quite shit.
Of course, if they really want to bring back the tradition of the FAC draw, they ought to have it on Radio 2 at 11am, the sound of balls in velvet bag, and the hushed tones of “I’ve been given the signal from Lancaster Gate that they are now ready to draw the FA Cup”.
And they can always dig up Bert Millichip as well. Not that anyone would have noticed the difference when he was alive…