But at this stage of the season, it needs to be three….
I don’t know whether the players were on a collective guilt trip when they helped pay for the coach travel to Shrewsbury yesterday, but it’s typical of us that such a gesture is rewarded with shite again.
Yes, we’ve got a draw away from home without conceding a goal, and in ordinary times this would be considered a decent result.
However, we need wins. Lots of them.
By all accounts, only one side was likely to get a goal – and it wasn’t going to be us. Comments of “disjointed”, “very poor performance” and “apathetic attitude” aren’t what you want to hear from a side that is bottom.
But it’s those very descriptions that is making our time in L2 next season become ever more likely.
Our fate is likely to be unofficially sealed after we play Peterborough on Tuesday week. Home form is vital for a club’s survival chances, and like so much else at AFCW it’s deserted us at the time we need it most.
Effectively, we need to win all our home games from now on. A tall order in itself at the best of times, but in a season where we’ve faced Fleetwood and Burton in “must win” games and fucked both up, it’s not really looking likely.
In his post-game interview, Walter said that there’s still a quarter of the season to go and that – in a slightly worrying impression of our previous manager – said he’s not interested in the results of other teams.
He’s not going to say we’re doomed (until it gets mathematically confirmed, presumably), although deep down he must look at games like yesterday and is just counting down the days when he can get the meat cleaver out.
As somebody put it to your editor last night – this squad is poison.
It’s quite interesting reading comments since yesterday, because it’s pretty much the first post-mortems already. OK, there’s been a few anti-WD kneejerks, but more sensible heads have prevailed since then.
There is a long, LONG list of people at this club who need axing in the summer. Wally Downes and Glyn Hodges are very near the bottom, as they should be.
With that in mind, it could make it an “interesting” last few games of the season. After all, this is a team that is basically spent, many of whom have no future at the club after the last game of the season, and who have been stung by fan comments at games.
But then, all the while there’s a chance of survival, we need to aim towards it.
Imagine getting a win against Donny next Saturday? Then following it up with victory over Peterborough? Look, just stick with me here on this.
Within the course of a few days, the narrative changes again. Just as it did when we beat both Walsall and Rochdale, albeit briefly.
The $1m question remains though – how the hell do we get this rabble to do that? Walter has wrung enough out of them as it is, and as yesterday suggested there’s still too much hiding when we need to step up.
We need to win against Donny and Posh, but we all know the players will bottle at least one of them.
The trouble is, that’s how this season has panned out. The soul-destroying grind that AFCW life became under our previous manager has thankfully long gone. Even defeats don’t seem nearly as bad to take now.
But you expect this spineless lot to shit the bed. The lack of characters has become a running theme this season, but it’s times like yesterday (and Charlton last week) where that really hits you between the eyes.
And while nobody wants to go down – will you be massively upset when/if we do?
The good news is that there’s a sense of renewal in the air, at least that’s what the smoke signals coming from the football side of things suggest. It needs more than that, of course, but once the first big change happens, the rest follows quite quickly.
Which is why W&G coming in may be more massive than first thought, and not just because they replaced their “unsackable” predecessor.
AFCW is now ripe for a big overhaul, the biggest seen for some time – even if we do pull off the greatest of great escapes. It’s just a shame we’ve got to wait two more months for the dam to start breaking…