New Year, same old bollocks…
I won’t depress you any further with a “proper” SW19 report, even though I watched the entire game through a computer/TV screen.
Right now, at the time of writing, I just can’t help but think we’ll be playing in League Two next season.
It’s not that we actually played badly, for the most part. At times today, we looked OK. Not great, but OK.
Yet as sure as the sun will always set in a westerly direction, we will undo all the hard work with yet more bloopers at the worst possible time.
The excuse today will undoubtedly be Covid, but that’s a very convenient distraction.
Too convenient.
Our starting XI wasn’t that weakened, we were able to put on Chislett and Roscrow as you would expect us to do in a “normal” game.
We lost today because of the same old mental weaknesses, that makes any good play a waste of time.
Playing well doesn’t mean a thing when you’re guaranteed a clanger at least once during the game.
The stats don’t lie – one point in six games. And we deserve that stat.
Nobody should delude themselves that we’re not in a relegation battle now, even though some will do so.
We are fast looking like one of those sides who are freefalling, just don’t know – or are unwilling to – change enough to stop the plummet, and are then shocked to find themselves demoted at the end of the season.
Are we in denial? I don’t pay much attention to formations and tactics, as you well know, but if GH is continuing with the failed experiment that is 5-3-2, then he deserves to be the first manager in the AFCW era to relegate us.
I’m just hoping that today’s game is the step too far. Then again, I thought the same against Oxford on Boxing Day.
And unfortunately, I expect to be saying/writing exactly the same thing after Wigan on Wednesday.
This is probably what makes all this stick in the throat – the sheer predictability.
We could have got something out of today, and the mood would have been better if we had, but there was no point in hoping for a draw.
This lot will always let you down. They don’t seem to know any other way.
GH should carry a lot of the blame for sticking with a failed system for so long, but I’m hoping that this finally tips him over the edge and make that urgent change.
Formation? Personnel? Doesn’t matter. His job may not be on the line, but he must be put under pressure to sort it out.
Already, we’re finding ourselves facing the biggest game of our season so far on Wednesday.
This lot are a bunch of windowlickers, and we simply have to stop the hemorrhaging. Even a 0-0 draw would be something.
I hope I’m proved very wrong against the Latics, but you can almost write some of the match report for that already – and you wouldn’t be far off.
We’ve lost three on the spin, after the draw at Sunderland. Lose against Wigan, and even your editor’s maths skills can work out that will be four.
Without something – anything – to arrest that slump, it could genuinely be a horrific January, and that’s without the circus on the 30th to come.
I’m hoping for some hard thinking between now and Wednesday, then some even harder contemplation after that.
Thankfully, we are in a position to do something about it. If some of these players are shipped out this month, and new ones bought in, so be it.
It’s a results based business after all, and they’re not getting the results.
I fully expect Covid and the EFL’s, ahem, avant-garde approach to decision making being the reason we lost today.
It isn’t.
But I’m beyond fed up knowing what the real answer is, and judging by the post-game reaction everyone else is too.
It was supposed to be different in 2021, but it’s the same old shit really. And a marked difference to the optimism at the beginning of the campaign.
Mind you, at least we got to see Ollie Palmer score a goal…