An away point and a clean sheet. But will that be enough?
Ordinarily, unless you’re team chasing promotion, a 0-0 draw on the road is a good result on any given day.
Us doing exactly that at Brizzle Rovers yesterday should be considered such, anyway.
But it’s hard not to look at the league table right now – if you want to – and think it’s an opportunity missed.
Granted, it’s not nice to see you’re the strongest team in L1 (as in, we are propping up the rest of the division).
We are bottom for a very good reason, and it’s our eunuch approach to attacking as much as defending.
Two goals in five games, isn’t it?
I haven’t got the willpower to check, but it’s been a big issue before this season as well, so we probably shouldn’t be surprised.
The good thing is that Ollie Palmer is going to play an ever-increasing role between now and the run-in.
Lest we forget, he scored 13 goals in L2 last season and even he should find the net a couple of times in L1.
But that’s for the thirteen ties still remaining. While Wigan becomes the latest Most Important Game Of The Season (TM), yesterday could have been worse.
Few were going into yesterday at the Gas exactly confident. We lost to Burton, and they gubbed t’Stanley the same evening.
And seeing other relegation strugglers finding the goal trail while we’re barely even scoring one sticks in the throat.
A lot.
But yesterday could have been better too, and maybe that’s going to be the approach until the end of the season?
By that, I mean making sure we’re still in the game with 20 minutes to go, then unleash our crack goalscoring weapons.
Of course, we could do something radical like putting them in from the off, and try and win the game a bit earlier…
To be fair, Robbo hinted at that in his OS interview, although he came across as a little bit defensive in some of the rest of it.
Is he already getting grief from our professional attention seekers, who wonder why we’re not top and winning every game 5-0?
If he was, perhaps he was exasperated by a brickbat or two?
Unless something goes very badly wrong in the relationship between AFCW and its Head Coach, MR is going to get time next season – regardless of where we finish.
The club is a bit (OK, a lot) wiser these days, and anyone with half a brain knows that we’re finally starting some medium-to-long-term planning.
Something we should have started way, way back, when the current Notts County manager was in charge.
I don’t think our current Head Coach deserves to be the first manager to have a relegation in the AFCW era, but very few would hold it against him if he was.
One thing I’d like to see MR do though is give Nik Tzanev more of a run out between now and May.
His praise of our lesser-spotted Kiwi hints he might be doing that, and perhaps Walker’s injury is a bit more than him just being hurt?
If Tzanev isn’t any better than our Reading loanee after all, then at least we can make the decision in the summer, when we’ve got some time to think.
But he got a lot of praise yesterday, and if he does likewise against Wigan on Tuesday, maybe we’ve saved ourselves a headache?
I know many want us to sign a keeper full time, and if they’re of the quality of Ramsdale or Joe Day then I can understand why.
But those two would come at a high price (and a Ramsdale-level keeper would be out of our range), so why not give our young shotstopper a chance?
We’re giving youngsters opportunities on the outfield side of things, after all, and it’s worth taking the risk with him.
Of course, I reserve the right to change my mind when he lets in a 90th minute clanger on Tuesday…