Well, your weekend isn’t about to be ruined by AFC Wimbledon…
In one sense, it’s a bit annoying we have another international weekend sans match, because today might have been a good day for football at Plough Lane.
That mid-November air, where the leaves are starting to turn, the temperature doesn’t know whether it’s still autumn or winter, and knowing you’ll be leaving SW17 in the dark.
Then I remembered we’d undoubtedly lose against Cheltenham, and I’m glad I’m not doing anything today after all.
I was earmarked to go to Sutton earlier this week, but I got chubbed for a ticket at GGL**, and I couldn’t be bothered enough to pretend I was a home fan for the evening.
Quite simply though, I’m glad I didn’t get in after all.
** – leaving aside how ludicrous it sounds to be locked out of a Papa John’s Trophy group stage match, Sutton are clearly having the same capacity issues as we had at KM…
Every manager has a particular game when things start to turn against him, and for Mark Robinson our game in SM1 might have been that.
Yeah, it was the Mario Pizza trophy, and in the grand scheme of things it doesn’t matter that much if we’re out or not.
But we needed a reaction from Guiseley (which was in turn where we needed a reaction from Cambridge) and we didn’t get that.
Against a Sutton side that wasn’t full strength either.
No wonder somebody had a bit of verbals with our coaching team after the full time whistle, presumably one of our own supporters.
Because it is shit right now, and we don’t look much closer to sorting it.
I have to admit, Tuesday was the first time I started to have doubts about Robbo, and I bet I’m not alone.
Especially when I made the mistake of reading some SW19 stuff from earlier this season, commentating about how much better we look now.
That was fatal.
Instead, I’m currently left with that feeling of deja vu, of what happened when the Glyn Hodges era started to nosedive.
That particular tenure went stale very quickly, and around this time of year too. Can MR avoid the same fate?
He’s got eight league games until the transfer window opens, when the decision makers may allow him as much as 50p to add three new senior players.
Until then, he’s got to get the mojo of this particular squad of players back.
Because that has nosedived as much as anything else right now, and the last three games have compounded that.
Lest we forget that we had a lengthy post-match meeting after we lost at the Abbey Stadium, where we responsed by labouring past a Conference North side and shit the bed at Sutton.
If there’s a time to radically re-work things, we need to be doing it right now. We’re heading for a relegation battle – again – if we don’t.
I hope that’s a big reason why there’s been no post-game OS Sutton reaction from anyone on the coaching staff.
At the time of me typing this out, there’s been, well, absolutely fuck all response.
I don’t particularly care for post-game video, but not fronting up after going out in such a fashion comes across poorly.
Remember when Ardley used to avoid pre-game interviews when it was going piles of toilet?
The good thing is, we still have plenty of time in 2021 alone to turn things around.
Slumps in form are inevitable, it’s how you pull out of them that’s the most important thing.
Today against Cheltenham might have been a good time to do that, but in truth I’d rather have this weekend off and aim for Pompey.
The next three games are very winnable, but we’re going to need to show a helluva lot more if we’re to do that.
Ironically, we could be facing the Robins in the FA Cup second round, if they overcome Gillingham next week.
That’s one of those ties that is equally winnable yet loseable too, as is any game against a fellow League One outfit.
It’s not a glamour tie, but how many Round Two fixtures are that anyway?
We could do with the money from a third round fixture, not that MR will see much of the cash earned from it.
But somehow, we might stand a better chance of getting through than if we’d drawn Buxton…