Oh football. How I have missed your ability to fully kick one squarely in the gonads.
So, welcome back competitive football. Welcome back to League One. And welcome back to having weekends ruined.
The worst thing about Premier League 1 CCL 0 is that this wasn’t even a gubbing by a far superior opposition.
I’d take it if we were under the cosh for the vast majority of the game, and only getting a 1-0 loss because they felt sorry for us.
But apart from one save by (the impressive) Bishop, it was down to Ryan Johnson to give Luton the win.
He must feel like utter shit this morning. I hope he is, like the rest of us, because I’d rather that than being all sanguine and all “let’s go for a beer”.
The funny thing is, the vast majority of us expected a bit of a gubbing last night, so losing shouldn’t quite be the surprise.
Certainly there was very little pre-match confidence. You just didn’t want it to be too much of a fisting, because that could destroy the season as soon as it starts.
I’m already kind-of looking forward to Lincoln next weekend, because we’ll have a week to sulk and we expect a reaction.
The game itself? Defensive wise, we (mostly) picked up again where we left off from Wombley.
We chased, harried, showed not a little skill in the middle of the park at times, and assuming it’s not a once-off we might be OK this season after all.
We clearly had to get to grips with the opposition being just that bit quicker, but we were able to step up to that.
There wasn’t much on offer from us up front, it has to be said, and more on that a bit later. Mind you, Luton weren’t much better.
But Smith looked decent in the middle of the park, Hippo looked like he belongs at L1 level. And we might have lost Ninetowns, but Asiimwe is almost reminiscent of the great man himself.
There was enough there to be confident about, and you didn’t quite feel we were out of our depth.
Their goal was a strange one, though I had to admit that in a way I saw it coming. I think even the home crowd were gobsmacked a bit, hence their muted reaction for a second.
Unfortunately, it seemed to knock the stuffing out of us, and if Luton had a bit more killer instinct they could have got a second.
But to be fair to us, we did push onwards for an equaliser. It’s just that it’s hard to do when you’ve had a size 12 in the danglies a minute or two earlier.
I didn’t hang around after the final whistle, but the team got an ovation it deserved, even if it got the result it didn’t.
And if we had some strikers worthy of the name, who knows what might have happened.
JJ’s post match comments are what I expected them to be, although it’s interesting he pointed out that Luton had to change their formation three or four times during the game.
As gutting as the end result was, I’ll take that as a compliment.
Fortunately, it does seem like we can get Browne, Hutchinson and Splatt back, and we’ll need them in due course.
Anyway, the football is back and you can now forget all the summer sports you’ve watched in the last couple of months.
Yes, it’s a bit too soon to be back, especially as Wombley was in late May. But maybe the next nine months aren’t to be feared after all?
Plus points: Defensively solid. Picking up where we left off. Not looking overawed. Smith. Hippo. Bishop.
Minus points: We lost. Ryan Johnson’s goal. Impotent up front.
The referee’s a…: For the first half, I’m definitely sure he had a signed poster of Brian Stein and Mick Harford up on his bedroom wall.
Apparently managed to miss two corners for us, penalised Josh Kelly for having his shirt pulled, and clearly had some money on dismissing Lewis. Although he did make up for it a bit in the second half.
Oh, and Lewis flattened the linesman. Sadly, the official got up afterwards.
Them: I know it’s first game of the season, all sides are settling in, and the most fancied teams do struggle in the first few weeks.
But if Luton really are one of the favourites, we shouldn’t be so worried for this upcoming campaign.
Funny to think they were Premier League just a mere two seasons ago, as we respectfully reminded them of that fact.
Personally, I reckon they were one of those sides who got up there through momentum (like Brentford and Bournemouth) but football gravity hit them and they’re back with us plebs.
I wouldn’t necessarily expect them to bounce straight back up, by the way. Charlton and Sunderland both took a couple of seasons to escape.
Hell, Reading are still stuck in the third tier, and they have the indignity of facing us this month.
I’m sure they’ll get better, and many teams will go away from their place with their tails between their legs this season.
The ground is still a dump, and until we returned home Luton were the only other team who needed a new gaff as much as we did.
There was (is?) a lot of romantic bullshit about Kenilworth Road, especially with their away entrance.
“Oh look, when you enter the Oak Road stand you can see in people’s back gardens”. That sort of thing.
Football hipsters loved eulogising about that ground, about how it had so much soul and how it was so much better than the new builds.
Kenilworth Road is why clubs everywhere have either refurbished or built new stadia. It’s cramped, you can’t see half the pitch and the away concourse is not for claustrophobics.
As somebody I know (who one or two might recognise), it’s a shithole. But people don’t like being told it’s a shithole.
Luton will move to their new ground eventually, and it won’t be a sad day when they do…
Point to ponder: Are our strikers going to be our biggest problem this season?
Neither Kelly nor Stevens set pre-season alight, and they didn’t exactly impress too much last night either.
Kelly was the better of the two, while Stevens is just… well.
Did we re-sign a player (presumably on good money) who passed his goalscoring peak in about January 2025?
Both of them need a goal, and a few more besides, but for all the good of yesterday – if we were still playing this morning we’d still couldn’t find the net.
It wasn’t as though we were bombarding their goal and it just didn’t go in. I genuinely can’t think of a chance we had, proper or otherwise.
As the club reminds us every 20 seconds, we don’t have too much cash and as such we’re lumbered with who we can get in.
As our last sojourn to L1 proved, if you get rid of a decent striker (Ollie Palmer) in this division you’re going to struggle.
Who’s our modern day OP? I doubt it’s Kelly, it certainly isn’t Stevens, and you have to think Bugiel isn’t either.
Maybe like last season we’ll be relying on the likes of Browne and Smith to chip in with a few. The former was missing yesterday, and we’ll need him back for Lincoln.
Fortunately, and despite all I’ve said just now, we might have a little bit of hope in that area.
Yesterday saw the debut of two strikers, Daniel Orsi (ex Frenzy) and Antwoine Hackford, and I think they’ll be OK once they settle in with some training under their belts.
Orsi’s signing seemed to trigger a few of our over-emotional supporters with one certain Franchise on his CV.
Personally, I don’t care if he does or doesn’t. He’s a pro footballer, he has no real loyalty to anyone bar himself, and I don’t blame anyone being employed by them, in what is a highly competitive industry.
I’m much more concerned that he has a manbun, and that he resembles a certain ex-forward of ours.
Hopefully, looking like Josh Davison is where the similarities end…
Truth is stranger than fiction: 1) Didn’t see any mattresses (avec turd) around Kenilworth Road this time. Sure there was one though. 2) Why didn’t Lewis have a sponsor on his shirt? Although the kit looked nice without it. 3) The “Dons away uh huh” song. Nicked from Hibs who nicked it from Wales fans. Still, every support will sing it this campaign.
Anything else? This season will end up being a slog at times, and I hope we don’t start getting the play-well-but-unluckily-lose syndrome that all relegated teams have.
But I’m glad we’re in League One again.
Yes, it’s quicker, pacier, other teams will spend more money than us** and everything that comes with it.
** – is it true Luton’s monthly parachute payment will dwarf our annual budget? Though if you have £10 in your wallet you do that as well.
We can right the wrong that saw us fall out of the third tier though, which is something that even now sticks in my throat.
And SW19 has made this comment before, which was reconfirmed in Bedfordshire last night – League One isn’t really all that.
And it never has been.
Yes, some teams spend a lot of money, but unless you’re Birmingham or Wrexham, it’s very easy to overspend on some ordinary players.
Our survival this season is really down to us. True, you can’t run a third tier side on the pin money we have, and that’s something which is already apparent with the striker situation.
But I see us right now as either the team that came up under Ardley (give or take) or even how the relegated team improved under Mark Bowen.
With the latter, I still believe that if he had come in three games earlier, we would have somehow stayed up.
We didn’t do that, although it did teach us a very harsh lesson which thankfully we’ve heeded. And, dare I say, played a massive part in returning to L1.
This campaign, we’ll need to be better than the sum of our parts, and to be fair we saw signs of that last night.
If you can’t be full of good players, then have a good way of playing that brings out the most of what you do have.
We didn’t do that in the last couple of L1 seasons. We might be doing so this time around…
So, was it worth it? Yes, I enjoy a steel toecap to the bollocks. Honest.
In a nutshell: Hello again League One.