You know, I could get used to Sunday football…
I don’t know if it was the sheer emotion of managing to witness WG Hales 1 JJB Sports 0, or whether I’m just out of practice watching football games as a fan.
Because afterwards I was shattered. And it sounds like I wasn’t the only one.
As we stand (?) here almost suitably refreshed on this August Bank Holiday Monday, we can at least enjoy a couple of days with a victory.
A win that was the first in SW17 since the 11th March against Blackpool, and the first goal since Plymouth on the 18th April.
We lost that game. Mind you, we lost most of them around that time.
But you can’t deny the relief that is around AFCW since the final whistle, and maybe it will kick us into life now?
Recently, this place wondered if half our problem is the lack of confidence that we can score, let alone get a point or three.
I guess we’ll find out against Burton on Wednesday. Especially as they now have his royal tightshortedness, Mr J Lewis in their defence now.
But yesterday was already a six-pointer, and while it wasn’t pretty it was ultimately effective.
We rode our luck big time, or more accurately were fortunate Wigan managed to be even worse up front than we are.
I’m not quite sure how to describe the pre-game vibe, although starting Sasu again feels like trolling at this stage now.
Look, he’s still a kid effectively, and it’s not his fault that for some reason he’s seen as Boy Wonder by the management.
And yes, he did what you expected him to do. I was asked to “be kind” about him, so I won’t mention that he managed to get the ball in the corner then slipped at the worse possible time.
Although our new lad from Forest also slipped over at the most inopportune moment as well…
The game itself? Well, they attacked a bit more than I would have liked, though without particular accuracy.
We unsurprisingly laboured, partly due to fatigue from Thursday, partly down from the hangover that still affects us, and partly due to – as it turned out – having our strongest side still on the bench.
By now, we should all know that JJ likes to keep it tight and put on pacier players with about 20 minutes to go.
Which is fine, except you need a defence tighter than a gnat’s chuff attached to a glued up wallet.
If yesterday and most other games in 2026 prove, we don’t have that. In fact, even in the second half Wigan should have been a couple of goals up.
Including one particular sitter (assuming it’s not been copyrighted) that if we had done it would still be repeating on AFCW social media loops everywhere.
Maybe it was to be our day after all, after that?
True, Joe McDonnell should have got MOTM if he didn’t already, although the four (yes, four) subs made changed the game immensely.
If that was Nkeng’s last game for us then it was a good way to go out. Although one suspects the potential move to wherever he was going has fallen through.
The rumour mill is still suggesting Forest aren’t going to sign him yet, and maybe that’s why we’ve got Donnell McNeilly, as a potential sweetener.
As in, we’ll give Nkeng more minutes and Forest get first dibs on him in January or next close season.
Which would make sense if that proved to be the case. He’s still raw, wouldn’t get much proper game time there this season and he’s better off with us for the next few months at least.
As for our newbie from the City Ground, him and Stockley could be a menacing pairing – maybe Stevens will find it harder to get back in the squad now?
While we kept giving them free kicks, we did at least try and win the game, although Stockley heading over felt like the big missed chance for us.
Except it wasn’t. With 88 minutes on the clock, a long punt from McDonnell, a flick-on from Stockley (?), finding McNeilly who found Hippo (who wasn’t offside), to slot home.
Scenes, as they say.
I’ve used “relief” before in this report, and I’ll use it here again. It was an immensely joyous celebration, but it was tinged with we-got-away-with-that-a-bit.
I won’t say I knew we won the game from this point, but the nine minutes injury time didn’t faze me one bit.
Don’t get me wrong, you can properly fuck it up in that time – it’s too long to run the clock down but equally it’s too short a time to get back into a game if you drop a massive turd.
Did Wigan have any proper chances in injury time? I know they had a corner, which they didn’t do much with, although I don’t think we were pushing for a second somehow.
The most important thing was to win (or not lose), which we did. With a massive mopping of the brow and an exhaling of breath afterwards.
I know it’s still August, and that was only the third game of the season, but when it’s taken you all those games to have a home victory again – you’re going to find it hard to take in.
It was interesting to note that JJ afterwards said some of the players were tired. While you can say that at the beginning of the season they shouldn’t be fatigued, they did put in a big shift last Thursday too.
And credit to our manager who did change things to try and win games. When you’re in charge of a team who does that, it makes up for the brickbats you get when you do it before and it fails.
Burton away on Wednesday will be a tough one, especially at a venue we usually do badly at, and it feels like too short a turnaround.
But we’ve got three points, and the league table already looks a lot nicer…
Plus points: We won. Clean sheet. Hippo’s finish. The substitutions. Last 20 minutes. Joe McDonnell. McNeilly. Pushing for a win at the end.
Minus points: Our defending. Still too lacklustre at times. First 70 minutes. Starting with a weaker XI than perhaps we should.
The referee’s a…: He did like to give them free kicks while not giving us the same. And yes, that’s a reference to the third minute as well.
Still, he allowed the goal, which was good of him.
Them: Even this morning, they must be wondering how they weren’t 3-0 or 4-0 ahead by the time we scored.
Although that does hint at something SW19 has said for many years – a lot of players at L1 level aren’t actually that good.
Their strikers in particular were no better than ours, even if they were able to get into goalscoring positions to begin with.
I had a quick look at their keeper’s challenge on Stockley about three minutes in, and he can consider himself a lucky boy to remain on the field.
Apparently they had no sub keeper, so that might have been an interesting afternoon. Not that we would have tested his replacement…
People talk about Leicester, Sheffield Wednesday and Luton declining rapidly, but Wigan must be one of the less-talked about falling from grace sides.
It was 13 years ago since they beat Citeh in the FA Cup final, and almost seemed like Premier League stalwarts.
And yet, they’re in the third tier and barely anyone outside Lancashire has noticed.
Mind you, considering they joined the Football League one season after WFC did, maybe they’re just going back to their actual level as a club…?
Point to ponder: What will the remaining hours of the transfer window bring us?
Right now, we’ve got more strikers than the RMT, so maybe we’ll see a couple of those going out.
Though of the incoming, Harry “Don’t call me Junior” Cornick has yet to even feature on the bench.
I guess he’s still catching up to match fitness, due to a lack of pre-season. Either that or he’s the Kjetil Waehler of this era.
The rumour mill is suggesting a couple of interesting additional incomings – Joe Bursik (Pompey keeper) and perhaps more intriguingly Lynden Gooch (Huddersfield winger).
If we get another keeper in, it might be an admission that the Bishop experiment (?) may be over.
It would be a shame, but goalkeeper is a position you have to get right, and to (mis)quote the BBC’s live feed for Fulham – “Bishop is unconvincing at crosses”.
McDonnell might be a bit peeved if he finds himself benched after the window, he pretty much saved (boom fucking tisch) us yesterday.
But equally, he’s played more first team fixtures than perhaps he would have expected when he rejoined too.
Gooch? Believe it when I see it (ditto Bursik), although do we need another wingback?
Then again, we do seem to be after “better” players now, even with our budget of £1.49. Either we’ve found some more money somewhere, we’ve had a cash injection on the quiet or those sort of players are demanding less wages now.
We definitely need another central defender, unless we have some “utility” defenders (or we delve into the PFA’s summer camp list), yesterday should have proved that.
That said, Yiadom and Sessegnon aren’t too shabby, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence both of those improved us in the last 20 minutes.
It’s the “out” list that is as important. Is Browne’s “injury” an actual injury or a euphemistic one?
We seem to be adding more up front, and there has to be some leaving, so maybe he’ll command a fee?
One wonders if Hackford and possibly McCoy-Splatt will be away from PL too, even if on loan.
The one most of us think should go on loan – Sasu – won’t, which I think will be detrimental to his ability.
Elsewhere, it’s only really Bishop who I think will find himself elsewhere this season, if a new keeper comes in.
Anyone else is probably staying, even those who were heavily linked with other clubs this summer (Hippo).
We need to do more, I think JJ himself knows that, even though his hands are tied a bit too much.
One thing though – I forget which manager the other day who was really unhappy the window closes during games, but it’s an odd state of affairs.
As the window shuts tomorrow at 11pm (Tuesday), and we play on Wednesday, perhaps for once we might gazump somebody?
Truth is stranger than fiction: 1) Sunday 2pm kickoff. Don’t mind it, actually. 2) Jamie Redknapp at the game. 3) The new (to your editor) big screen between the east and south stand concourse. Not a bad addition, though perhaps put an actual game on rather than SSN?
Anything else? Very briefly about the Fulham game – I think that was a reminder of the gap between a middling at best L1 side and even the second string of a PL outfit.
It was a tough evening, which makes yesterday’s win all the more credible, and I noticed some of the Fulham XI then featured at Sunderland.
So it’s not like we were playing a bunch of stiffs, we were playing a side where one of their players would be worth more than our entire squad.
I mention this because a few people reacted after Thursday a bit, well, differently to what they maybe could have done.
Granted, you don’t want to lose 3-0 ever, and all of us would have preferred most attacks on their goal (though their injury time strike proved why we didn’t do that).
Just as the (presumably off) Nkeng transfer would have proven, 2026 is a completely different era to when WFC was in the top flight.
While cupsets (yes, I said “cupsets”) can still happen, it’s now almost impossible for a lower level club to go to a PL outfit away and knock them out.
It’s more likely at the home venue of a L1/L2/non-league side, where it’s a more level playing field, but PL squads these days are frighteningly talented.
Fulham’s starting XI on Thursday would pretty much walk L1 this season, and possibly if not probably the Championship as well.
That we lost 3-0 with two admittedly poor goals from our part isn’t something to get irate about.
Maybe the reaction of a few is down to a realisation that the gap between the likes of us and the top flight is a lot bigger these days.
One other thing about our Thursday night at Craven Cottage – a few of their fans weren’t impressed by our chants at them.
Now, Fulham can’t complain too much about atmosphere, but I discovered something that I’d kind of forgotten – all the teams around west London (us included) don’t seem to like each other.
If we ever got to be a Championship-level side, I expect we’ll start getting grief from Fulham fans more often. Ditto Brentford, although QPR don’t seem to object to us.
But it surprised me how much FFC don’t like the Super Hoops, or indeed the Bees, or indeed anyone else.
Nobody likes Chelsea though, not even Chelsea fans…
So, was it worth it? Three points.
In a nutshell: The season starts here.