As I genuinely have better things to do than analyse the crap from yesterday, a MOTD-esque brief summary.
There is something depressingly deja vu-ish (?) about this current slump in form we’re in. And not just from this season.
It used to be that Wimbledon came on strong in the second half of the season, but 22/23 is now very likely to follow the same, well-trodden path of recent history.
What makes it worse is that the season isn’t effectively over, because believe it or not – we’re not immune from having to fight the drop.
That we’re even contemplating having to look over our shoulder at whether we might even be in the EFL next season is a fuckup too far.
I believe somebody elsewhere has calculated that we’ll stay up by one point if we don’t arrest this current trajectory.
Think about that for a moment – one point.
This in a season that we should have been aiming for the playoffs, or at least have an outside chance of them come Easter.
The truth is, the arse has fallen out of this particular squad of players, and JJ doesn’t have the resources to get us out of it.
He can talk about us “getting punished” and being in the ascendancy, but as Mark Robinson found out – once you surrender leads as easily as we do, it’s very hard to stop that.
No, he shouldn’t be sacked, and as said on here recently you only do that if you want to repeat the same mistakes of the last few years.
It feels like we’ve just lost any sort of on-field leadership we had. By that, I mean Harry Pell’s absence is as much a blow as losing Towler and Assal.
Granted, some of JJ’s tactics are under scrutiny, as they should be, but it’s obvious some players should be shown the door this summer.
Woodyard isn’t impressing many, and Nightingale seems like he’s got injured again.
One has to think whether Gunter will announce his retirement from domestic football as well at the end of the season, and we’ll likely lose Currie too.
Our management team will (hopefully) be making notes on who leaves SW17, and at the very least JJ in particular deserves a proper close season with some proper backing from AFCW.
Yeah, I know. As if any money we get from Currie going will find its way into the transfer kitty.
It’s proven to be another poor January transfer window, although this time losing our loanees (and Assal) was out of our hands.
Somebody elsewhere yesterday pondered whether the lack of a full bench was JJ’s way of telling the decision makers he wasn’t fully backed in the window?
Funny how whenever the club decides to hold back on spending transfer money, the whole results and performance thing goes to pot.
It’s almost like it continues not to understand there’s a minimum level of investment that is needed even to be a middling L2 side…
As you can tell, I was elsewhere yesterday but I’ll probably be at Newport this Tuesday.
I can get to see for myself just how lousy we’ve become, and whether we can turn any of it around before the 8th May.
I’m not holding my breath. Hell, I’m looking at what I’m going to spend for Barrow and wondering whether I might as well have a weekend somewhere else.
I will mention one final thing though – whilst browsing through Youtube on Friday I saw the clips from the training ground.
One of the exercises was the one where about six of them stand in a circle with somebody in the middle, and if you give the ball away you’re the piggy.
I’m not saying it’s a good indication of where we are, and maybe the artifical turf at the Elmbridge Xcel was a factor.
But the lack of ball control in that exercise shocked me – it was what I expect from a Sunday League outfit currently playing on Prince Georges Playing Fields.
Maybe we should get ourselves down there PDQ and pick up anyone who can trap a ball? They couldn’t do a worse job at defending a lead…