Not so bad is it, this League One lark?
Yeah, I know it’s early season, although it’s a quarter of the way through. And past history proves that we play OK until the clocks go back.
It feels like simply enjoying it as it lasts, because we all know it can still go to shite. But as it stands, we’re sixth in the third tier of English football.
Sixth.
Us.
Weren’t we supposed to be relegated by now? Cut so adrift at the bottom that they gave up looking for us, and Golden Goal tickets started featuring months instead of times.
Because Saturday was an early kickoff time, we had that strange period where we did nowt but went from 4th (yay) to 7th (boo. JJ out).
Before Reading did us a favour. Which is mental to type out, let alone analyse.
A very quick mention of Wycombe – first half sounded very good, Bugiel’s header was lovely to watch.
It’s good to see Seddon being like he was first time round with us, rather than the shitty version of him for his first return.
That was the Covid season though, so maybe he has kenophobia? In which case, best drop him if we play at Stadium:MT.
The second half sounded a bit like Europe’s singles matches at the Ryder Cup yesterday, although with the same level of success.
I think Wycombe aren’t as bad as their league position suggests, although they seemed to get very arsey about their disallowed goal.
Unfortunately, Lewis went off injured, and it wasn’t because they had to remove his shorts from his arse.
It might have been a different sort of crack, or a rib injury at least, and that’s an undeniable blow.
Thankfully, we have Harbottle and Bauer in reserve, and we’ll get to see how good they are.
We’ll definitely have to deal with injuries, but at least this time around we can put decent players off the bench if need be.
Other than that, all is well on this sunny Monday, and we can even bask in a week without a game. In fact, we’ve got hardly any midweekers for a while.
I don’t doubt there’ll be a grind of fixtures at some point, we had one at the beginning of the campaign. And something I think made sure we went out of the Carabao.
As the title says though, it’s that ten-game marker and we’ve done pretty well.
Six wins, four losses, three of those defeats being just a bit too sloppy at the very worst time. And only one genuine stinker in all of that.
That’s not a bad return.
It’s been mentioned before, but sum-of-our-parts is apt for why we’ve had a decent start. Individually, anyone decent would be snapped up by Bradford.
But as JJ said after Wycombe, our first ten games aren’t a fluke.
It strikes me how organised we are, how we managed to deal with faster opponents within a game or two (Luton fans still admit they got lucky for our game there).
While we’ve ridden our own luck a few times, that’s what most teams do in most games anyway.
Again, back to our current manager’s comments from Saturday – you’re not going to get it all your own way.
Hanging onto a 2-1 lead doesn’t do the nerves much good, but the fact we’ve done that at Reading and at home to Wycombe tells us something promising.
Perhaps teams will suss us out, but I think it’s difficult for any side to do that against a side that is as organised as we (mostly) are.
You can work out how we play, who does what and when and whatnot on the tactics board. But you’ve then still got to actually do it.
Wycombe didn’t in the first half. Barnsley couldn’t. Reading needed a wondergoal to come close to us doing it.
I’ll take that.
Where will this lead us? Who knows, but one thing is certain – it’ll be fun to find out.
Because that’s what this season is really all about. Just enjoying ourselves, getting wins when we get the chance to.
Being competitive in games, because if you do that you’ll win a few. Having the Doncaster type wins, where a 4 hour journey back feels like 4 minutes.
And because we don’t feel pressure bound to get promoted, like we did in L2, a defeat here and there will hurt but it doesn’t really matter.
It’s a fun season already. It’s actually been genuinely enjoyable (Bolton excepted) and it’s nice to know we’re in a likeable division and holding our own in it.
Better still, our manager has pointed out that we have room for improvement. The players know it too, and they may well do just that.
Finally, some SW19 related news, and it’s absolutely nothing to do with this update being delayed by a day.
For the forseeable future, you’re not going to get many – if any – “proper” reports as I won’t be at most games.
Basically, it looks like I’ll be working every Saturday now, unless a game of ours gets moved to Sunday or the fixture list is kind to me.
I know people do enjoy the reports, and to be fair I enjoy writing them. Mostly, it has to be said.
Christ, some of the ones I ended up writing under Mark Robinson’s time felt like a death sentence.
But it’s good for my bank balance, and in the industry I’m in you’ve basically got to take whatever you can these days.
The good thing is from AFCW’s point of view, with the exception of Donny and Barnsley we lose every time I go to a game.
That’s guaranteed promotion for us then, so I hope you’ll allow me to the game where we win promotion. Even if I don’t expect to be let in…