Well, that was a turn up for the books, wasn’t it?
If, just before a ball was kicked this season, you would be telling me we would do the double over Reading – and the home game proved to be one of the best of the season – I’d probably send you to Dignitas.
Because if we’re scrapping for points, it would be against the bottom feeders. And not against a side you have heard of.
It’s sometimes hard to forget that this was the same Reading that gubbed us 7-0 in the pre-season of a campaign that saw TB leave.
That they (and Notlob, Cardiff, Huddersfield and Luton) shouldn’t really be in the same division as the likes of us, and is probably something they say themselves.
But they’re in League One for a reason. And so are we.
You could have been forgiven for fearing the worst yesterday. Home games since November have been borderline illegal under UN charters.
Yet a Marcus Browne hat-trick, winning despite losing the lead twice, and by all accounts looking nothing like the team of recent weeks makes it so good.
Be honest – you had that post-win glow all of last night, didn’t you?
I haven’t mentioned beating Port Vale yet, and I’ll come onto that a bit later – your editor was there but obviously no report, I’m still drying out.
Listening to R5L on the way back from Southampton v Watford felt a bit old skool, even down to them calling us “Wimbledon”, without the prefix.
I’m not going to be a smart-arse here, and say that I knew we wouldn’t lose (even when they equalised for the second time).
But even before the game, I had an odd feeling that we’d do all right.
The players clearly felt the same too, Marcus Browne certainly did. Scoring as many goals in one game as we have the previous seven at PL is an impressive stat.
Even though it’s a statistic that has shown how utterly limp we’ve been in the goalscoring department.
But so many people played well, by all accounts. Nkeng continues to impress, Johnson got many plaudits, and we seem to have broken the returning player curse again with Tilley.
Both him and Seddon have proven that you can have those who have played for you before who don’t stink the joint out.
Dare I say our uptick in form has co-incided with Jake Reeves being on the bench?
I think he’ll be gone in the summer if his contract is up, he’s been a good servant to us but we’re now having to give him rests in the season we perhaps shouldn’t need to.
It was the same last season as well, although to be fair he came back and we ended up in L1 as a result.
Not everything sounded perfect yesterday – Smith got quite a few negative comments, and I’m still not 100% sold on Bishop in goal.
I don’t care if he’s magic, you know. I don’t like it when the ball goes through the legs of a keeper, because to me that’s basic keeper stuff.
Mind you, the Reading shotstopper wasn’t much better. Perhaps L1 keepers are generally crap?
They’re minor gripes in the grand scheme of things. We’re looking a bit healthier in the table, and more importantly the confidence has skyrocketed in the space of a week.
The second half against Notlob was the embryonic stage of what proved to be a very good week indeed.
I know we didn’t score but you could sense a bit of “hang on, we’d better get our arses into gear here”.
As for the trip to Port Vale last Tuesday, in proper Stoke weather, it was genuinely awful for the most part.
But Maycock’s winner proved something I think has been the case in recent weeks – we just didn’t have the belief we could score goals.
Maybe that game at Vale Park gave us that bit of confidence, that realisation that actually, we can find the net.
It was interesting to note when we went 1-0 up at PV that as soon as we did, we looked a lot more confident and bouncing.
There was no sense that they would get a late equaliser, and I think we carried that on into yesterday.
The most important game now is Barnsley away next Saturday, because that would be another good place to get a result.
I know we’ve got Northampton in the ex-JPT, and obviously I hope we win because it will give us something to look forward to.
We’re due a run of good form now, and this wouldn’t be a bad time to get it.
Finally, I’ll very briefly mention the club’s meeting on Wednesday, and I don’t think it really said anything we didn’t know.
There’s a helpful precis here, assuming it’s not deleted by the time you get to read it.
Cash(flow) is King, and I’m in no doubt the begging bowl will come out again (with ever-diminishing returns).
Constantly borrowing money just to keep going is the road to eventual ruin, and you just can’t escape that.
We’re now getting to the stage where the credit cards are maxed out and you’re still doing the proverbial paper round because getting proper income is capitalism, akshally.
It’s interesting to note that a) we’re talking to investors, and b) they all seem to want at least one place on the board.
I don’t know why anyone would be surprised at the latter, hoping that somebody would come in as a sugar daddy and say “pssh, don’t worry about paying it off my precious”.
The whole reason a sugar daddy ploughs money in to begin with is because he gets to plough into something else in return.
Wanting some proper say in where their investment goes is par for the course in the outside world, and is something I certainly wouldn’t object to.
If nothing else, the current decision makers look stale and that side of things really needs fresh blood. And from people who have a big stake in it working.
We have the ASOS guy and a couple of others who have done that with relative peanuts (trust me, if they put more money in they would have a lot more say than they do), but now we’re talking about proper investment.
Who would come in and what they would want is for another time, but one senses we’ve reached beyond what can be achieved now without it.
As said so many times on SW19 in recent years – running a professional football club is expensive.
Player wages are stupid, but they ain’t being cut any time soon. Plough Lane itself must cost more in a month to run than KM did in a year.
Making our new home turn a profit is good, but that’s just being eaten up as soon as it’s generated just because life is more expensive now.
Your editor drives past RPV and sometimes Colliers Wood United and often wonder how those clubs can pay for their electricity bill.
Whatever they pay, we’re paying far more. And of course, there’s the small matter of what we’ve borrowed from various people needing to be repaid…
So, it’s going to be a bit hairy and some people are going to have to make changes they don’t really want to.
One thing that has long irritated me over this whole side of things is that we don’t need to be poor.
In some quarters, it’s like a badge of honour that we’ve got little money but are staying true to our principles.
Their time has passed now, and one wonders if people like Craig Cope (and even JJ himself) have pointed a few home truths out?
As somebody said to your editor on Tuesday – imagine what those two could do with us if they were given a bit of proper backing…