Mental health eh? Flippin eck.

After the tragic passing of Ricky Hatton, I had a quick look through some social media responses. As has become the norm these days, the threads were full from no doubt well meaning people of "Men, Just tell someone!" messages. One bloke even put it in shouty capital letters and added FFS! at the end, I guess he felt that emphasized his point about just how serious he was.

There's no question at all that these responses represent a huge step forward from the "Oh Man up FFS!" advice that people used to dish out, but in all honesty they aren't massively more useful. In this case for example Ricky HAD told someone. His mental health issues were well documented and hardly a secret from anybody. No doubt people will dish out the same "Tell someone!" advice when the slow-motion tragedy of Paul Gascoigne's life comes to its inevitable conclusion. Unfortunately KNOWING about an illness and talking about it isn't a guarantee in itself of any recovery. I'm not saying talking isn't a good idea (it is) but there's no silver bullets in this scenario.

And if you are the sufferer DOES decide to talk, who do you tell? The next door neighbour while he's washing his car? Your mates down the pub? And what do you tell them? "I'm feeling a bit depressed/lower than a Dacshunds ball bag"? "I think I'm gonna kill myself"? Sheesh as humans we can't even tell the waiter that the food is shite never mind tell one of our mates about the inner workings of our heads. No, there's not a lot of chance of many men unburdening themselves in real life. Even if you did, good luck telling "Dave from the darts team" when he enquires about your slightly melted face that you stuck your head in the gas oven last night only to discover it is electric.

No, "Tell someone", while obviously being well meaning as far as pat on the head advice goes, ain't gonna solve it every time.

Personally I think what MIGHT actually help is a government funded advertising campaign, written by people who actually know what they are talking about. People with proper experience could list some mental health basics, stuff to watch out for. That way, at least sufferers would have SOME chance of keeping their problems in perspective.

I'm talking bullet points, stuff like:

1. If you feel terrible today, you WON'T feel great tomorrow. If though you take the right steps, by tomorrow you might feel one or two percent better. Recovery takes a bit of time.

2. Don't waste time thinking "I just can't work out what I'm depressed about". Almost always it isn't a tangible thing. You could be a billionaire and married to Miss World, you can still have mental health issues (the illness doesn't respect things like that).

3. You can't cure it forever. If you get the flu then get better you can easily catch the flu next year. Mental health is the same.

4. It isn't your fault if you caught the flu. It isn't your fault if you are a bit depressed either.

5. Most people have triggers. Once you know what they are, do your best to avoid them. For me it's Zoom meetings and people that talk bollocks, you'll have your own.

6. It DOES clear in the end. Just like when you set the smoke alarms off when cooking a bacon sarnie & the Jehovas Witnesses come to the door, it WILL clear once you let the air in. It takes a bit longer though than in this example.

7. Some things are quite good at speeding up that "Let's get better" process. For me it's walking the dog and avoiding my triggers. Once again I'm afraid you have to find your own, but they ARE there.

THE most important one of all though is the fact that it's not your fault. One last thing, regardless of what Dave from the darts team tells you, if you "Man the fuck up" it isn't really going to make any difference.

Time to be boring....

I suppose it was always going to happen that we were going to run into choppy waters at different points this season, it appears that we are just entering some now. We're nowhere near in the gale force winds and six metre high waves territory just yet, but for sure you'd have no problem getting a kite up in the breeze. We've had a couple of iffy results, we've ran into a couple of players that are way beyond anything we've seen for a season of two at league level and it'd be easy to feel a bit sorry for ourselves.

Fortunately for us, this management team and this group of players look like they don't have the "let's sit in a corner and blub our eyes out" fallback in their DNA. Yes the result on Saturday hurt, the sendings off even more so, but it's important we don't dwell on the somewhat gloomy past. Our future is potentially brighter but more importantly careering towards us at a searing rate of knots.

By now, Johnny, Skivvers & DR will have analyzed the shite out our last couple of matches. Tom the stats guy will have rinsed OPTA for every bit of information they had, there won't have been a stone left unturned as they search for a solution. I hope they've broadly come to the same conclusion as me (because obviously I think I'm right), namely that we have become a little bit too easy to play against, make chances against, score against.

Now that's by no means solely the fault of the defence (or the defenders anyway). It's a collective thing, and as so often happens in football we are to a large extent victims of our own success. There's not a doubt in my mind that in these first seven games we have played the best football in any period of Johnny Jackson's time as manager. Some of it has been brilliant, I've applauded it and cheered it from the rooftops. We've kept the ball, we've opened teams up, created chances, got men into the box. It's been superb stuff, but inevitably there's been a slight drop off in our scrooge like defending as a result.

To my naked eye (I don't use heat maps) it appears that Miles Hippolite is significantly more advanced than any of our three midfielders have been in previous seasons. Ali Smith is pushing on too, sometimes even the captain. Not only that but they appear (to me) to be much more vertical in formation than the very horizontal set up we've become accustomed to. Neither of our fullbacks seem particularly comfortable coming into midfield, so the end result is that if the oppositions do, we are instantly outnumbered in the centre of the pitch. 

The net result of all that waffle is that teams ,(better teams) are able to pass through us much more easily. Once in and around the edge of our box we look vulnerable to the little slid in through balls, one twos, all that malarkey. Our centre halves are better at defending against direct teams who launch it than they are tricky ones who get in and around our soft underbelly, they aren't the first.

So I'm here to tell you that despite banging the drum for "better football" for three seasons and despite applauding it loudly now, I feel it's likely the time to revert back to type a bit. I guess Omar will come in for Marcus Browne which would suit my thinking that a direct, less possession based smash & grab attack is where we ought to go. Crucially under those circumstances, we wouldn't be "going over the top" with the whole midfield either. We've got to (IMHO) get both Miles Hippolite and Jake Reeves to be much more defensive. In the latter's case, he simply must he attached to the back five with an almost umbilical restraint. And we have to get some width into the midfield, both by being less vertical and ensuring out full backs push on at the optimum moment. They oughtn't to just push on when attacking, they ought to do it at times when defending too.

In short, it's time to become a bit boring. After the week we've just had, a clean sheet would be handy, even a 0-0 draw or two not to be sniffed at. Our whole league one survival push depends upon us staying in games, keeping them close. Not easy to do that when you concede the number of opportunities and goals that we are just now. We CAN shore it up, we've done it before. Time to get below deck and do the grunt work, the boring stuff. The pretty, pleasing on the eye work can wait until a later date. COYD

Fans, to be or not to be?

I don't know about you, but as an AFC Wimbledon supporter I'm absolutely loving the season so far. I think if there's one thing that EVERYONE can agree on, it's that L1 is miles better than L2. Yes it's more challenging but the away grounds are better, the opposition have better players who are worth watching and when teams play at Plough Lane they bring loads of fans and make a great atmosphere. It's brilliant, we should do everything we can to stay in this division.

Another aspect of it that I really enjoy is that I personally have an impact on how many points we get, how well we play. Obviously not ON the pitch (God forbid), but I am absolutely convinced that by getting behind the team 100% I and the faithful have an impact upon how well the lads play. How much impact? Gawd knows, but I reckon the crowd at Anfield (the ground where such things are most prevalent in my view), has at least a 15% impact on Liverpool players, probably as high as 10% away. The crowd there ALWAYS stay with the team, always push them on, never give up on the eleven lads wearing the red shirt. I'm not pretending our following gets to that level, but I've never in my football obsessed life seen anybody who doesn't play better when encouraged from the sidelines, doesn't play worse when lambasted. That's as true for little kids all chasing the ball in a seven a side game as it is for professional footballers, people like to be loved. So while my input and influence is minimal, I'm convinced it's there.

Take last night's game for example. I went along along with 1300 others, and I'm not gonna lie we got absolutely taken apart by a very good Stevenage second eleven. It was 5-1 but in truth it could have been many more, it was men against boys. The thing is though, their second eleven would be a very decent League One outfit, our second eleven contained LITERALLY boys. I think we had four kids making their debuts last night, and in the case of young Harry Hedges in particular I'm talking a PROPER kid. He won't even be shaving yet never mind up to playing against men at football, and though he obviously has bags of talent (I really liked him) he's a country mile away from being the player he WILL be in three or four years time. I and many others stayed to give the lads a standing ovation off the pitch, the manager too. Not because obviously we were happy with getting whupped 5-1, but because under difficult circumstances the players gave everything. As it turns out, the everything was miles away from making it a proper contest, but that's not their fault. 

Now I noticed online some supporters calling the result a disgrace, how we should be embarrassed and the like. I couldn't disagree more. In order to compete last night we had two options. One, we could have played Jake Reeves, Ali Smith, Marcus Browne, Matty Stevens etc etc. Or, we could have spread the money we had in the Summer so as to try and get a stronger squad of 22 players as opposed to concentrating our resources into having the best first team possible. It appears to me that we DID concentrate our resources into getting the best starting eleven possible, and in so doing we compromised a little on the "back up" front. I for one totally agree with that decision, it seems to me to be the only chance we've got.

So we get hammered, in a competition that is a bit of a farce anyway, BUT some lads who needed minutes got them and some kids who needed a start got them. All fine and dandy by me.

Someone else online said "But that's three in a row we've lost now", and it is. I'd say to anybody who looks at things that way though, you'd better get used to it and quick. And to echo that famous Mick McCarthy "It can't go on like this" meme (In a broad South Yorkshire accent) "It CAN" it might well be four consecutive defeats after Saturday. Put it this way, Bolton with their budget and wage bill will be absolutely gutted if they don't win the game against us. By all measureable metrics, they absolutely SHOULD beat us. We oughtn't really to have any chance, the fact that we have is a tribute to the manager and the players. Not only that, but we are going to lose lots of other matches too. When the injuries come, points are going to be VERY hard to come by.

But we knew all of that before we started didn't we? I've heard people say we might make the playoffs, cloud-cuckoo land. I personally think that if we finish above the bottom third (16th or higher) it's an astonishing achievement. We are ALREADY in a relegation battle in my opinion, but I'm not being defeatest in saying it, I'm just preparing myself to get behind the team more than ever.

Because given where we are, let me tell you that given our opening six fixtures, nine points from eighteen is an absolute gift from God. It's quite possible that will be our best six game return of the whole season, such is the steepness of our task. So DO cheer for the lads, yes even when they get beat. DO back them even when they're getting battered, doing it makes a fraction of a difference. That fraction might keep us up.

One last thing, for us this season there are no such thing as "consoltation" goals. If we're 3-0 down and we get a last minute goal, it isn't a "consolation goal" it's a goal. We would by no means be the first team who stayed up on goal difference, and if we do it we won't be the last.

That's my thinking this season and always has been. We battle for every inch, every angle, every blade of grass. We give it absolutely everything, leave no percentage gain on the shelf. And as long as the manager and players do the same, I'll stand and applaud them off every game. They did last night, even though we got stuffed 5-1 at home.

It happens, it's football. I'm going to make sure though that I give 100% as a fan, how could I not if I demand if off the players and manager?