AFC Wimbledon. Where we are, my two penneth worth.

I listened to the Wombles had a dream podcast just now, it was brilliant. It always was brilliant, but for a few months I've kind of checked out of football a bit and I left it (listening). I've still been going to games, even gone to a few away trips, but I've had real trouble getting as "Up for it" as I normally do. That's not a criticism of Johnnie, Skivvers, the players or anything, it's football in general. Someone offered me a pair of free tickets to go see England at Wembley a while back, it took me about five seconds to politely decline. The five seconds were spent thinking of an excuse, not on making a decision. Anyway for some unknown reason I can feel it coming back, listening to the podcast this morning definitely helped, thankyou.

So anyway my thoughts, in no order at all.

Things aren't quite as bad as they look.

Don't worry I'm not going to get all happy clappy on you, of course we're playing shite I'm not blind. The GOOD news is though that if you'd shown any sensible Wimbledon fan a picture of this league table before a ball was kicked, they'd have bitten your arm off at the elbow. Sure it would have felt better if we'd kind of picked up points consistently rather than all at the start then none for ages, but beggars can't be choosers. Equally it'd be better if we were playing better and banging goals in left right and centre, but we are where we are.

Whichever way you cut it however, from here we have a great chance of staying up. My guess is that it will be close (in my judgement we are currently the worst team in the league on form), but we have given ourselves a huge chance. We don't from here need to win every week, we just need to win SOMETIMES and draw a few. That would be plenty good enough, so as much as you can keep your chin up. BTW on that subject Port Vale isn't even close to being the "Must Win" that people say it is. It's not even a "Must not lose". Port Vale are in contrast to us already down, losing three points to THEM is just three points. We obviously though are very capable of winning the game, we should go absolutely all out to do just that. No sitting in for a draw, get after them and win.

Marcus Brown.

Our best player by a fair distance and yet still we as fans are seemingly. underwhelmed. He as a player looks like  he feels like he underachieves. Nine goals this season (without which we'd be fucked) and using the age old barometer ALL of which in the league were on the road, ought to have the fans singing his name. And yet, and yet.

So what is it with Marcus? Well firstly to repeat myself, he is by far our best player, it isn't even close. I must admit though that I myself don't "love" him, and why is that? Firstly stating the obvious is because despite his output, it's as plain as the hooter on my face that he's obviously capable of much more. He is probably a Championship player in terms of ability, but we don't quite get it.

Now if Marcus was silly enough to read this, he'd no doubt say "Hang on silly bollocks what do you want FFS? I'm the top scorer in the team and without me you'd be fucked". He'd be right too, so what DO I want (silly bollocks)? 

Well, I think the best player in the team has a duty to lift the other players, to make THEM play better. I think he has a responsibility to get outside of his own headspace and get into theirs. I think he has the onus upon him to be the beating heart of the team, in much the same way as Maradona was for Napoli & Argentina. See there's no such thing as a one man team, but there IS such a thing as a team which is miles better because of one man. Marcus is out best player, he knows it and the other players know it too. That warrior who is leading the forces to heights they didn't realise they could reach role is vacant in our team, and it's vacant because only HE can do it. The other players need him.

And in a nutshell how do you coach that? Well if Marcus imagines he's 34 years old while he's playing that'd be a start. He's talented enough to still play league One at that age, and what would he do if he did? Well he'd drop in, get it, give it, rinse and repeat. He'd be doing little no look reverse passes, sliding people in down little corridors. When the opportunity came to have a shot, he'd keep his head down and keep his technique solid. He wouldn't snatch at it and screw it wide like the young players do and he does now. He'd be putting his arm around the refs shoulders and cajoling him, not screaming in his face like the young players do and he does now.

In short he'd be taking responsibility. He wouldn't be a one man team because there's no such thing. But he'd be playing for a team which is much better when he is in it. My guess is the fans would love him too, THAT'S the Marcus Brown that Id love to see.

Another loss, but perhaps a glimmer of hope?

After the 1-0 defeat to an admittedly excellent Bolton team, Johnnie was slightly hyperbolic in his assessments but that's OK, he's supposed to keep everyone's pecker up. Sure saying it was a game of two halves was stretching it a bit (aside from the obvious fact that it literally always is), as was saying we dominated the second half. We didn't actually have any shots on target during that period, but while "dominated" might be a bit OTT, it WAS the best we've played for months in my opinion.

How did it happen and why did it happen? Well firstly there was a shrewd half time switch of James Tilley by the manager. I thought our tail between his legs returnee was comfortably our best player on the day, and it made perfect sense to put him up against their most dangerous attacker.

The management team deserve lots of credit for that decision. It was a huge call, and while it's nice that numpties like me applaud it in hindsight, we'd have been the first to call it "Madness" if it had gone wrong. And James Tilley deserves huge credit too. He slightly went down in my estimation when he told some of our younger fans to Fuck Off, but there is no doubt that he is a quality footballer. God only knows how he couldn't get a game at Wycombe.

Another big call was the introduction of Junior NKeng at half-time. It's obvious when you watch this kid that he is way off the finished article and has a huge amount to learn. BUT, he is a classic example of the "Let's talk about what he CAN do rather than what he can't". The excellent Plough Lane by numbers posted up that we had 10 successful dribbles in the whole match, eight of which were this kid in the second half. Now when you are talking "impact" you can't get much better than that, and I counted FOUR free kicks he won on the edge of their box. The obvious caveat with this kid is that if you sneak him into the team at wingback, now teams are getting to know about him they'll target his side, push him back and ask him to defend. The best way to deal with natural dribblers like Junior NKeng is to keep him in his own half, sooner or later we'll be forced into playing him left midfield or not at all.

More important than all of those changes though was the fact that in the second half we changed the way we were playing. I'd summarise it in saying we introduced energy, high press and tempo into our game. Instantly the game became more chaotic and I've long been 100% convinced that we are a far better team under those circumstances. Of course when you press high you carry the risk of being played through or over. You are far less compact, your shape can get pulled all over the place and you are by definition more vulnerable. That said, you by definition become more uncomfortable to play against, opposition players have less time and you have the opportunity to nick the ball high up. Players far better than the ones we run into in league one don't like being pressed, and we did it excellently.

Tempo is another thing. I've long said that if we ARE going to continuosly launch it (and let's face it, we are) then can't we just get on and do it already? There's no need to fart around rolling it sideways for two minutes before we hit it long, if we're going to do it then get on with it. Similarly if we get a throw in, a corner, a free kick or a goal kick, GET ON WITH IT! There is no gain for us in slowing the game down, in the second half we did it far less and looked better for it.

So no it didn't get us a result nor a shot on target, but Omar really ought to have scored and Steve Seddon very nearly did. The difference against a team who frankly could have been out of sight in the first half was significant.

So for me I hope we've learnt something. The answer if you can't score a goal is not to assume you're not going to score one & defend like crazy for a 0-0. No, the answer is to gamble, to take a risk, to apply all of your efforts into scoring. I think we need to press high, from minute one. To do that though you need players with energy who can get about the pitch. Those that can't need to sit down for a while. N'Keng obviously needs to start and we obviously need to get the ball to him whenever we can. We oughtn't either to over complicate what we're asking him to do, "Get it and go at em" would do the trick. He is the first player since Ayoub Assal to get the fans off their seats. 

In short we need to gamble, to push all in. We are losing every week playing conservatively, we can't do any worse if we go for it.

My match report & thoughts.....

Terry Skiverton take a bow. People like me can pontificate about formations, tactics. "Our best eleven" and such things all they like, if you don't do the ugly stuff properly you are going to lose lots of football matches. Recently many of us have argued about all the little "icing on the cake" things, meanwhile the players and coaches have been putting in the hard yards on the ugly stuff. That much was obvious from yesterday's display, it doesn't happen by accident. Skivvers I reckon is the leader on this stuff, he deserves huge credit for the defensive aspect of yesterday.

Aside from allowing Charlie Goode a free header from which he really ought to have scored, it was a foot perfect effort from the whole eleven. We were at it from minute one, snapping into challenges and denying a very good team the opportunity to dominate us. I know it isn't always pretty to watch, but it's the result of a collective effort that much like when a university boat race team gets it together, ought to be applauded.

It would be wrong also to imply that we didn't at least try to get things going in an attacking sense. In a Top Trumps scenario, Omar Bugiels skied volley would cancel out the aforementioned header from their ex Premier League centre half. We had a go, and in a game of very few chances (or excitement to be brutally honest) we provided as much of both commodities as they did. I probably disagree with Johnnie's "We were the dominant team" comment, but Sheesh Kebabs if you can't be at least a LITTLE one-eyed when you're the manager, when can you?

The thing I liked the most from an attacking perspective is that we clearly were trying to mix it up a little. Gone were the mind numbingly predictable barrage of consecutive diagonals, we tried to go through the thirds a bit and hit channel balls too. I totally agree with the manager that at times we lacked conviction around the edge of the penalty area*, but going forward it was a much more varied and encouraging display. We've scored one goal in our last four league games, so obviously this is an area which we need to improve on.

All in all though a good point. I heard someone saying as we were leaving "Surely our football can't get any more boring than THAT?". I didn't do it, but I was tempted to do a Mick McCarthy "IT CAN!". I'm afraid if you are expecting total football or some kind of Pep Guardiola derivative as we battle to stay in the league (because make no mistakes, that's what we're doing) then you are living in cloud cuckoo land. I'll moan along with the best of you, but realistically we'd better strap ourselves in for some functional football.

On other things....

Around this time of year people talk a lot about "Signings". My own perspective is that we urgently need a midfield player and a left back. Obviously he could never play for us, but Dan Kemp fits the bill exactly of what I'd like to see us get, Isaac Hutchinson, that type. We need a left back because Steve Seddon can't play every game (he just can't, although no doubt he will if you ask him). The squad is though I'm afraid very unbalanced. While Marcus Browne & Omar Bugiels toiled away against excellent defenders yesterday, I counted FOUR strikers warming up (Stevens, Sasu, Orsi & Hackford). Junior NKeng didn't make the bench or it would have been five, Josh Kelly being out on loan makes it six. To have that many attackers on our books (I make it eight, nine if you include the lad banned for betting) while having to playing Jake Reeves, Ali Smith & Steve Seddon practically every week is mad. That needs sorting one way or another.

*Perfect example of "conviction" was Aron Sasu yesterday. At one glorious moment he got fed, to his feet, one on one with the left back. Now I would have been needing nappies if I was in that defenders shoes, but our lad made it easy for him. Conviction for Aron in my eyes means coming inside, at pace, accross the box and hitting it, scoring the match winning goal. MAKE HIM DEFEND, ask him the question, make him decide quickly what he's gonna do. If he defends it properly, chop back & burn him for pace on the outside, if he doesn't, then HIT IT! 

I'd be working Sas on that every day. Recieve it, set off across the box and hit it. If it's not on, chop out and cross it. Conviction in football is "I KNOW what I'm gonna do, what are YOU gonna do to stop it?". This.kid has so much ability that even if you KNOW what he's gonna do, stopping him from doing it is difficult. Mo Salah has made a career out of that (no I'm not comparing the two), Sas needs to get the "I KNOW what I'm gonna do" part sorted though, and sharpish.

Points hard to come by...

In the first Ashes test in Perth, at one point England led by 100 second innings runs and they had lost one wicket. The opportunity to bat Australia out of the match was in their grasp, but it slipped through their fingers like sandy BazBall through a tennis racket. Older readers will remember Jean Claude Van Der Velde, leading the open by two shots going up the 18th at Carnoustie. He mystified the world by not just playing safe with an iron but smashing his drive miles right. He ended up in a farcical ditch situation and his race was run in a never to be forgotten shoes and socks-off skit.

My point? Well it's that failure to adapt to the in game situation is not a sporting recipe for success. Sure it's great to have a game-plan, but the most effective sports people and teams adapt, change, modify and evolve as the picture in front of them alters. There are no doubt many reasons for our current poor form, I want in this piece of drivel to waffle on about this particular aspect.

Firstly an admission, I don't do stats. XG & all that stuff bores and baffles me in equal measure. All of my opinions are formed by watching with my eyes, taking only mental notes, kind of going "old school" on it. The result of that is there is a very significant chance here that I'm talking utter bollocks. There is every chance that Arash or Plough Lane by Numbers will completely take apart and factually disprove my thoughts, but it's never stopped me before so here goes.

Firstly, why has our form fallen off so dramatically? The obvious if slightly boring answer is that the players aren't playing as well anymore (and they aren't), but why is that? Well, it's my hunch that there has been a subtle yet significant change in the way that teams are setting up against us. As of yet, if we HAVE made modifications to counter it (I don't think we have but anyway), then those adjustments need to in my opinion be more marked.

So how are they lining up different then? (Silly bollocks) I hear you ask. Well the most obvious alteration that teams have made is that they've stopped pressing us high anywhere near so much. When we first came into the league many people thought we were going to be cannon fodder, me amongst them, and teams felt that they had to smash us 4-0 not just beat us. They swarmed all over us feeling confident they could kill us off quickly, but they were wrong. We handled the high press very well, confounded our "They can only play one way" critics and played our best football under Johnnie Jackson. We played through teams, around teams and created many chances. Our opposition paid a heavy price for not giving us the respect that we deserved, and for a time we were solid playoff contenders. The trouble with professional sport though is the other team get chance to watch video, make new plans, and that's what's tripped us up.

Teams now sit off us. They're happy to let our possession stat percentage be largely made up of us rolling it around at the back between the defence and the goalkeeper. They know that they haven't got to go and get the ball back, if they wait, either Joe Lewis or Ryan Johnson will launch it to them on the diagonal. Obviously for them there is a risk in allowing us to drop the ball onto the corner of their penalty box, but they can comfort themselves with a couple of points. Firstly, unless Omar Bugiel is on the pitch we are very unlikely to win the header. Even if we DO win the header, because we don't get many bodies around the contact area we are a heavy underdog to win the knockdown in any case. So what tends to happen is we spend thirty or forty seconds manoeuvring the football into the correct diagonal launchpad spot, then concede possession once the ball gets bazookered forward. It makes the "How long did you have the ball" numbers look alright, but it doesn't do your chances of winning football matches any favours.

From there teams have worked out that if you come out with a bit of pace, you have a good shot of playing through our midfield and getting at the back five. Back there, even our best defenders are beginning to look shaky as the threats come at them from all angles.

The good thing is that our "underestimated" period saw us rack up a good few points, so I should think that any AFC Wimbledon fan would have bitten your arm off at the shoulder joint to be where we are today. Ask last seasons League Two Champions or the team that finished second (Port Vale and Doncaster are bottom and second bottom respectively) if you don't believe me. To be where we are has been an incredible effort by the players and management group, they deserve huge credit.

Given we've picked up two points out of the last seven matches though, obviously we need to arrest the slide sharpish. I'm fairly convinced that teams are going to continue to let us smash it forward from 50 yards away, this is what I'd like to see us doing a little bit more of going forward.

1. Encourage the centre halves to bring it forward occasionally. They are ALL easily good enough footballers to do it, if they did it would open the game up a bit and ask a question of the opposing team. Yes it carries an element of risk with it, but there is significant potential reward too.

2. Encourage the central midfielders to drop in and take it on the half turn occasionally, commonly referred to as "playing through the thirds" or "playing through midfield". I've lost count of the number of times we have the opportunity to go forwards yet take the safe option and go back. Too often we aren't just passing the football, we're passing the responsibility too.

3. Occasionally play it earlier and rather than ALWAYS going on the diagonal, have the full backs bend it into the channel and work from there. It's a bit old fashioned this one, but the ball into a channel into a willing runner will outlive all of us as a legitimate football tactic.

I think if we do these three things, as well as obviously keeping the long diagonal occasionally, we will be much more difficult to play against. We'll keep the football in meaningful areas for much longer periods of time, we'll decrease the amount of defending that we have to do.

I'm convinced we'd get more points, and that's the crux of it really.

Aron Sasu-Cometh the hour.

Never before (nor hopefully since) has a player who has barely scored a goal nor even registered an assist generated so much debate.I must confess that to some extent I've always felt guilty that I was probably responsible in part, so convinced was I and am I that Aron Sasu is going to be very good. The opinions on the kid amongst our fans form just about the broadest spectrum of any player I've ever come across. There's been a few believers at one end, then some in the middle but lots and lots of doubters.Those doubters have formed a sub-section all of their own, from those who say "he needs a loan" to those who say he'll never make a footballer while he's got a hole in his arse. Listen to some and Sasu wouldn't get minutes in their Sunday League team.

For my part, there have been plenty of occasions when I've watched him and had to remind myself that I really HAD seen a player in there at some point. I really had seen that little dip of the shoulder and an explosion from a standing start. I really had seen that awareness and head movement which always reveal quality in a footballer. I'd really seen that step, that glide of a good player in possession. I had to remind myself because there has been occasions where his performances have lacked all of those things, times when at best he has been ineffective at best and insipid at worst.

But I know what I've seen when I've seen it, so I've had to wait. Much like Johnnie Jackson (who incidentally deserves huge credit for sticking with the kid), I've copped my fair share of ridicule and derision for my belief in Sasu, but you can't unsee something so significant, can't forget something so potentially exciting.

And what is it that the kid has? Well pace obviously, in it's most blistering and brutal form, as well as the ability to go both sides, hit it off feet. His heading has improved a lot but still has some way to go, ditto his awareness and ability to get his body in the right position to protect the ball better. I've always felt though that with young footballers you're far better off talking about what they CAN do rather than what they can't. If as is the case with this boy the "can'ts" are readily teachable while the "cans" are things shared with only a tiny percentage of footballers and stuff that you really either have or you don't, then you have something really worth working on. That's what Aron Sasu is, a footballer who is REALLY worth working on.

And at last he showed it, by scoring four goals in one match. Pay no mind to those neighsayers who tell you the goalie wasn't very good and Cardiff didn't have their first team out, for any striker in any game of professional football to score four times without penalties is an extraordinary achievement. Haaland likely wouldn't score four times against non league Cup opposition, to do it at ANY level is incredible.

Does that settle the debate as to whether he'll make it with us? Of course it doesn't. I personally think it settles the "Has he got huge potential?" discussion, but much like the "Is his best position as a striker?" argument, my stance will surprise nobody.

Hopefully from here, what last night has done has settled the debate in the PLAYERS head, that's often the most important bit. Hopefully from here Aron Sasu goes on to achieve something like his full potential. Even partially fulfilling that would see us in my opinion have a striker who is far too good for League One.

My match report: AFC Wimbledon v Gateshead.

I've had a combination of writers block & not wanting to jinx it by posting recently. So well have we been playing and so excellent has been the job Johnnie has been doing, after missing a couple of games due to family stuff I didn't want to upset the applecart by posting stuff. So I've kept my own council for a few weeks, but today I've got to speak up.

What I saw really surprised me, disappointed me even more. No I'm not talking about what went down on the pitch (we never got going, it happens sometimes in football) I'm on about the reaction of a section of fans to the defeat. To hear the same players who have been getting such fantastic results getting booed because they had an off day really shocked me. This is the same bunch of lads, the same manager that were a conceded late equaliser away from being top of League One a couple of weeks back. From pre-season relegation favourites and being written off by everyone (including me) to being in a playoff slot is some effort. In my world it gives you plenty of credit in the bank, easily enough so that when a dodgy performance DOES eventually arrive, you DON'T get booed off.

Anyway, maybe it just me. As for the game itself, like I say we never really got going. On the plus side Aaron Sasu was excellent & deservedly won man of the match in the stadium. Once he gets confident enough to properly go for it each time he gets the ball, I mean go both ways, have shots etc, he'll be some weapon. It was handy to get a game into Joe Lewis's legs, other than that it didn't have much going for it. Aside from perhaps Craig Cope noticing their 20 in midfield who I thought was excellent, the 7 up top & the baldy midfielder not far behind him, it was a day to forget.

The booing though? We're better than that. Johnnie and the players have every right to feel a bit aggreived by that in my opinion.

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.