Reasons to be cheerful? The season so far.....

Drawing too many conclusions about a season only five matches old is a total mugs game, we all know that. As I've been called far worse than a total mug many times in my life though, I'm happy to do the "school report" before I even know all the kids names.

So let's start with a bit of "state the obvious", hopefully that might con the odd reader into thinking that occasionally I talk some sense. Johnnie Jackson, Craig Cope and Andy Thorne have put together a strong squad of players for the level. I don't obviously know how much say each of them has in the signing of the individual players, but I think we can safely guess that on the "Do we/Don't we" final flowchart, a "No" to the "Are they massive?" question meant we didn't sign them. We are giant, a huge football team. If one of the more innovative owners in League two has employed an ex basketball coach as manager, I suppose we might get "outsized". If not, I'd be amazed if we aren't the biggest team in the division. Size (as we all know/hope lads) isn't everything, but in the hurly burley of league Two it's certainly something.

Now if any fans of opposing teams in L2 are foolish enough to read this blog, let me tell you you ain't gonna enjoy playing against Wimbledon this season. As an aside I can tell you with some certainty that you ain't gonna enjoy WATCHING your team play against Wimbledon either. If ever a game was ripe for you to prove the Mrs wrong when she says "You NEVER miss a football match to take me to lunch on a Saturday", it's when you play us at your ground. Believe me. You're welcome.

So here we arrive at another state the obvious moment. We ain't gonna win the Johann Cruyff total football award for L2 this season. Don't Google it I made it up, but you get my drift. That's not to say that we don't have good footballers because we do, but we are totally route 0.5 (route one is for pussies seemingly). I looked at the possession stats for our convincing arm wrestle win at Cheltenham on Saturday. They were miles out. It had us down as being 60:40 in the ascendancy or something. Total nonsense. The possession stats for the game WERE in our favour, but it was more like 40:25:35. The 35% of the time in all of our games is when the ball is either up in the stratosphere or has bounced and people are chasing it. There are significant periods of our games where NOBODY is in possession of the football. To be in possession of it you have to be in control of it surely? So no, I stand by MY stats, 40:25:35 it is.

And where will it all take us? Well I predicted 12th before a ball was kicked, and I'd be erring towards us doing slightly better than that at the moment. That's not because we've won two out of three league games, (we've played some poor teams so far), but because the likes of Myles Hippolite, Ali Smith, James Ball and Josh Kelly are capable of being a lot better than we're currently seeing in my opinion. If we can get those guys firing, then we have a chance in my view of getting into the playoffs. We are good in defence (Ryley Harbottle is a fine acquisition), but we are going to need the aforementioned players to get our goals and chance creation stats going. Despite it being just about as dominant a 1-0 as you'll ever see against Cheltenham, we didn't in all honesty rack up chance after chance. We are going to need to do that against poor teams. 

Negatives? Well we are at times a brutal watch. No I'm sorry, we are. Even when there are acres of space in which to carry the ball, players completely ignore the opportunity. Even when there is a simple pass on, we still launch it. Catching us in possession is practically impossible because if an opposition player is anywhere near us, we smash it into the clouds. I totally get that this is the risk free approach, but I can't lie and tell you that I enjoy watching it massively. I'd love to see us go through the thirds and express ourselves but it's a long way off.  Jake Reeves sometimes gets it going for a moment or two,  but it soon fizzles out and we smash it again. I actually think that if we did play a bit more we'd be a better team, but it doesn't look likely at the moment.

That though wouldn't be my biggest gripe. No, that would be that we seem to have just about given up on playing our own youngsters. I get that Josh Neufville is learning the "wing-back" role as he goes, but we have two excellent young right backs sitting on their arse watching him do it. I get that out central midfielders are getting to know each other and standing back to back to see who is tallest, but what of young Morgan Williams, seemingly so bored with his lot these days that he's taken to cutting his own Barnet? There are others, young Ethan Sutcliffe looks to me like a lad who might just have it, Paris Locke, Kai Jennings too. All these kids could be the next on the Jack Rudoni/Jack Currie gravy train the club needs to pull into the station ever year or so. I said last season that if we pissed the league I'd have taken the "We couldn't have done THAT with kids" hook line & sinker. We didn't piss the league though, we were 10th. To this observer, being 12th instead but giving Williams a dozen starts, Sutcliffe a few, Ogundere/Biler a load in front of the long throw bloke etc would have been a price worth paying. Similarly, playing slightly more progressive football but not getting as many 0-0's at "tough places to come" would be a price that this watcher would happily stump up for.

As it is, it looks to me like we're kind of "all-in" this season. We've binned off a lad who successfully coached at all levels of the club for many years, we're in the process of binning off any claims that we prioritise our own youngsters, and we're binning off any pretensions that we are looking to play progressive, possession football. If it all works and we get promoted then I guess the school report would be an A*. If on the other hand we don't succeed, we might find that we've given up a fair amount of our DNA for little or no return.

That's the "all-in" move though I guess. Those of us who know poker know that by it's very nature it's a "shit or bust" move. Time will tell which.

AFC Wimbledon, What can we expect and hope for in the new season.

I'll tell you one thing, being a football manager can't be easy. There can't be many jobs where even if you do a much better job than last year you risk getting the sack, but that's exactly the game for Johnnie Jackson, Skivvers and the new coach fella this season.

Why? Well in my opinion the team we go into the new season with is by quite a margin weaker than the one that started last season. That's not anyone's fault particularly, but you can't expect to lose Alex Bass, Jack Currie and Ali Al-Hamadi while retaining the same strength. Those three (particularly Al-Hamadi who was the best player in the league by some distance) are practically irreplaceable at the level, I think time will brutally demonstrate that as we go along.

We have at least arguably improved the squad as a whole. The front four represent the most potent bunch of options there's been since I had a season ticket, we've also picked up an option or two in midfield. That said, one or two things concern me.

Jake Reeves was brilliant until Christmas last season, then fell away a bit towards the end. I think that is partially explainable by the fact that he isn't 17 feet tall (I've calculated that as being the optimum height for an AFC Wimbledon central midfielder given our tactics in the last dozen games). Like Josh Kelly, you'd expect him to improve if he hasn't got to jump nine feet into the air in order to receive the passes aimed at him, but like the striker he ALSO has a bit to prove this time around. Jake has to re find the incisiveness of pass that he had, to resist the temptation to go safe, pass it backwards, shirk responsibility as he began to do. Josh Kelly arrived bristling with intent, running diagonals and patterns which would twist any league two centre back into a half hitch granny. Never recieving the ball though gradually eroded his dash and his confidence. He became niggly to compensate, gradually allowing his David Speedie to overrule his Dennis Bergkamp (look if you're under 25, you're just going to have to Google it).

And what of Johnnie? In my view (and I appreciate this sounds ridiculous but let's face it, it's never stopped me before) probably his biggest problem is that people are a bit bored with him. Not that he's particularly done anything wrong or that he himself is boring (he's a perfectly nice fella in real life), it's just that being at a club into a third season is rare at the level. The meet the manager thing tonight will be sparsely attended, not because people don't like him but because folks have by now got a good idea what he's going to say. If for example Johnnie had been sacked last week and we'd put Jodie Morris (for example) in charge, people would be all over the thing tonight. Not because Jodie tells better jokes (although again he's a totally nice fella) but just because it's a new voice, something different.

And if we DID have a new manager, and they got us into say 12th this season, I reckon the fan-base would be pretty happy with that. If we got 12th without the ball having snow on it all of the time, all the better. The fans would likely reason that a season of consolidation after losing our best players was a decent effort. They might even argue that finishing 12th THIS season is in many ways a better achievement than finishing 10th last time.

I'd agree. 10th last time with THAT team was only a 7/10 in my book, it'll be harder this time. Of course though we haven't got a new manager, we've got a familiar face who's doing a solid job. 12th (my prediction) would be another solid result, but I'm not sure it would be enough to get the manager a 4th season.