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.
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