On sunny but cold March afternoon, we at AFC Wimbledon were "done the double on" for the first time this season by an impressive Bromley outfit. Earlier in the campaign our South East London neighbours outmuscled us at their ground, here they took the points playing some decent football and in my view narrowly deserved the win.
There wasn't much in it (there never is in our games) and I'm afraid that the unfortunate truth of the matter is that if just about every game you are involved in is either 0-0 or 1-0, sooner or later you are going to concede a daft one and get beat. For sure big Joe Lewis and Owen Goodman won't want to watch the replay back, but unlike the captain who got stuck into the young goalkeeper, they've got loads of credit with me and I aren't going to criticise them. Defending as well as we do is really hard, sooner or later you are going to have a balls up, it's life.
On the occasions when you DO have a balls up though, you're really looking for someone to bale you out with a goal. I'm afraid it's in THIS department that we currently are falling well short. Two goals in the last four matches isn't the stuff of playoff places never mind automatic promortion pushes, we have to get it sorted and sharpish.
From my seat in the West Stand it doesn't look like we have too much wrong, we just too often have a "football by numbers" look about us in possession. Patterns from the training ground are great, but there has to be some spontaneoty, some joy to the game too. The safe pass has a place and is an important part of the modern game, but equally if you continually pass up the opportunity to be incisive you end up playing in front of teams all of the time.
That to my eyes is us. We often work it into great areas but just when we get an opportunity to get a shot off, take somebody on or try and play somebody in, we check back and recycle way too often. We're too "kind" to defenders, allowing them to regroup just as soon as we've ruffled their shape.
By contrast Bromley flooded forward, throwing men at it and causing chaos. For sure we could have scored, but equally they could have scored more too.
It's telling that while I'd have had Cameron Congreve (their 22) as comfortably MOM, I'd be struggling to pick a contender from our side. It was all a bit grey, a bit staid, a bit flat and lacking inspiration.
We're still a very good team, we've just got to kick off the shackles a bit, take off the handbrake and start showing it more. COYD
